Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

https://www.wsj.com/finance/currencies/trump-pardons-convicted-binance-founder-7509bd63

by cowboyscott • 9 months ago

1055 1019 9 months ago

wsj.com

scrlk• 9 months ago

https://archive.ph/XRw42

mmayberry• 9 months ago

Fraud is now legal

greenpizza133• 9 months ago

As long as you bow to King Trump.

gorjusborg• 9 months ago

I have no proof of this, but I would bet that there will be some quid-pro-quo involved between Trump and the pardonee. Trump does not usually give things away, he leverages his power to get more power/money.

bayarearefugee• 9 months ago

If you're already rich and can stomach writing a flattering letter to Dear Leader you're leaving money on the table by not committing massive fraud right now.

bayesianbot• 9 months ago

I feel like democrats should make it clear that if there's still a fair election and they regain power, they'll go after both the corrupt people in this admin and entities buying favors. The current state can't be too good for the society, at least there should be a clear possible downside for being a part of it.

Finnucane• 9 months ago

Fraud has been an essential component of Trump's business his whole life, he clearly doesn't see it as a crime. And the crypto guys have spent a lot of money getting into his good graces. He knows a good grift when he sees it.

wslh2• 9 months ago

Beyond the Trump effect, a lot of fraud has always been "legal", mostly because the victims can't afford to go after the fraudsters.

drak0n1c4• 9 months ago

CZ was not involved in fraud, the case only found him guilty of not doing enough to surveil his customers to sufficiently block US citizens from using a crypto exchange that other people from sanctioned countries could use.

taylodl• 9 months ago

I'm impressed. Leavitt managed to Blame the Biden administration, effectively asserting that Zhao's crimes were a result of the Biden administration's "war on crypto." Never mind that Zhao was engaged in criminal activity for which he was prosecuted, tried, and found guilty.

nickff3• 9 months ago

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Zhao was convicted of crimes which were a direct result of his operating a crypto exchange, and not any other criminal activity. It may be possible to operate a legally-compliant crypto exchange, but I am not sure that any current exchange is fully compliant with US law. If we agree on these facts, and think that the 'war on drugs' is what has resulted in 'drug possession' and 'drug trafficking' convictions, then it seems reasonable to say that Zhao was convicted as the result of a 'war on crypto'.

I am actually not sure that either the 'war on drugs' or a 'war on crypto' is a bad idea, but they do seem analogous.

mullingitover2• 9 months ago

and not any other criminal activity

He made a lot of money from the other criminal activity. That's what money laundering is: just because you're not directly trafficking children, for example, doesn't mean you have clean hands when you make significant profits from the people who are.

wmf3• 9 months ago

The CEOs of Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, etc. have not been indicted for anything. Those exchanges have had some compliance issues but they were minor compared to Binance, FTX, BitMEX, etc.

sunshine-o• 9 months ago

Changpeng Zhao pled guilty for violating the Bank Secrecy Act and not complying with anti-money laundering requirements.

That also happened to a lot of big banks over and over again.

Three days ago one of the biggest was found guilty for helping Sudan’s government commit genocide by providing banking services that violated American sanctions [0]. Sounds worst.

Binance is a casino for millennial and gen Z and like casinos is used by criminal to launder money.

Should Changpeng Zhao be pardoned? I don't know, I don't care he is a small fish.

Should BNP CEO serves prison time? probably.

- [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bnp-paribas-shares-fall-us-17...

jamesblonde2• 9 months ago

Whataboutism. Has to be called out.

pulisse• 9 months ago

Sub-headline: "Pardon follows months of efforts by Changpeng Zhao to boost the Trump crypto company"

verdverm2• 9 months ago

Subtext, a convicted fraudster pardons a convicted fraudster

drak0n1c4• 9 months ago

CZ was not convicted of fraud or even money laundering. There's a reason the sentence was only 4 months. His charge was the first ever prosecution of a platform/bank poorly implementing KYC and not doing enough surveillance of its users to comply with the letter of AML regulations. The case relied on the theoretical possibility of US citizen users placing trades that are matched by people from sanctioned countries - it did not even find cases of such trades. Big banks routinely pay fines for this, and never face imprisonment.

