Connecticut Senator Says Binance ‘Greased the Wheels’ for Trump’s Crypto Deals

Connecticut Senator Chris Murphy blamed the crypto exchange Binance to help facilitate the corruption case in exchange for a presidential pardon of its billionaire founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao.

“We are not dumb. Your company launched Trump’s corrupt cryptocurrency,” Senator Murphy he tweeted Friday. “You greased the wheels of the massively corrupt UAE ‘trade secrets for cash’ deal.”

“You basically did everything Trump asked. And then, voila – your billionaire owner gets a pardon! Let’s go,” wrote Murphy, directly to the crypto exchange.

The comments came a week after the White House confirmed President Donald Trump sorry CZwho served four months in federal prison in 2024 after pleading guilty to violating US anti-money laundering laws.

The pardon, promoted by the administration as the end of the “Biden administration’s war on cryptography,” has sparked a political uproar in Washington.

“Full Time Corruption Machine”

Murphy published a series of critical tweets since the pardon, with the attacks ramping up after Binance US announced on Tuesday that would list USD1, a stablecoin issued by Trump’s World Liberty Financial project

“A week after Trump pardoned the owner of Binance (for a stunning series of crimes related to the financing of terrorist and sexual predators), Binance begins to promote Trump’s crypto,” Murphy. he tweeted. “The White House is a full-time, 24/7 corruption machine.”

In response, Binance US he tweeted that he conducts “comprehensive due diligence” before listing, noting that USD1 already trades on more than 20 exchanges, and called Murphy’s claims an unfair routine business policy.

Kadan Stadelmann, Chief Technology Officer at Komodo Platform, said Decrypt that Murphy is “trying to defend a flailing system losing its grip on money and financial supervision”, as the market has clearly adopted WLFI, with its listing on major exchanges in addition to Binance.US.

“Washington DC looks like a soap opera where Democrats and Republicans accuse each other of corruption, when both are guilty,” Stadelmann said.

“Why doesn’t Murphy rally against AML failures in big banks? Because what he does is political opportunism. All this is the reason for DeFi,” he added.

Democrats denounce the CZ pardon

Democrats also pointed to Binance’s growing ties to Trump’s crypto companies, particularly a MGX $2 billion investment in USD1 which nets $60-80 million annually for World Liberty Financial and $1 billion for the Trump family.

Ranking Member Maxine Waters called Trump’s pardon “A frightening but unsurprising reflection of his presidency,” while Representative Ro Khanna responded by announcing the legislation to prohibit elected officials from owning or creating cryptocurrencies.

Senators Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Adam Schiff (D-CA) have supported a resolution condemning the pardon, writing that Trump’s decision followed “months of an increasingly intertwined business relationship” with Zhao and urging Congress to stop “this blatant corruption and influence peddling.”