Binance Founder Changpeng Zhao’s Lawyer Says He Did Not Pay for Trump Pardon
Zhao’s legal team says the story doesn’t survive even basic scrutiny — and that the people repeating it know better.
Teresa Goody Guillen, the defense attorney leading Zhao’s U.S. case, sat down with Anthony Pompliano on the Pomp Podcast to address the rumor directly. She didn’t hedge, soften, or deflect. Her summary:
“Impossible. It could never happen.”
A Theory Built on an Idea Blockchain Makes Impossible
Pompliano asked whether a private Bitcoin wallet controlled by former President Trump might have received a payoff from Zhao or Binance in exchange for clemency. Guillen dismantled the claim by pointing to the very nature of the technology causing the speculation: If such a payment existed, it would be publicly traceable. Someone would have already proven it.
She also emphasized that Zhao has never operated that way — not before prison, not during sentencing negotiations, and not after.
Why the Rumors Won’t Die
What keeps the story alive has little to do with evidence and everything to do with timing. After Trump returned to the White House, Binance’s ties to the Trump family became more visible. Around that same moment, Zhao — serving a four-month sentence for violating the Bank Secrecy Act — received a pardon. Those two headlines arriving back-to-back created the perfect fuel for political speculation.
Senator Elizabeth Warren seized on the optics, warning that “Congress becomes complicit” if such corruption goes unchecked. But none of the statements made by critics have cited documents, blockchain transactions, or legal records — only conjecture.
The World Liberty Connection and Narrative Inflation
Binance was later linked to World Liberty Financial, a company tied to the Trump business empire. Early filings listed the Trump family with a 75% stake in the firm before dilution reduced their share to 38%. They currently hold 22.5 billion World Liberty tokens and receive 75% of token sale revenue.
According to Guillen, this storyline was mutated into a scandal without the facts to support it. She described most of the reporting as stitched together from unnamed intermediaries rather than primary sources.
“Regulatory Violation — Not Corruption”
Zhao’s guilty plea acknowledged that Binance failed to stop laundering activity — but his lawyer says the public has been persuaded to treat a financial compliance breach like a political conspiracy thriller. To emphasize her point, she compared Zhao’s case to the countless times major financial institutions have paid penalties for similar violations without sending their CEOs to prison.
Her conclusion:
Zhao’s pardon reflects proportional justice, not political leverage, and no wallet — secret or otherwise — ever received crypto in connection with it.
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Filed under: Bitcoin - @ November 16, 2025 4:20 pm