Binance’s CZ Weighs Defamation Case Against Senator Warren: Report

Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) is considering a defamation suit against Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren for alleged defamation, the New York Post reported.

This is after the senator last week criticized US President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon the crypto billionaire.

“CZ pleaded guilty to one count of money laundering and was sentenced to prison,” Warren said in a statement X message shortly after the pardon was confirmed. “But then he funded President Trump’s stablecoin and lobbied for a pardon. Today he got it. If Congress doesn’t stop this kind of corruption, it owns it.”

Warren and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff have also introduced a resolution condemning the move and calling on Congress to “use its authority to stop this form of corruption.”

CZ has not been guilty of money laundering

CZ’s action is said to be based on the fact that he was not convicted of money laundering, as Warren claimed, but of violating the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to implement proper controls against possible illegal financial activity on Binance.

According to the New York Post story, attorney Teresa Goody Guillen will call on Senator Warren on behalf of CZ to retract her statement. Without a formal retraction, Guillen said her client plans to file a defamation lawsuit soon.

“Mr. Zhao will not remain silent while a U.S. senator apparently abuses his office to repeatedly publish defamatory statements that cast doubt on his reputation,” CZ’s attorney wrote in a draft letter the newspaper said it had seen. “Accordingly, Mr. Zhao respectfully requests immediately the retraction of these false statements, both within the resolution and on X.”

“Mr. Zhao reserves the right to pursue all available legal remedies to address these false statements,” Guillen added.

In an earlier response to Senator Warren’s

Worth remembering Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 US 111 (1979). The Speech or Debate Clause protects debates/legislative acts, not false and misleading information. The court ruled that the clause prohibited the transmission of allegedly defamatory material in press releases and…

— Teresa Goody Guillén (@teresagoody) October 24, 2025

Guillen reiterated that there were “no money laundering charges.”

An X community note has been added to Senator Warren’s X post. “CZ pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program. He pleaded not guilty to money laundering,” the note said.

Trump-Binance Connections

Binance has listed the USD1 stablecoin, a token created by a Trump-backed DeFi platform called World Liberty Financial. More recently, the leading crypto exchange also listed the project’s native WLFI token, and has the highest trading volume around the token of any of WLFI’s current markets.

Binance has the highest trading volume for WLFI (source: CoinMarketCap)

That’s why Warren and other politicians have argued that Trump’s pardon of CZ was inappropriate. RRepresentatives for CZ and Trump have reportedly denied this, arguing that the ties between the president’s family and CZ’s activities are incidental.

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