Burisma, Meet Your Brother Binance
WASHINGTON — I’ll admit it: I’ve held President Donald Trump to a different standard than former President Joe Biden when it comes to financial entanglements.
Why? For all their “Middle Class Joe” values, Biden and his family — notably, grabby son Hunter — apparently set out to cash in on Biden’s time in public office and after he served as vice president. Hence Hunter Biden’s $2 million pay during 2013 and 2014 as he worked for Ukraine energy concern Burisma.
Trump’s money situation was different during his first term. Trump entered the White House a billionaire. The newly elected commander-in-chief lost loads of money during his first four years in the White House — Forbes estimated that about $1 billion of his $3.5 billion fortune disappeared.
That’s odd considering that the White House press corps was obsessed with Trump getting a cut of the profits whenever foreign lobbyists, beltway big shots, and international diplomats hung out at the then–Trump International Hotel mere blocks from the White House.
Trump seems unconcerned about the appearance of conflicts of interest the second time around. Could crypto, then, become his “cryptonite?”
If your eyes start to glaze over when you see the term “crypto,” please bear with me.
And know that I share your pain.
So I’ll segue from crypto to the old-school term “pardon,” which you may recall from Biden’s pardon of his son, siblings, and their spouses on his way out the door.
Now Trump has his hand in the pardon cookie jar.
As the Wall Street Journal reported last month, Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao, founder of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance. The pardon wiped clean Zhao’s criminal record, which stems from a 2023 plea deal to violations of the Bank Secrecy Act. CZ, as Zhao is known, served four months behind bars last year, and he agreed to pay a $4 billion fine.
Here’s the follow-the-money eyebrow raiser: Binance has had dealings with World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture co-founded by Trump scions Donald Jr. and Eric.
The influx of money, former banker Austin Campbell told 60 Minutes, “vaulted them from the small time to the big leagues.”
“What’s different from Hunter Biden selling a painting for $500,000 and Don Jr. selling a pardon for $500 million?” Aaron Klein, senior fellow at the D.C.-based Brookings Institution, asked rhetorically as we chatted over the phone.
Binance, Klein expounded, makes it feel like, “if you buy enough of Trump’s personal crypto, your crypto crimes can be expunged.”
Binance and Team Trump deny any connection between business and Zhao’s pardon.
What to do?
Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., went on X to tout her solution: getting rid of the presidential pardon.
To which University of California, Berkeley law professor John Yoo reacted, “What’s she gonna do, get an amendment to the Constitution?”
No. The change needs to be in how voters react to a crypto boom that, with or without Binance, sure smells like the subprime mortgage meltdown that arguably got President Barack Obama elected in 2008. Less government intervention, please.
The White House wants you to believe that the pardon and Team Trump’s support for Binance are principled stands born from a desire to see the U.S. economy prevail in a rapidly changing world. But then there’s the World Liberty angle.
A victim of overzealous prosecutorial overreach himself, Trump told reporters that Zhao “was prosecuted by the Biden Administration in their war on cryptocurrency.”
That’s almost like saying that criticism of artiste Hunter Biden is a war on art.
Contact Review-Journal Washington columnist Debra J. Saunders at dsaunders@reviewjournal.com. Follow @debrajsaunders on X.
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