Regardless of what you think of the circumstances of the pardon, the prosecution was not related to fraud and was an unusual case by a DOJ that was recently embarrassed by FTX and was arguably symbolic in intent.

koolba2• 9 months ago

Zhao, in November 2023, pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court and agreed to step down as Binance CEO as part of a $4.3 billion settlement by the company with the Department of Justice.

Did he already pay the $4.3 billion? That's a lot of money, even for the federal government.

al_borland• 9 months ago

From what I can tell, Binance had to pay the $4.3B, while Zhao had to pay $50M.

The status of each isn’t something I can readily find.

culi2• 9 months ago

Whatever he hasn't paid of that $50M, he'd no longer be on the hook for

Fluorescence• 9 months ago

I understand that the commutation of George Santos means he does not have to pay the court ordered restitution to the people he defrauded.

Puts an even grosser spin on this incineration of the rule of law.

Penalties within plea deals likely have different rules but given a pardon is a higher rung of absolution I am horrified to wonder if he could clawback any personal financial penalties he has paid or even seek compensation.

keernan• 9 months ago

>Representatives of the Trump family have held talks to take a financial stake in the U.S. arm of Binance.

insane_dreamer3• 9 months ago

Most corrupt president in living memory (ever?) pardons convicted corrupt businessman, while directly profiting from said corrupt businessman's industry

Years ago people would have thought you were talking about the DRC, Haiti or Uzbekistan. Today's it's the USA.

WheatMillington4• 9 months ago

Don't kid yourself, US political corruption pre-dates Trump. This is just bringing it to a new level.

bena2• 9 months ago

Yes, he clearly said "most corrupt", not "first corrupt".

zen928• 9 months ago

It's honestly a shame that comments from people like you will be silently forgotten, when your unending ceaseless discharge of excuses to sweep the rug for the current status quo should be something that you should never be allowed to forget. I guess you have a point though, a flame left unextinguished will only grow and that was the result here. Not too many outcomes remain when you only add more fuel, but there is always another way to solve that problem :)

twixfel2• 9 months ago

I find comment such as yours rather pathetic, for reasons I can't quite put into words. It's like you want to make excuses for Trump but you're not really willing to actually commit to it.

Political corruption was not invented by Trump. We know. But that's really not the point at all.

bdavisx• 9 months ago

Serious question - it seems that many of this Administrations activities are illegal in some way or the other. I know that government officials are shielded from a lot of actions so they can not be prosecuted.

What actions that have been taken could actually be prosecuted? For example, I would have to assume that the ballroom demolition and build-out is illegal, there were $0 appropriated from Congress for this, and it doesn't seem like direct donations would be legal either. They are donations to the government and Congress has to appropriate that money too.

NOTHING is going to happen while the Republicans control congress, period. What could be done when the next administration comes in? Not just about the ballroom, but the various other things like this pardon. What of these actions are prosecutable?

ksherlock• 9 months ago

"Well, when the president does it ... that means that it is not illegal" -- Richard Nixon (1977)

"Well, when the president does it ... that means that it is not illegal" -- SCOTUS (2024)

That leaves impeachment as the only legal remedy, which you've correctly identified as not a possibility with the current congress.

shoemakersteve• 9 months ago

His two previous impeachments don't seem to have slowed him down, so it seems unlikely that a third would be any different. Not to mention his felony conviction.

JumpCrisscross14• 9 months ago

it seems that many of this Administrations activities are illegal

Many are. This one is not. The President has sweeping pardon powers.

The solution is to strike the final phrase in Article 2, Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution: “and he shall have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment.” [1].

