CZ's Lawyer Denies Payment for Trump Pardon, Cites 'War on Crypto'

Monday Nov 17 2025 06:30

Duration

2 min

  1. 1. CZ's Lawyer Denies Payment for Trump Pardon

  2. 1.1 Pardon as "Justice" in a Crypto Crackdown

CZ's Lawyer Denies Payment for Trump Pardon

Teresa Goody Guillén, the personal attorney for Binance co-founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao, has vehemently denied accusations that her client paid for a presidential pardon from Donald Trump. Appearing on Anthony Pompliano’s “Pomp Podcast,” Guillén described the allegations surrounding CZ’s pardon 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 stated, emphasizing a “fundamental misunderstanding of how either business works or how blockchain works.” CZ served four months in prison in 2024 and resigned from Binance following charges related to the company's failure to implement adequate Anti-Money Laundering (AML) protocols. He received a pardon from Donald Trump in October, with the former president asserting that CZ’s alleged offenses "weren't a crime." Critics, including Senator Elizabeth Warren, condemned the pardon as “corruption,” alleging that CZ had “boosted” one of Trump’s crypto ventures and “lobbied for a pardon.” CZ refuted these claims, stating that Warren couldn't get her “facts right.” Guillén directly addressed Warren’s accusations, questioning the broad immunity granted to U.S. politicians and criticizing Warren for falsely claiming that CZ was convicted of a crime “he wasn’t convicted of,” along with unsubstantiated allegations of additional “criminal liability” linked to 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,” Guillén asserted.

Pardon as "Justice" in a Crypto Crackdown

During the podcast appearance, Guillén defended the pardon as “justice,” arguing that CZ was scapegoated amidst a larger crackdown on the cryptocurrency industry. She contrasted his prosecution with the lack of similar jail sentences for executives in traditional finance who faced comparable legal challenges. “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 explained. “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.”

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Written by:

Ava Grace

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