Trump Is Rewriting History to Justify His Sketchy Pardon of a Crypto King

After Donald Trump pardoned a billionaire crypto king on Thursday he claimed that Binance founder Changpeng Zhao was persecuted by Joe Biden s Justice Department as part of what the White House called a war on cryptocurrency On one level that assertion was an attempt to explain away a pardon that several see as a naked quid pro quo with a man whose business used Trump s crypto tokens in a transaction that benefited the president s family firm On another level observers say that claim is totally wrong Zhao willingly pleaded guilty under a conscientiously negotiated deal with former Attorney General Merrick Garland s Justice Department which ultimately saw his company pay billion in fines and serve only four months in prison At the time one analyst saw the overall package as a clear supremacy for Binance and Zhao There s a sense of bitter irony for longtime critics of Biden Justice Department They had long complained in general about Biden s approach to corporate crime and Binance in particular was accused of facilitating everything from terrorism to child sexual abuse images before it received a deal that allowed its founder to spend a insufficient months in prison Biden is certainly not anybody to hold up as an exemplar of people persecuting people reported Bart Naylor a financial procedures advocate with the nonprofit group Populace Citizen Choosing Club Fed Progressive critics have maintained a drumbeat of criticism of Biden and Barack Obama s Justice Departments ever since the Great Recession when top bankers avoided jail time for their role in the housing sphere crash Prosecutions of corporate criminals fell to a record low during Biden s final year in office according to a description issued by Constituents Citizen earlier this year Binance was one of the thinning ranks of companies to find itself in court but critics say it may be the exception that proves the rule Three years ago it was one of the leading cryptocurrency exchanges in the world as it effectively thumbed its nose at U S anti-money-laundering laws designed to prevent terrorists drug traffickers and other criminals from making their dirty money look clean In statements around the time of the November plea deal Biden Justice Department administrators laced into Zhao Still the deal they crafted allowed Binance to remain one of the leading players in the field Unlike the bankers who escaped jail time Zhao was the rare executive to see the inside of a prison s walls but not for long Prosecutors sought a three-year sentence for Zhao but a federal judge dipped below that request to hand him the monthslong term He served his time at a low-security prison in California Since then he has returned to serving as something of an oracle to crypto industry fanboys who generally refer to him by his nickname CZ If you consider how seriously the establishment of both political parties takes issues like terrorism I think a four-month prison sentence is comically inadequate If you set the bar at response to the great financial emergency then yeah bar cleared It was more than was common in the past explained Jeff Hauser executive director of the left-leaning nonprofit Revolving Door Project But if you consider how seriously the establishment of both political parties takes issues like terrorism I think a four-month prison sentence is comically inadequate Even at the time of the settlement observers thought that it might not dent Binance s business by much While the massive penalty is a blow to the company s treasury and the humbling of Zhao undercuts Binance s longtime edge the early field response suggests the company will survive Fortune magazine intoned shortly after the deal was publicized As of this quarter Binance is still the world s largest cryptocurrency exchange Nevertheless Trump has cast the prosecution has a grave overreach by the Biden administration that he had to correct It wasn t a crime that he was persecuted by the Biden administration and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of very good people Trump mentioned Unparalleled Open Corruption During and after the Biden administration cryptocurrency insiders painted a dark portrait of regulators attempts to place guardrails on the industry in the wake of FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried s far-reaching fraud They complained about relentless attention from agencies ranging from the Securities and Exchange Commission to the Justice Department The idea that the Biden administration was single-mindedly focused on crushing crypto is absurd Hauser mentioned At largest part Hauser argued the SEC under former Chair Gary Gensler was generally skeptical of the industry The Garland Justice Department did not and nor did the Yellen Treasury Department or other aspects of the national guard state never sought to delegitimatize crypto and tie it strongly to terrorism Hauser reported If they had advised that story repeatedly I think the reputation of crypto may have been very different and that might have impacted at a minimum how Trump chose to be corrupt in this administration Related Who s on the Guest List for Trump s Meme Coin Dinner Since Trump s inauguration he has sought to rapidly reverse perceptions of the federal regime s attitude toward crypto He has pardoned crypto executives and even a crypto company itself in an apparent first In addition to cheerleading crypto s enhancement moreover he and his family have jumped headlong into crypto schemes themselves relying on various ventures to rapidly boost Trump s net worth Trump directly tied his pardon of Zhao to the Biden administration s war on cryptocurrency In doing so he also pardoned a man whose business is linked with his Zhao helps the Trumps make billions and gets a pardon In May an stake fund created by Abu Dhabi s sovereign wealth fund used the Trump family s stablecoins to invest in Binance effectively allowing the Trump family to reap the benefits of a large transaction relying on its token Frank Bowman a University of Missouri law professor who studies pardons noted that if reporting on the financial ties between Binance and Trump s business ventures is accurate the pardon is perhaps the largest part overtly corrupt in American history Zhao helps the Trumps make billions and gets a pardon With Trump one has already almost exhausted the superlatives But this is unparalleled open corruption The post Trump Is Rewriting History to Justify His Sketchy Pardon of a Crypto King appeared first on The Intercept