Blog

President Donald Trump’s pardon of Changpeng Zhao is a remarkable turn of fortune for the entrepreneur who just over a year ago was serving prison time for allowing money launderers access to his cryptocurrency trading platform.

It’s also the latest example of what’s possible in Trump’s Washington for those who can afford the right lobbyists.

For Zhao and his company Binance, the pardon represents a fresh start in Washington, emblematic of Trump’s friendly attitude toward the crypto industry and soft approach to regulation. For the lobbyists who helped make the pardon happen, it’s a show of force that embodies the shifting power on K Street toward firms with direct ties to the Oval Office.

“I don’t believe I ever met him,” Trump said of Zhao on Thursday. “But I’ve been told, a lot of support, he had a lot of support and they said that what he did is not even a crime, it wasn’t a crime, that he was persecuted by the Biden administration and so I gave him a pardon at the request of a lot of good people.”

One of those “good people” was likely Ches McDowell, a hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. whose North Carolina based lobbying firm, Checkmate Government Relations, has become one of the highest earning shops in Washington during the second Trump administration. Photographers captured McDowell and Trump Jr. speaking to the president at the White House last week during an event honoring slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Checkmate hauled in $7.1 million in revenue during the last three months alone, a remarkable profit for a firm that didn’t have a Washington office until earlier this year. Binance hired McDowell in late September to lobby the White House and the Treasury Department on financial policy issues and “executive relief,” according to a disclosure report. For one month’s work, Binance paid Checkmate $450,000.

But Zhao’s pardon effort has been ongoing for much longer than one month. In February, three weeks after Trump’s inauguration, Binance and Zhao in his individual capacity each hired Teresa Goody Guillén, a leading crypto lawyer who Trump had reportedly considered to lead the SEC in his second administration. Her firm reported earning $290,000 from Binance and Zhao so far this year.

“With my client, Mr. Zhao, we express our profound gratitude to President Donald J. Trump, whose courage and moral clarity made this day possible,” she wrote on X following news of the pardon.

McDowell and Goody Guillén did not respond to requests for comment.

The pardon is the culmination of nearly a year of effort by Zhao and Binance to cultivate closer ties to the president. In addition to the lobbying efforts, Binance has established business ties with the Trump family’s highly profitable World Liberty Financialcrypto venture.

Binance’s lobbying history in Washington has ebbed and flowed in conjunction with the legal affairs of the company and its founder. A U.S. subsidiary, Binance.US, reported hiring its first lobbyist in late 2021 and spent more than $1 million on lobbying on crypto issues in 2022. During the first nine months of 2023, as Zhao and Binance negotiated their futures with federal prosecutors, the company spent nearly $1.2 million on lobbying efforts.

That spending plummeted to zero in the final months of 2023 after Zhao and Binance agreed to plead guilty to charges of intentionally ignoring anti-money laundering laws and allowing the trading platform to be used by criminals looking to turn illicit crypto assets into clean cash. As part of the plea agreement, Zhao agreed to step down from his position as CEO and pay a $50 million fine.

He was later sentenced to four months in prison. The company was separately fined $4 billion and has since been subject to compliance monitoring by the Justice and Treasury departments.

The Binance lobby remained dormant in Washington during 2024 but has roared back to life in the months since Trump took office. So far in 2025, the company has reported spending $860,000 on lobbying, putting it on track to match or beat its previous peak spend. And in July, the company’s current CEO, Richard Teng, joined the advisory board of The Digital Chamber, the leading cryptocurrency trade association.

“With President Trump and his administration being such a huge advocate for the crypto industry, the future is bright,” Teng posted on Xearlier this year.