Social Justice Policy Brief #181 | Valerie Henderson | October 29, 2025
Summary
The pardon of Changpeng Zhao (“CZ”), the convicted founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, by President Trump, is widely viewed by critics as a clear act of “pay-to-play” corruption and a severe abuse of executive clemency.
The controversy stems from the direct financial and lobbying links between CZ, his company, and the President’s family business, World Liberty Financial. CZ had pleaded guilty to a felony charge of failing to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering (AML) program, a failure that facilitated billions in illicit transactions for terrorist groups and child abusers. Despite this, the President granted a full pardon shortly after Binance and its associates provided financial and structural support to the Trump family’s new crypto venture, which yielded the President over $57 million in the last year.
Analysis
The executive pardon of Changpeng Zhao represents a critical nexus where executive authority intersects with private financial gain, drawing severe condemnation for its transactional nature and the damage it inflicts upon the rule of law. The highly scrutinized relationship with the Trump family’s venture, World Liberty Financial, provides the ethical framework for this criticism. Zhao’s conviction was not for a minor infraction, but for a federal felony—willfully violating the Bank Secrecy Act—which prosecutors established enabled over $900 million in criminal activity, including money laundering for groups like Hamas, al-Qaeda, and organizations peddling child sex abuse material. Yet, instead of upholding the verdict, the President utilized the constitutional pardon power to effectively erase this crime, a decision immediately following the public emergence of a lucrative financial entanglement.
The connection is threefold and explicit: First, the President’s financial disclosure showed he earned more than $57 million from World Liberty Financial. Second, Binance provided technical support (creating the smart contract) and financial legitimacy to World Liberty’s USD1 stablecoin. Third, this support culminated in a $2 billion investment into Binance that utilized the World Liberty stablecoin, creating a direct economic bond between the President’s family and the convicted executive’s company. The fact that Zhao hired a lobbyist known as a close associate of Donald Trump Jr. to seek “assistance from the administration” only cemented the narrative of a “pay-to-play” scheme, where clemency was a political payoff for business support.
Furthermore, this act aligns perfectly with the strategic patterns of political power and manipulation criticized in USRESIST NEWS foreign policy briefs. The pardon is a form of “narrative erasure”, where the administration denies the atrocity of financial crime by rebranding CZ as a victim of the previous administration’s “war on cryptocurrency”. This move “whitewashes the crime” of enabling money laundering, replacing the need for legal accountability with the “illusion of economic salvation” for the crypto industry and the President’s own financial empire. It converts a legal crisis into a “business plan,” asserting that power absolves itself and that the highest office can be used as a “tool of ego” to reward loyal, wealthy allies. This action sets a dangerous precedent, signaling global impunity for financial crime when it is politically or personally advantageous to the executive branch.
My Opinion
The pardon of Changpeng Zhao represents a profound moral affront to the principles of justice and public service.
This is not an act of mercy; it is a brazen privatization of executive power. The President is shown to have used a solemn constitutional authority—the power to forgive federal crimes as an instrument for personal financial gain and commercial advancement for his family’s enterprise.
In this context, silence on the clear connection between the pardon and profit is not prudence it is complicity. This action signals to the world that if one can provide sufficient financial support to the power structure, one can escape accountability for even the most severe financial crimes. It is the logical and disastrous extension of a worldview that transforms justice into a business plan, and where political access is sold to the highest bidder.
Engagement Resources
- Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs (Minority Staff): Provides official legislative and oversight efforts, including pressuring the Department of Justice and Treasury on the pardon’s impact on enforcement.
- Americans for Financial Reform (AFR): A non-profit coalition that advocates for financial accountability and has issued strong statements against the pardon as rewarding “crypto crime”.
- US: A non-partisan government watchdog that monitors and exposes corruption and conflicts of interest within the executive branch.
- Brennan Center for Justice: Provides in-depth analysis and reports on the erosion of oversight, abuses of executive authority, and potential self-dealing in government.
- Transparency International: A global civil society organization that fights corruption, specifically focusing on the integrity and corruption risks associated with executive clemency powers.
Keywords
Pardon Corruption, Changpeng Zhao (CZ) Clemency, Binance Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Failure, World Liberty Financial Conflict of Interest,