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 the highest-earning lobbying firms under Trump’s second administration.
Binance hired McDowell in late September to lobby the White House and Treasury Department on financial rules and what filings called “executive relief.” For just one month, Binance paid $450,000. But CZ’s push for a pardon began far earlier.
In February, three weeks after Trump’s inauguration, Binance and CZ also hired Teresa Goody Guillén, a prominent crypto lawyer and former SEC contender under Trump. Her firm has already earned $290,000 this year from both clients.
After the pardon was confirmed, Guillén wrote on X that she and CZ expressed their “profound gratitude to President Donald J. Trump, whose courage and moral clarity made this day possible.”
Binance rebuilds its Washington presence
The pardon capped nearly a year of effort by Binance to build closer ties with the Trump administration.
Beyond hiring top lobbyists, Binance deepened its relationship with the Trump family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, a profitable enterprise that’s quietly become part of the family’s growing business network.
Binance’s lobbying activity has mirrored its legal troubles. Its U.S. unit, Binance.US, hired its first lobbyist in late 2021 and spent more than $1 million on crypto lobbying in 2022.
During the first nine months of 2023, as CZ and the company negotiated with prosecutors, spending rose to nearly $1.2 million. Then, when CZ pleaded guilty and stepped down, that number crashed to zero by the end of 2023.
With Trump back in the White House, the engine restarted. In 2025 alone, Binance has already spent $860,000 lobbying policymakers, putting it on pace to match its previous high.
In July, the company’s new CEO, Richard Teng, joined the advisory board of The Digital Chamber, the top crypto trade group in Washington.
Later, Richard posted on X that “with President Trump and his administration being such a huge advocate for the crypto industry, the future is bright.”