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President Donald Trump’s pardon of Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has turned into a full-blown case study in how money and access now move power in Washington. CZ, who just a year ago was serving a four-month prison sentence for allowing money launderers to use his crypto platform Binance, is now walking free and back in the corridors of influence. His company was fined $4 billion, and he personally paid $50 million while stepping down as CEO. Yet this week, his name is cleared, and the man behind one of the biggest scandals in crypto is once again welcome in Trump’s America. For Binance, the pardon is redemption, after a huge political investment that paid off. The company spent months rebuilding its network in D.C., aligning itself with Trump’s pro-crypto stance and betting on the power of those closest to him. Lobbying firms cash in on Trump connections “I don’t believe I ever met him,” Trump told reporters about CZ.“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” appears to be Ches McDowell, a longtime hunting buddy of Donald Trump Jr. and the head of Checkmate Government Relations, a North Carolina lobbying firm that didn’t even have a Washington office until early this year. Photographers caught McDowell and Trump Jr. chatting with Trump during a White House event honoring Charlie Kirk, the conservative activist killed last year. That quiet moment symbolized just how deep these ties now run. Checkmate pulled in $7.1 million in the past three months, making it one of…

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Filed under: News - @ October 25, 2025 8:26 pm