Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao on Friday denied having any business ties with President Trump or his sons, adding that he did not expect to be pardoned last month.
“I believe my lawyers submitted the petition in April,” Zhao told Fox News’s Bret Baier on “Special Report,” referring to the clemency as a “surprise.”
“It took a few months. I don’t know the progress. There’s no indication of how far it went along, exactly,” he added. “So, it just happened one day.”
When Baier suggested Zhao was working with a firm connected to Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr., he called the information “categorically false.”
The Fox News host cited the Wall Street Journal’s reporting that Zhao’s representatives wanted to strike a deal with World Liberty Financial, the cryptocurrency company led by Trump‘s sons, following the 2024 presidential election. The deal would alleviate tech platform Binance’s financial troubles and offer Zhao a potential pardon.
“There’s no deal, there has never been any discussions,” the embattled former CEO said. “It’s as simple as that.”
Zhao added that any business relationships with the Trumps or World Liberty Financial “just don’t exist.” He said that he has never met with the president but did meet once with Eric at a Bitcoin conference in Abu Dhabi.
When asked about why he pleaded guilty, Zhao said he did so to “confront the problem and solve it head on,” and he did not debate the charges.
The Binance founder pleaded guilty in 2023 for failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program and ultimately served a four-month prison sentence. The company paid $4.3 billion to settle various related charges with the Justice Department.
CBS News’s Norah O’Donnell asked the president about the pardon in an interview last Sunday.
“I don’t know who he is,” Trump said. “I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a [Biden administration] witch hunt.”
“My sons are involved in crypto much more than me. I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry,” he continued. “And if we’re not going to be the head of it, China, Japan or someplace else is. So, I am behind it 100 percent.”
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said the president used his constitutional authority to pardon Zhao after he “was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency.”
“Neither the President nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest,” Leavitt added.
One of Trump’s key supporters, venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, said the president was “terribly advised” in choosing to pardon Zhao.
“If I’m calling balls and strikes, these are hit-by-pitches!!” Lonsdale posted on the social media platform X, following the news. “POTUS has been terribly advised on this; it makes it look like massive fraud is happening around him in this area.”
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