"Trump is effectively admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning, but he’s doing it to help his corrupt sons."

From Robert Tracinski's latest roundup of his work for Executive Watch at The UnPopulist, this one focusing on the spectacular personal corruption of this administration, comes this news:

A Crypto Conman Whose Platform Helped Hamas Launder Money Receives a Full Pardon After Investing in Trump’s Crypto Fund

One of the most flagrant abuses of Trump’s second term is his more or less open sale of pardons to those who enrich him and his family. Early this year, Executive Watch noted the Trump family’s deal with Binance, a cryptocurrency exchange whose Chinese founder Changpeng Zhao was lobbying for a Trump pardon. Now Trump has delivered on his end of the deal.

The New York Times reports:

President Trump granted a pardon to Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance, wiping away one of the U.S. government’s most significant crackdowns on crypto crime.
    Mr. Zhao had pleaded guilty to money-laundering violations in 2023 and served four months in federal prison, after a yearslong investigation by financial regulators and U.S. prosecutors. …
    To seek the pardon, Mr. Zhao hired lawyers and lobbyists with ties to the Trump administration, while Binance struck a business deal with World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto start-up.
    That deal alone is poised to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps and the family of Steve Witkoff, the president’s top Middle East adviser. …
    Long considered the crypto industry’s richest man, Mr. Zhao—a Chinese-born executive who now lives in the United Arab Emirates—admitted that he had violated the law by failing to install rigorous compliance systems at Binance. That allowed people in countries under sanctions, and terrorist groups like Hamas, Al Qaeda, and the Islamic State, to move money on his platform.

This is typical of Trump’s pay-to-play presidency. Writing an op-ed critical of Israel can get you branded as a supporter of Hamas and rounded up by government goons. But funnel enough money to the Trump family and you can get a free pass for helping terrorists launder money.

60 Minutes quizzed Trump on this. (This the crazy 60 Minutes segment in which "they just edited out a segment where Donald Trump tells them to edit out a segment in which he brags about getting CBS to pay him because of them editing out part of an answer by Kamala Harris, and he notes that CBS clearly did the wrong thing in editing Harris in the same fucking sentence he tells them to edit out what he’s saying.") Techdirt summarises:

From the full (unedited) transcript ... :

NORAH O’DONNELL: This is a question about pardons. The Trump family is now perhaps more associated with cryptocurrency than real estate. You and your son– your sons, Don Jr. and Eric, have formed World Liberty Financial with the Witkoff family.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Helping to make your family millions of dollars. It’s in that context that I do wanna ask you about crypto’s richest man, a billionaire known as C.Z. He pled guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Right.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Looked at this, the government at the time said that C.Z. had caused “significant harm to U.S. national security”, essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Why did you pardon him?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is.

Um. That’s worse. You do get how that’s worse, right?

Trump’s own administration is claiming Biden’s pardons are invalid because he didn’t know who he was pardoning. And Trump just proudly announced, on camera, that he has no idea who CZ is.

Then he admits that his sons basically told him to do this for their crypto business:

My sons are involved in crypto much more than I– me. I– I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry. And if we’re not gonna be the head of it, China, Japan, or someplace else is. So I am behind it 100%. This man was, in my opinion, from what I was told, this is, you know, a four-month sentence.

But this man was treated really badly by the Biden administration. And he was given a jail term. He’s highly respected. He’s a very successful guy. They sent him to jail and they really set him up. That’s my opinion. I was told about it.

By whom? Who told you about it? A good reporter would have stepped in and asked that question, but this is the new Bari Weiss 60 Minutes where you won’t see follow-ups like that. Or if you did, they’d be edited out.

He continues:

I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.

Again, “who told you this?” is the next question any reporter should be asking. O’Donnell did not. Though she at least did point out that he pleaded guilty to allowing terrorist groups to engage in money laundering, which seems notable for a guy who keeps talking about fighting crime.

NORAH O’DONNELL: The government had accused him of “significant harm to U.S. national security”–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: That’s the Biden government.

NORAH O’DONNELL: Okay. Allowing U.S. terrorist groups to, you know, essentially move millions of dollars around. He pled guilty to anti-money laundering laws. That was in 2023. Then in 2025 his crypto exchange, Binance, helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin. And then you pardoned C.Z. How do you address the appearance of pay for play?

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Well, here’s the thing, I know nothing about it because I’m too busy doing the other–

Um. Isn’t that exactly why your administration is claiming Biden’s pardons don’t count?

NORAH O’DONNELL: But he got a pardon–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: I can only tell you that–

NORAH O’DONNELL: He got a pardon–

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: Norah, I can only tell you this. My sons are into it. I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, crypto. I think it’s good. You know, they’re running a business, they’re not in government. And they’re good– my one son is a number one bestseller now.

So here Trump admits (1) he doesn’t know who CZ is, then (2) admits that basically his sons are the ones into cryptocurrency and “not in government,” and effectively admits that (3) he pardoned CZ on the advice of his sons, who directly profit from the pardon through their cryptocurrency business, while claiming ignorance of the entire arrangement.

This isn’t just yet another example of the most corrupt pay-for-play administration in the history of the United States but one that literally does everything it falsely accuses past administrations of doing, but way worse. Just as they’re claiming that Biden’s pardons weren’t valid, Trump is effectively admitting he has no idea who he’s pardoning, but he’s doing it to help his corrupt sons.