With all the other Trump behavior swirling around, the pardon of CZ Zhao may seem small potatoes, but the story has some staying power. All the egregious, deplorable pardons by Trump of his political allies are bad enough, but the pardon of CZ Zhao takes Trump’s corruption to a whole new level. Trump’s claim not to know Zhao makes it worse. I was heartened to see this 14 minute segment appear on 60 minutes. The segment lends the Zhao scandal more oxygen. I urge you to watch it.
For more rigorous detail I’ve copied below another post by eastern Washington Substacker Linda Gunshefski. I encourage you to sign up here to receive her email posts.
The money-launderer gave enemy states access to the US. America’s founders defined treason as giving “aid and comfort” to our enemies. Trump’s pardon of CZ Zhao comes close.
🩺 Pulse Check by Dr. Linda Gunshefski, November 3, 2025
Trump’s 60 Minutes Interview
“OK, are you ready? I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that.” — Donald J. Trump, CBS 60 Minutes, Nov 2, 2025
Last evening, November 2 on CBS’ 60 minutes, President Donald Trump was asked why he pardoned CZ Zhao, the notorious billionaire founder of Binance who admitted in court to laundering money for terrorists and enemy states such as Iran and North Korea. Trump stated that he did not know who Zhao was and added that he’d “heard it was a Biden witch hunt,” brushing off the question as if it were a nuisance rather than a matter of national security. Video: Trump on pardon
When answering questions from reporters on October 23, 2025, the same day he issued the pardon to Changpeng Zhao (aka “CZ”) of Binance “I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people.”
This was a moment that captured in real time of what the Constitution calls “giving aid and comfort” to our enemies. The president of the United States had granted clemency to a man whose company admitted moving nearly a billion dollars through Iran, Syria, and North Korea and then he dismissed it as a “witch hunt”.
As I shared yesterday, the Trump Family’s company World Liberty Financial profited more than $2 Billion dollars earlier this year from a crypto deal that Binance facilitated for them. (A $2 billion Crypto Profit and a Presidential Pardon. ) When pressed on whether his pardon created the appearance of corruption, Trump shrugged: “I’m not concerned. I’d rather not have you ask the question.”
Zhao and Binance admitted to knowingly breaking US anti-money-laundering laws
In 2023 the US Justice Department saw it differently. When prosecutors unsealed their case against CZ Zhao and Binance in November 2023, they described a global operation that knowingly broke U.S. law to expand its profits — a company that courted American traders while pretending not to exist in the United States. This wasn’t merely a clerical oversight; it was a business model built on evasion.
From the beginning, CZ Zhao and Binance built their empire on not asking questions and looking in the other direction. Internal communications obtained by prosecutors showed that senior executives knew thousands of Americans were trading on Binance.com using VPNs to hide their locations. Instead of blocking them corporate leadership encouraged it. The company never registered with FinCEN as required for money-transmitting businesses, never built a functioning anti-money-laundering (AML) program and never filed the suspicious activity reports that banks must file daily.
One Binance compliance officer even joked internally: “We see the bad but close 2 eyes.”
That feigned blindness was extraordinarily profitable. Between 2018 and 2022, according to the Justice Department, CZ Zhao and Binance processed roughly $898 million in trades between U.S. persons and users in Iran, a nation under sweeping American sanctions. They also admitted to handling transactions tied to Syria and North Korea, countries on the U.S. Treasury’s blacklist for supporting terrorism and weapons proliferation. Binance failed to block IP addresses from sanctioned regions and did not screen users against the Specially Designated Nationals list, the basic firewall designed to prevent American dollars from supporting hostile regimes.
“Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child-abuse networks threatening our national security.” — Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen
Binance Gave Organized Crime Access
Behind the scenes, prosecutors found something darker still. CZ Zhao and Binance’s network of shell companies and anonymous wallets moved hundreds of millions of dollars in illicit funds linked to ransomware gangs, darknet drug markets, and crypto “mixers” designed to obscure the origin of stolen or tainted assets. One of the largest — the Russian darknet bazaar Hydra — relied on Binance to launder proceeds from narcotics, hacking, and identity theft.
