Binance founder Changpeng Zhao attended the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups held at the Porte de Versailles Exhibition Center in Paris on June 16, 2022.
Benoît Tessier | Reuters
President Donald Trump said: “I don’t know anything.” Binance Its founder, Zhao Changpeng, or his company’s recent involvement in a cryptocurrency venture with ties to Trump’s family, despite his pardon granted last month.
Asked why he pardoned the former cryptocurrency executive known as CZ in an interview aired on CBS’s “60 Minutes” on Sunday, President Trump responded, “Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is.”
In late 2023, Chao resigned as CEO of Binance and pleaded guilty to charges of failing to adequately combat money laundering on the cryptocurrency exchange. He was sentenced to four months in prison and released in September 2024.
Trump suggested that his decision to pardon CZ was motivated by a desire to increase the United States’ global competitiveness in the nascent cryptocurrency industry. He then accused the administration of his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, of conducting a “witch hunt” against CZ, despite Trump repeatedly denying knowledge of the incident.
“My sons are much more involved in cryptocurrencies than I am. I know very little about cryptocurrencies except for one thing. Cryptocurrency is a huge industry,” he said. “If we’re not going to be at the forefront of that, China, Japan or other places are going to be at the forefront of it.”
Trump said he did not know who CZ was, but said that Zhao had been “treated really badly by the Biden administration.”
“They sent him to prison and really got him down. That’s my opinion. I was told about it,” the president said.
President Trump continued, “I don’t know anything about that man. I don’t think I’ve ever met him.” “I have no idea who he is. I heard that like me, and like many others, he was a victim of an evil and horrifying group in the Biden administration.”
Trump’s claim that he knows nothing about prominent pardon recipients comes as Biden and the Republican Party argue that the pardons Biden issued using an “autopen” were invalid because the president did not know what he was signing.
In a post on Truth Social in March, Trump wrote that many of Biden’s pardons are “invalid due to the fact that they were done with an autopen. In other words, Joe Biden didn’t sign it, but more importantly, he didn’t know anything about pardons!”
After Republicans on the Oversight Committee released a report last month on Biden’s use of an autopen, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) said the former president “didn’t even know what the categories were, let alone the individual people eligible for pardons.”
In 2023, Binance agreed to pay a total of $4.3 billion to resolve a multi-year investigation into allegations that users of its platform made thousands of transactions to support illegal activities such as terrorism and child abuse.
Then-Attorney General Merrick Garland called the fine “one of the largest corporate fines in American history.”
After Trump’s election, Zhao ran an aggressive campaign for a pardon, praising the president in public and filing a request for pardon, The New York Times reported.
Binance has also recently become financially entangled with World Liberty Financial, a crypto financial platform that sends 75% of its token sales proceeds to companies linked to Trump and his family.
World Liberty co-founder Zach Witkoff, the son of Trump administration official Steve Witkoff, said in May that his stablecoin would be used to facilitate a $2 billion investment in Binance by Emirati state investment firm MGX.
Later that month, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission announced it was dropping its lawsuit against Binance and Zhao.
President Trump announced a pardon for Zhao on October 23.
President Trump was asked to address the “emergence of play-for-play” in a CBS interview on Sunday.
“Well, here’s the thing: I don’t know anything about it because I’m too busy,” Trump said before a moment of small talk.
“I can tell you this: My sons are into it. They’re happy. Cryptocurrency is probably a great industry. I think that’s a good thing. You know, they’re running a business, they’re not in government,” he said.
Returning to CZ, Trump said: “I don’t know anything about the man other than what I heard was that he was a victim of government weaponization. When I say government, I’m talking about the Biden administration.”
