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 October 2025 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.”
Elizabeth Oyer, a former U.S. Pardon Attorney, described Zhao’s case as unusual and said the influence of money in securing the pardon is unprecedented.
“This is corruption,” she added.
Harvard legal scholar Lawrence Lessig told the program there is no clear evidence of quid pro quo, but argued that “the culture of giving and exchanging” surrounds the deal.
Lessig noted that Zhao’s Binance left the $2 billion deposited in World Liberty Financial, a sum that could earn about $80 million a year in interest for the Trump family and their partners.
60 Minutes also cited a source claiming Binance donated software to World Liberty Financial to help Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump launch their cryptocurrency, with the program stating that without Zhao “the technology doesn’t exist.”
A spokesman for World Liberty Financial disputed the report, saying, “It’s disappointing that a once-respected news program like 60 Minutes would conduct such disgraceful and false reporting.”
White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump exercised his “constitutional authority” by pardoning Zhao, arguing his prosecution was part of a Biden-era “war on cryptocurrency.”
Zhao, according to a 60 Minutes source, “now controls whether World Liberty dies or lives. He has a sword over their head.”
Leave a Reply