Donald Trump’s pardon for a billionaire Chinese felon with financial links to his family has been called out as “corruption.”
Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder of cryptocurrency firm Binance, last month. He had pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations that allowed criminal groups to move money connected to drug trafficking and child abuse.
The pardon came just months after Binance struck a $2 billion deal in partnership with the Trump family’s crypto venture, World Liberty Financial.
Asked about the pardon last month on 60 Minutes, Trump said he had “no idea” who Zhao was and did not remember him, and previously told reporters at the White House “he had a lot of support… so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”
Former U.S. Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer, who worked for the Justice Department, said Zhao’s case was “unusual.”
“The influence that money played in securing this pardon is unprecedented,” Oyer said on Sunday’s 60 Minutes. “The self-dealing aspect of the pardon in terms of the benefit that it conferred on President Trump, and his family, and people in his inner circle is also unprecedented.”
“This is absolutely not justice,“ she added. “This is corruption.”
Oyer was fired in March when she refused to reinstate Mel Gibson’s gun rights, which he lost after a domestic violence conviction. She was replaced by a Trump loyalist.
60 Minutes said Binance had also donated software to World Liberty Financial to help Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump launch their cryptocurrency, with the program quoting a source who said without Zhao “the technology doesn’t exist.”
Shortly after applying for the pardon in May, Zhao was involved in a major financial windfall for World Liberty. That month, an Emirati fund made a $2 billion investment in Binance, with the deal done in World Liberty crypto, a currency that had only been on the market for five weeks.
A source told 60 Minutes that “it wasn’t strange, it was nuts.”
Harvard legal scholar and political activist Lawrence Lessig told the program of the currency selection: “The only reason it makes sense is to ingratiate with the president.”
“There’s no clear evidence of quid pro quo,” Lessig added. “But there wouldn’t be. Nobody is so stupid as to conduct themselves with that explicit structure. Instead, it’s the culture of giving and exchanging in a much more informal way that we clearly know is happening right now.”
Lessig added “Zhao’s Binance left the $2 billion deposited in World Liberty Financial. That money could be earning interest for the Trump’s and their partners of $80 million a year. Also, $2 billion represents most of World Liberty’s deposits.”
In a statement to the Daily Beast, World Liberty Financial spokesman David Wachsman said, “It’s disappointing that a once-respected news program like 60 Minutes would conduct such disgraceful and false reporting.”
They stated there were no conflicts of interest between World Liberty Financial and the U.S. administration. “The independent actions of the President of the United States have nothing to do with the enterprising business of a private DeFi company like WLFI. There has never been any sort of political quid pro quo — nor could there ever be, as there is no connection.”
The spokesman said Binance is not an investor in World Liberty Financial.
“The WLFI governance token and USD1, World Liberty Financial’s GENIUS Act-compliant stablecoin, are traded on Binance, but so too are hundreds of competitor tokens. 60 Minutes failed to make clear a simple fact: when MGX selected USD1 as its stablecoin of choice for their historic investment in Binance, they did so because it was the best technology available.”
An attorney for Zhao and Binance told 60 Minutes that neither provided “…technical support, personnel, or any other resources…” The Daily Beast has reached out to Binance and Zhao’s attorney for comment.
In a statement to the Daily Beast, White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump had exercised his “constitutional authority” by pardoning Zhoa, claiming he had been prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their “war on cryptocurrency”.
“In their desire to punish the cryptocurrency industry, the Biden Administration pursued Mr. Zhao despite no allegations of fraud or identifiable victims,” Leavitt said. “The Biden Administration sought to imprison Mr. Zhao for three years, a sentence so outside Sentencing Guidelines that the even the Judge said he had never heard of this in his 30-year career.”
“These actions by the Biden Administration severely damaged the United States’ reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation,” she added. “The Biden Administration’s war on crypto is over.”
Zhao, according to a 60 Minutes source, “now controls whether [World Liberty] dies or lives. He has a sword over their head.”
Constitutional scholar Michael Gerhardt, who teaches at the University of North Carolina, said Donald Trump does not have to be involved in his family’s financial deals to know he benefits from them.
“They do not benefit the people of the United States so that makes it a classic example of a conflict of interest the Constitution is designed to prevent,” Gerhardt said.
“He has divided loyalties, he’s got people who have invested in his business he wants to keep happy. But there’s also the additional problem that the president is using his office and the resources of his office in other words our money, federal tax dollars to help promote that business.”
Earlier this month, 60 Minutes interviewed Trump for the first time since CBS’ parent company Paramount agreed to pay the president $16 million to settle a lawsuit. The company has since installed MAGA-curious Bari Weiss as editor in chief of CBS News.
Anchor Norah O’Donnell asked the president if he was “concerned about the appearance of corruption” after pardoning CZ. The second time O’Donnell asked, along with Trump’s answer, was cut from the final edit, but made available in an online transcript.
“I can’t say, because—I can’t say—I’m not concerned. I don’t—I’d rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it. You just came to me and you said, ‘Can I ask another question?’ And I said, yeah. This is the question…” Trump answered.
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