The White House said the Biden administration\u2019s decision to prosecute Zhao and to seek a three-year prison sentence for him had \u201cseverely damaged the United States\u2019 reputation as a global leader in technology and innovation,\u201d adding that the \u201cwar on crypto\u201d was now over.<\/p>\n
Binance has spent almost a year pursuing a pardon for Zhao, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday, noting that Binance has been a \u201ckey supporter\u201d of the Trump family\u2019s crypto venture World Liberty Financial.<\/p>\n
Despite stepping down as chief executive in 2023, Zhao remains the majority shareholder of Binance.<\/p>\n
In a social media post on Thursday, he said he was \u201cdeeply\u201d grateful to Trump for \u201cupholding America\u2019s commitment to fairness, innovation, and justice\u201d.<\/p>\n
Democrats were quick to criticise Trump\u2019s decision to pardon Zhao.<\/p>\n
\u201cCZ pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge and was sentenced to prison. But then he financed President Trump\u2019s stablecoin and lobbied for a pardon. Today, he got it,\u201d Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren wrote in a post on X.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf Congress does not stop this kind of corruption, it owns it,\u201d added Warren, a high-profile figure on the left of the party who sits on the US Senate\u2019s finance committee.<\/p>\n
Since his presidential campaign, Trump has become a defender and promoter of the cryptocurrency sector, reversing his past criticism.<\/p>\n
He has eased the regulatory framework imposed on the cryptocurrency industry, which contributed more than US$100 million ($173.8m) to his re-election campaign.<\/p>\n
The Trump family\u2019s various crypto businesses have netted them a pre-tax profit of around a billion dollars over the past 12 months, according to a recent Financial Times investigation.<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s pardon of Zhao follows a string of other similarly controversial moves, such as his decision to issue a blanket pardon for people convicted of violence in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.<\/p>\n
Trump has also commuted the sentence of the disgraced former Republican lawmaker George Santos, who was convicted of committing wire fraud and identity theft.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The White House said the Biden administration\u2019s decision to prosecute Zhao and to seek a three-year prison sentence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":97846,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[23545,9092,2436,40619,138,72036,17452,5767,72039,2178,10053,2454,4479,111,139,69,72038,72035,18550,2572,3048,2179,19096,72040,6149,16550,72037],"class_list":["post-97845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-accusing","tag-against","tag-biden","tag-binance","tag-business","tag-changpeng","tag-cofounder","tag-convicted","tag-cz","tag-donald","tag-house","tag-industry","tag-launching","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-pardoned","tag-pardons","tag-predecessor","tag-president","tag-said","tag-trump","tag-trumps","tag-unnecessary","tag-war","tag-white","tag-zhao"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97845\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/97846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}