What did Donald Trump do today?
He pardoned a money launderer for Hamas whose crypto firm has made him billions of dollars.
Today, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to using his position at Binance to launder money on behalf of Hamas, among other criminal or terrorist organizations. The company itself pleaded guilty to a wide range of crimes including money laundering and helping criminal clients evade international sanctions.
Binance is currently being sued by the victims of the Oct. 7th, 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel. The suit charges that Binance enabled the attack by providing Hamas with secure and secret funding channels it used to acquire weapons.
But Binance also has made Trump's ventures into the scam-ridden crypto industry enormously profitable. It agreed to accept $2 billion in financing from an investment fund for the United Arab Emirates, but in crypto "stablecoins" controlled by a Trump family business rather than actual money. The result is that Trump personally made millions of dollars in transaction fees.
In other words, Binance sold part of itself at below market value in order to indirectly funnel money into Trump's pockets while it was actively lobbying for a pardon for Zhao.
Zhao had been forbidden as part of his sentence from working in finance. This is a common punishment in white collar fraud cases, to prevent criminals with expert knowledge of the financial system from simply learning how to avoid getting caught the next time. Trump's pardon also undoes that protection, and similar restrictions on Binance itself.
Trump administration officials today blamed the Biden administration for overprosecuting Binance and Zhao—again, for knowing enabling Hamas to evade sanctions and fund the attack that started the ongoing war in Gaza. Asked about it by CNN's Kaitlyn Collins, Trump became angry and insisted that "what he did is not even a crime, wasn’t even a crime."
Why does this matter?
- It is wrong to sell pardons.