There isn’t a place for one-man pardons in a republic. If the courts overreach, address it through legislation. (Even the imperium-obsessed Romans didn’t give their dictators, much less consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special legislation to overrule the law.)

With Presidents of both parties having so recently abused pardons, we may be in a place where a wave could pass a Constitutional amendment at the federal level, allowing it to be punted to the states.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...

thijson• 9 months ago

It seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly doesn't want to change the system they inherited. I remember Trudeau talking about eliminating first past the post in Canadian elections. But once he got into power he forgot about it.

We need a way to vote for popular ideas via referendum at the federal level. That might get it through.

perihelions3• 9 months ago

"Many are. This one is not. The President has sweeping pardon powers."

I understand it's debatably possible to prosecute the public corruption that motivated a pardon, even though the pardon act itself is unreviewable. I.e., the DoJ attempted a criminal bribery investigation of Bill Clinton's pardon of the donor Marc Rich,

https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/15/us/us-is-beginning-crimin... ("U.S. is beginning criminal inquiry in pardon of Rich" (2001))

"Some lawyers have said that proving such a case could be exceedingly difficult because bribery cases usually required the cooperation of one of the parties. Moreover, contributions to political parties or to Mr. Clinton's library foundation are legal, and the president's pardon authority is unreviewable."

I assume similar logic might apply to World Liberty Financial and Trump's CZ pardon.

vunderba• 9 months ago

Between sweeping abuse of executive orders, declaring emergency powers, and the pardon system (there's a reason it used to be called the "royal pardon"), my only hope is that this will finally open the public's eyes to the MASSIVE overreach that a US president has. It needs to be heavily curtailed.

The pardon system in particular really pisses me off. The argument that one rando at the top of the pyramid somehow magically knows better than the entire judicial system is such a load of horsecrap. For any injustice that the pardon system might be able to correct, it can and does just as easily introduce more injustices.

onlyrealcuzzo• 9 months ago

For example, I would have to assume that the ballroom demolition and build-out is illegal, there were $0 appropriated from Congress for this, and it doesn't seem like direct donations would be legal either.

Maybe it's funded by the $230M he's demanding from the Department of Justice?

anigbrowl5• 9 months ago

Assuming a normal election where the pendulum swings back and a normal transfer of power (no certain things), the outgoing President could pardon everyone from his chiefs of staff and cabinet officers to low-level federal law enforcement on the way out, and then the Democrats would wring their hands and say there's nothing they can do, bar some large scale political realignment where Republicans lost control of numerous state legislatures and governorships by a large margin, as well as in Congress.

The best opportunity for a major restructuring of the legal environment would bea Constitutional Convention, but because Republicans have pursued this as a strategic goal for a while, Democrats invested all their relevant energies in being against it rather than developing any kind of strategy of their own, guaranteeing that they would get rolled if one actually took place because they went in with wholly defensive mindset and no plan to win. The fundamental flaw of the modern Democratic party is that it sees itself as a vehicle for competent management of the status quo, not a force for implementation of its voters' political aspirations. Thus is pays lip service of what its supporters want but operates to dampen and delay those same supporters whenever it gets into office in the name of continuity and responsibility. It operates on a combination of political rent seeking and fundamental conflict aversion.

This is why I find myself increasingly impatient with self-styled moderates. Wanting to talk things out and compromise is good, but it only works when there is mutuality between counterparties. When the political opposition is indifferent to questions of truthfulness or corruption, moderation degrades into appeasement; moderates will sell out their own supporters in the name of peace and quiet, while giving away the strategic initiative over and over. The previous Trump administration engineered a mob overrunning Congress in an attempt to stay in power, and only failed because the Vice President declined to aid the scheme; a mistake the current one surely doesn't intend to repeat. The incoming administration spent a great deal of energy prosecuting every footsoldier they could find who set foot inside the Capitol, but shied away from going after the people who actually organized it. The results speak for themselves.

garaetjjte• 9 months ago

Why it is even accepted that pardons can be issued before conviction?

iLemming• 9 months ago

NOTHING is going to happen while the Republicans control congress, period

For anyone interested, for the past 30 years, Republicans dominated for 22 years in total, while Democrats only 8.

