Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy has accused crypto exchange Binance of helping facilitate corrupt deals in exchange for a presidential pardon of its billionaire founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.
"We aren't dumb. Your company launched Trump's corrupt crypto coin,” Senator Murphy tweeted Friday. “You greased the wheels of the massively corrupt UAE 'trade secrets for cash' deal.”
“You basically did whatever crooked thing Trump asked. And then, voila - your billionaire owner gets a pardon! C'mon," Murphy wrote, directly addressing the crypto exchange.
The comments came a week after the White House confirmed President Donald Trump had pardoned CZ, who served four months in federal prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to violating U.S. anti–money laundering laws.
The pardon, touted by the administration as ending the “Biden Administration’s war on crypto,” has triggered a political uproar in Washington.
‘Full-time corruption machine’
Murphy has posted a series of critical tweets since the pardon, with the attacks ramping up after Binance US announced on Tuesday that it would list USD1, a stablecoin issued by Trump's World Liberty Financial project.
"One week after Trump pardoned Binance's owner (for a stunning array of crimes related to terrorist and sex predator financing), Binance starts promoting Trump crypto,” Murphy tweeted. “The White House is a full-time, 24/7 corruption machine.”
In response, Binance US tweeted that it conducts “comprehensive due diligence” before listings, noting USD1 already trades on over 20 exchanges, and called Murphy’s claims an unfair politicization of routine business.
Kadan Stadelmann, Chief Technology Officer at Komodo Platform, told Decrypt that Murphy is "trying to defend a flailing system losing its grip on money and financial surveillance,” as the market has clearly adopted WLFI, with its listing on major exchanges in addition to Binance.US.
"Washington D.C. is akin to a soap opera where Democrats and Republicans lobby accusations at each other of corruption, when both are guilty,” Stadelmann said.
“Why doesn’t Murphy rally against AML failures at big banks? Because what he is doing is political opportunism. All of this is the reason for DeFi,” he added.
Democrats denounce CZ pardon
Democrats have also pointed to Binance’s growing ties to Trump’s crypto firms, notably a $2 billion MGX investment in USD1 that nets $60–80 million annually for World Liberty Financial and $1 billion for the Trump family.
Ranking Member Maxine Waters called Trump’s pardon “an appalling but unsurprising reflection of his presidency,” while Representative Ro Khanna responded by announcing legislation to ban elected officials from owning or creating cryptocurrencies.
Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) have backed a resolution condemning the pardon, writing that Trump’s decision followed “months of an increasingly intertwined business relationship” with Zhao and urging Congress to stop “such blatant corruption and influence-peddling.”
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