“Binance’s failures allowed criminal actors to transact freely through its platform and exposed the U.S. financial system to unacceptable risks.” — U.S. Department of Justice, United States v. Binance Holdings Limited
Yet between 2017 and 2022, despite all of this, CZ Zhao and Binance filed zero Suspicious Activity Reports with FinCEN. Zero.
By the time the government charged them, the damage had been done: billions of dollars in untraceable crypto had flowed through a platform that was, by the company’s own admission, built to defy American law.
“Binance became a payment highway for criminals, rogue nations, and terrorist organizations to move their money through the shadows and into the legitimate economy.” — Attorney General Merrick Garland
CZ Zhao and Binance pleaded guilty
In November 2023 CZ Zhao and Binance pleaded guilty and agreed to pay $4.3 billion in criminal and civil penalties — one of the largest corporate settlements in U.S. history.
Zhao personally paid a $50 million fine, stepped down as CEO, and in April 2024 was sentenced to four months in federal prison. They admitted in writing that their actions “allowed criminal actors to transact freely” and “exposed the U.S. financial system to unacceptable risks.”
As part of the plea, CZ Zhao and Binance must now operate under a five-year independent compliance monitor supervised by the DOJ, FinCEN, and OFAC.
The Justice Department made clear that these crimes were not victimless. In court and in its filings, prosecutors said that CZ Zhao and Binance’s failures “endangered the integrity of the U.S. financial system and U.S. national security.”
Attorney General Merrick Garland described the company as a “payment highway for criminals, rogue nations, and terrorist organizations.”
Treasury officials echoed that conclusion, warning that their deliberate blind eye to money laundering and sanctions evasion “threatened the safety and credibility of the American financial system.” In other words, this wasn’t a mere corporate scandal — it was an attack on the safeguards that keep the U.S. economy from becoming a laundromat for global crime.
The Trump Pardon
Then came the Trump pardon. In October 2025, President Trump quietly issued a full pardon to CZ Zhao. Zhao had already served his prison sentence but the presidential pardon will allow him to conduct business in the US once again.
Pressed by interviewer Norah O’Donnell about the appearance of corruption, Trump replied, “I’m not concerned. I’d rather not have you ask the question.”
Trump then pivoted to praising cryptocurrency, calling it a “huge industry” and noting that his sons were involved in it. The exchange was less an explanation than a confession of indifference — a reminder that in Trump’s Washington, billionaires with money to move will always find a sympathetic ear.
Binance facilitated the release of the World Liberty’s Trump stable coin, USD1. The Trump family investment catapulted from $127 to $2.1 billion almost overnight.
Pulse Check: Is it Treason?
The US Founders defined treason as “levying war against the United States, or adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort.” Legally, pardoning an admitted and convicted money-launderer who funneled funds to terrorists and enemy nations may not meet the narrow constitutional threshold for treason.
“Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.” — U.S. Constitution, Article III, Section 3
Yet if a president knowingly grants clemency to someone who enriched enemy states and violent actors, the moral boundary begins to blur. While the pardon power is nearly absolute, its abuse for personal, political, or financial motives transforms it from an act of mercy into an act of betrayal. Even if not treason in the courtroom, such a pardon gives aid and comfort in spirit — signaling to America’s adversaries that loyalty and law are negotiable.
CZ Zhao and Binance admitted to doing exactly what every financial criminal in history tries to do — move dirty money through an unregulated system and call it innovation. When finally confronted by the US Justice Department, they confessed, yes, we did that.
But when Trump was confronted on television in front of millions of viewers he denied even knowing Zhao, the founder of the company that increased his family’s net worth by over $2 Billion dollars.
Well, maybe it’s not treason but it sure is something.
