President Donald Trump started a firestorm Sunday after he said he didn’t “know who” Changpeng Zhao, a cryptocurrency billionaire he’d recently pardoned, was. But he clearly knew one thing about Zhao: He was prosecuted by the Biden administration.
And in Trump’s second term, that’s a major point in favor for people requesting pardons.
“The administration definitely is sympathetic to cases of weaponization from the Biden years,” said one person close to the White House and the growing pardon economy.
Weaponization of the government is one of the second Trump administration’s top talking points, and both the president and the White House cited unfair treatment by prosecutors to defend the controversial pardon of Zhao, the Binance founder who previously pleaded guilty to violating federal anti-money laundering laws and was accused by the Biden administration of causing “significant harm” to U.S. national security.
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Earlier this year, Zhao’s company helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of stablecoin from World Liberty Financial, a firm founded by Trump’s eldest sons.
When asked about the pardon on a CBS “60 Minutes” interview that aired Sunday, Trump said he didn’t know Zhao.
“I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that,” he told host Norah O’Donnell. “And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”
Trump went on to say that Zhao “was treated really badly by the Biden administration,” and talked about the crypto industry. “If you wanna go after people, you’re gonna kill that industry.”
While many took the president’s comments as an admission he knew little about the man he pardoned, the White House said he was merely saying he did not know Zhao personally.
“He means he does not have a personal relationship with this individual,” White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told NOTUS at Tuesday’s briefing.
Leavitt stressed the protocols in place to help aid Trump’s decision. “He’s the ultimate, final decision-maker, and he was very clear when he came into office that he was most interested in looking at pardoning individuals who were abused and used by the Biden Department of Justice … so the president is correcting that wrong, and he has officially ended the Biden administration’s war on the cryptocurrency industry.”
A separate source familiar with the Binance case said that the pardon application went through the typical procedure in place to vet applications and approve pardons for those who qualify.
That process was overseen in this case by White House chief of staff Susie Wiles, who is a gatekeeper of sorts. Wiles typically decides who can present such cases to the president. White House counsel David Warrington’s team managed the application process.
Typically, Trump is presented with at least toplines of each case being considered, along with who is recommending clemency for them, according to the source involved in the pardon business.
The White House is now the epicenter for pardons, defanging the Department of Justice, which for decades oversaw the process almost exclusively, and typically prioritized federal felons who showed signs of rehabilitation and growth while incarcerated.
Trump has already pardoned a slew of people convicted of white-collar crimes, including those who were found guilty of committing wire fraud, securities fraud, money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the United States.
The source with knowledge of the Binance case said that Trump, who has issued clemency for nearly 1,700 recipients since taking office in January, is not only motivated by weaponization-of-justice claims. Already he has pardoned some people convicted of less-serious crimes like shoplifting or theft, or non-white collar crimes such as those involving narcotics.
Three people familiar with the pardon process and interviewed this month by NOTUS predicted that Trump will pardon many more people this year.
“There’s so many people that have been weaponized against that there’s a tremendous need for a large number of pardons,” said Peter Ticktin, Trump’s former lawyer who has advocated for pardons for Jan. 6 rioters, Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.
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