Elizabeth Oyer, a former pardon attorney, told "60 Minutes" that she thinks President Trump's pardon of crypto billionaire Changpeng Zhao is "corruption." Kenneth Vogel, a reporter for The New York Times, joins with more.

Washington

President Trump's pardon of Shang-Ping Zhao, founder of Binance, has raised concerns about the use of presidential pardon power. Zhao, who pleaded guilty to failing to prevent money laundering on his platform, received a pardon described as unprecedented by former pardon attorney Elizabeth Oyer, who cited the influence of money and self-dealing.

New York Times reporter Kenneth Vogel explained that Trump and his family have business interests in World Liberty Financial, which facilitated a $2 billion deal between Binance and an Emirati sovereign wealth fund. The pardon could allow Binance to re-enter the US crypto market and aligns with Trump’s policy of deregulating cryptocurrency, raising questions about the intersection of political power and personal financial benefit.

Former pardon attorney on Trump's crypto billionaire pardon

President Trump's pardon of billionaire felon Shang-Ping Zhao has sparked concerns about the president's use of the pardon power. Zhao is a founder of Binance, which is the world's largest exchange for cryptocurrency. He pleaded guilty for failing to prevent money laundering on the platform. Now, last night on 60 Minutes, former pardon attorney Elizabeth Oyer shared her thoughts on why this pardon is not typical. You would describe this pardon as unusual? The influence that money played in securing this pardon is unprecedented. The self-dealing aspect of the pardon in terms of the benefit that it conferred on President Trump and his family and people in his inner circle is also unprecedented. Is this justice? This is absolutely not justice. This is corruption. Ogle, for more on this, he is a reporter for The New York Times and covers money, politics, and influence. Kenneth, thank you so much for joining us on 24-7 today. Is this an overreach, I should say, of political power to pardon Zhao's financial crimes? Well, I mean, there are no real checks on the pardon power of the president. That's what makes it so useful to a president seeking to act in a unilateral fashion to assist allies, potential business partners, or to punish enemies. And President Trump sort of got all three of those things in this pardon and that there is a clear benefit or potential benefit. There's already a benefit to his family's crypto company. And let's be clear here, this is not just his family's crypto company. He is invested. He personally, the president, is invested in this crypto company, World Liberty Financial, that facilitated a massive $2 billion deal between Binance, which is the company of the pardoned crypto billionaire, CZ, and this Emirati sovereign wealth fund. And so there's already a benefit, but there's potentially more benefit if Binance, as a result of this pardon, is allowed to enter the crypto market. And then you also see it being used to sort of further this policy that the president has embraced of sort of deregulating crypto, or at least pulling back from a crypto crackdown that the Biden administration had engineered. And actually before that, even the Trump administration, the first Trump administration had engineered. So there aren't many checks on what he can do with the pardon power. And here we see it being used in a way that has a clear personal benefit for him and his family. Yeah, and I want to go back to what you mentioned about the Emirati fund. We know Binance donated software to World Liberty Financial to help the Trump family venture launch a cryptocurrency. A Zhao's Binance received $2 billion from an Emirati fund back in May, and the deal was done in World Liberty Crypto. So it sounds all very confusing. Can you explain the connection between Binance and World Liberty Financial? Yeah, I mean, it's basically the outline is what you just said, which is that World Liberty Financial is kind of like a bank. It's not offering, I mean, in some cases it is offering cryptocurrency, but in this case, all it was doing was sort of providing the backend financing between the Emirati Sovereign Wealth Fund and Binance. And so there's no real reason for these two major players in the crypto space, Emirati Sovereign Wealth Fund on the one hand and Binance on the other, to turn to World Liberty Financial, except to curry favor with the president and the people around him, including his family. By the way, I should say that Zach Whitcoff, the son of Steve Whitcoff, President Trump's top peace envoy, is also involved in this World Liberty Financial. And so the reason that they did this was to involve the president and the president's family's company in Binance and in the affairs of Binance. And here we see it paying off to the tune of a pardon that could help facilitate even more business between the Trump family crypto sort of empire and Binance and allow Binance to enter the very lucrative US cryptocurrency market, which was banned from so doing as a result of the guilty plea by CZ and Binance to these very serious charges of allowing the platform to be used for money laundering by some of the worst terrorist entities in the world, at least in the eyes of the US government. We're talking Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS. In their guilty plea, CZ and Binance said, we allow these entities to do business on our platform by virtue of our failure to initiate and implement strict money laundering protections. Wow, so much to unpack and so much to unravel there. Kenneth Vogel with the New York Times, thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your insight.

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Breakdown