Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao, also known as CZ, said he was surprised by Donald Trump’s pardon and denied it was the result of business ties to the president or his family.
In one interview On Fox News, Zhao said he has never met Trump and has only met Trump’s son Eric once at the Bitcoin Middle East and North Africa conference in Abu Dhabi.
Zhao was unaware of the status of his pardon
“I didn’t know when or if it would happen,” he said of the pardon. “I believe my lawyers filed the petition in April, and that took a few months. I didn’t know the progress.”
The pardon “just happened one day,” he said, calling the idea that he was pardoned because of business ties to the Trump family “categorically false information.”
“There is no deal, there have never been any discussions,” Zhao added. “It’s that simple.”
Trump’s CZ pardon had mixed reactions
Zhao pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering (AML) program at Binance.
As part of a plea deal, Zhao was forced to step down from his role as CEO of Binance and was sentenced to four months in prison.
I am deeply grateful for today’s pardon and President Trump for upholding America’s commitment to fairness, innovation and justice.
🙏🙏🙏🙏We will do everything we can to make America the Capital of Crypto and promote web3 worldwide.
(Still on the way, more posts to come.)…
— CZ 🔶BNB (@cz_binance) October 23, 2025
While the crypto community celebrated Zhao’s pardon, seeing it as a reversal of the anti-crypto policies of the former Joe Biden administration, some Democratic lawmakers criticized it.
Maxine Waters accused Trump of making a “pay-to-play” deal. It sends a “dangerous and reckless message to white-collar criminals and the entire cryptocurrency industry,” she said.
Meanwhile, Senator Elizabeth Warren and several other Democratic lawmakers rejected the pardon in an open letter they wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi.
Open letter written to Bondi (Source: US Senate)
White House calls ’24/7 corruption machine’
Senator Chris Murphy accused the White House of corruption.
“A week after Trump pardoned Binance’s owner (for a stunning series of crimes related to financing terrorists and sex predators), Binance begins promoting the Trump crypto,” Murphy said at X. “The White House is a full-time, 24/7 corruption machine.”
The comments came after Binance.US announced it would open deposits for USD1, a dollar-pegged stablecoin issued by the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial, and began trading a USD1/USDT pair.
Binance.US denied any political motive and said the listings had been “approved for some time” through the usual review process. It added that more than 20 major exchanges, including Coinbase and Bybit, have also listed the tokens.
”To be clear, this was a business decision on the part of @BinanceUS and nothing more,” it reads.
Trump said Zhao was victim of a “Biden witch hunt”
After the pardon, Trump said he does not know Zhao personally and that his advisers had told him the case against Zhao was politically motivated.
“He had a lot of support and they said what he did wasn’t even a crime, it wasn’t a crime,” Trump said. “He was prosecuted by the Biden administration.”
Trump also appeared on the CBS show 60 Minutes and said he doesn’t know who CZ is.
Trump added that Zhao was the target of a “witch hunt” carried out by the Biden administration.
Asked if it was a pardon ‘pay to play’ given Binance’s business interactions with the family-owned World Liberty Financial, Trump responded that he knows “very little about it,” adding that his sons are more involved in the crypto space than he is.
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