Lawyer Addresses Criticisms of Pardon
The lawyer for Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has denied that he somehow paid for a pardon from US President Donald Trump. Appearing on Anthony Pompliano’s “Pomp Podcast” on Friday, CZ’s personal attorney Teresa Goody Guillén described the criticism around CZ’s pardoning as a “pile up of a lot of false statements.”
“The media continues to refer to World Liberty as Trump’s company, and I haven’t seen anything to show me that that’s true,” she said, adding:
“People are making these assumptions that just show a fundamental misunderstanding of how either business works or how blockchain works.”
Background of CZ's Legal Issues and Pardon
CZ spent four months in prison in 2024 and had to step back from Binance over charges relating to a failure to establish Anti-Money Laundering protocols at the firm. The former Binance CEO was pardoned by Donald Trump in October, with the president stating that what CZ was locked away for “wasn’t a crime.”
Critics of the move, including Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren, labelled the pardoning as “corruption” as CZ “boosted” one of Trump’s crypto ventures and “lobbied for a pardon.” The former Binance CEO fired back that she couldn’t get her “facts right.”
Responding to Warren’s claims, Guillén questioned the immunity granted to US politicians, as she criticized Warren for incorrectly asserting that CZ had been convicted of a crime “he wasn’t convicted of,” alongside allegations of additional “criminal liability” against him for the pardon.
“This is actually an area where I’m hoping that we pay a little bit more attention because you know, the immunity that’s given to these folks is not what our founding fathers had wanted,” she said.
Pardon as "Justice," Lawyer Argues
During the appearance on Pompliano’s podcast, Guillén argued that CZ was “pardoned for justice,” as she argued that CZ became a scapegoat for the war on crypto, while pointing to a lack of jail time in traditional finance for executives who were involved in similar legal issues.
“He’s the only person who has ever been prosecuted and then worse sent to prison for you know this specific charge or anything similar with the characteristics of like no fraud and no victims, no criminal history or anything like that,” she said, adding:
“I think it was part of the war on crypto, and at that point, this was close after the FTX collapse and I think that the war in crypto had to go against somebody, and they had to prosecute somebody and really persecute someone. And unfortunately, that ended up being Binance and CZ.”