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CNN’s Jake Tapper shot down President Donald Trump’s claim that he pardoned a man he didn’t know because he was a victim of a “Biden witch hunt.”
On the most recent episode of 60 Minutes, Norah O’Donnell pressed Trump about his pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao in October. Zhao, in 2023, pleaded guilty to money laundering charges and was sentenced to four months in prison. In response to O’Donnell’s questioning, Trump revealed that he didn’t actually know who Zhao was. To him, the billionaire was simply something caught up in a “witch hunt” orchestrated by the administration of former President Joe Biden.
On Monday afternoon, Tapper posted a video on X/Twitter explaining who Zhao is and why his imprisonment was not the result of a shakedown:
Let’s explain why this was not a “Biden witch hunt,” as president Trump claimed in that 60 Minutes interview. First of all, in November 2023, we should note Binance pleaded guilty and CZ pleaded
guilty; and Binance paid more than $4 billion in penalties, and CZ was sentenced to 4 months in prison for willfully ignoring anti-money laundering laws in the United States.Now what did that mean? Well, according to the attorney general at the time, Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed. What else does it mean? The Treasury secretary at the time said that the company’s “willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cyber criminals, and child abusers.”
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