A Crypto Conman Whose Platform Helped Hamas Launder Money Receives a Full Pardon After Investing in Trump's Crypto Fund

Oct 23, 2025

One of the most flagrant abuses of Trump’s second term is his more or less open sale of pardons to those who enrich him and his family. Early this year, Executive Watch noted the Trump family’s deal with Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange whose Chinese founder Changpeng Zhao was lobbying for a Trump pardon. Now Trump has delivered on his end of the deal.

The New York Times reports:

President Trump granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, wiping away one of the U.S. government’s most significant crackdowns on crypto crime.
Mr. Zhao had pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023 and served four months in federal prison, after a yearslong investigation by financial regulators and U.S. prosecutors. …
To seek the pardon, Mr. Zhao hired lawyers and lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration, while Binance struck a business deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto start-up.
That deal alone is poised to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps and the family of Steve Witkoff, the president’s top Middle East adviser. …
Long considered the crypto industry’s richest man, Mr. Zhao—a Chinese-born executive who now lives in the United Arab Emirates—admitted that he had violated the law by failing to install rigorous compliance systems at Binance. That allowed people in countries under sanctions, and terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State, to move money on his platform.

This is typical of Trump’s pay-to-play presidency. Writing an op-ed critical of Israel can get you branded as a supporter of Hamas and rounded up by government goons. But funnel enough money to the Trump family, and you can get a free pass for helping terrorists launder money.

The Executive Watch is a project of the Institute for the Study of Modern Authoritarianism, and its flagship publication The UnPopulist, to track in an ongoing way the abuses of the power of the American presidency. It sorts these abuses into five categories: Personal Grift, Political Corruption, Presidential Retribution, Power Consolidation, and Policy Illegality. Click the category of interest to get an overview of all the abuses under it.

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