TrackerFF• 9 months ago

Some problems: Trump has already argued that if what he does falls under official acts, it's essentially absolute immunity. Trump also tried to argue that everything he did while during his presidency, was official acts. The supreme court agreed that if something is and official act, it is protected by absolute immunity.

So my guess is that whatever Trump is doing now, he'll later argue was done as a president.

Second, should be convicted of anything, the best shot is if it's a state law violation. I'm going to bet everything I own that Trump will either pardon himself, all his cronies, and/or when the time comes, step down and have Vance pardon him. So with that all federal crimes become pardoned.

The supreme court has been very frank about this: The only, and I do mean the only mechanism is a successful impeachment. And even if Trump by some miracle is successfully impeached, we have no way of knowing how that will play out. The current supreme court majority are seemingly true believers of the unitary executive theory, so I'm guessing that with time - we'll just see Trump get more and more unchecked power. And since it's going to be done via the shadow docket, it'll likely be valid for Trump only.

I think for all intents and purposes - and I don't mean to sound defeatist when I'm saying this - people should just accept the fact that Trump will be untouchable for the rest of his life.

WheatMillington4• 9 months ago

This is not "good guys versus bad guys", the democratic party are not going to wash all this badness away. They have been guilty of basically the same things, even if at a lesser scale. Biden tried to appropriate billions outside of congress for student loan forgiveness. Political pardons have been a factor since the beginning of the US experiment. Pelosi has been using her position for self-enrichment in the open for decades now.

covercash2• 9 months ago

We need them all gone. Anyone who makes "politician" a career is precisely the wrong type of person to be an elected official. It should never be about personal gain. Wipe them all out, implement campaign finance reform, set term limits, prioritize election security & availability...

We need a reset.

9dev4• 9 months ago

What about the acts of piracy (in the classic, seafaring way) and coldblooded murder of foreign citizens, carried out by US soldiers, claimed to be "drug dealers" (like that was a capital offence anyway)?

I’m curious if any of the involved personell will ever be tried for that.

jpadkins3• 9 months ago

What of these actions are prosecutable?

The President must first be impeached by both parts of Congress. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_Stat...

The Senate runs a trial for the "high crimes" with the supreme court justice presiding. They can sentence a sitting president IIRC (or just remove him from office in which the DOJ can then prosecute normally).

skm12• 9 months ago

- Zhao has ties to World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that Trump and his sons Eric and Donald Jr. launched in September.

- Trump’s most recent financial disclosure report reveals he made more than $57 million last year from World Liberty Financial

dgrr19• 9 months ago

they just reported 1B from crypto ventures, so 57m seems like lunch money...

jb1991• 9 months ago

I wonder what those ventures actually are and how that money is made?

cedws• 9 months ago

Is there any way to read this other than Trump is cuddling up to crypto because it’s a tool for him and his cronies to make dodgy money?

zeld4• 9 months ago

in this particular case maybe. but i don't think he's pardoning only crypto people. as long as criminals can offer sth useful to him, they will get above the law.

EgregiousCube• 9 months ago

Yes - he campaigned on making America more crypto-friendly in general; this could also be read as part of making good on that promise.

csto12• 9 months ago

I hope this is satire. Only a moron would think this.

righthand2• 9 months ago

This makes me hate cryptocurrency more and make me support candidates that want feel the same, that we should be prosecuting cryptocurrency fraud. How is that making it more friendly?

estearum3• 9 months ago

Just like being bank-friendly means allowing criminality in bank management. And being transportation-friendly means allowing people to drive drunk!

crispyambulance• 9 months ago

...it’s a tool for him and his cronies to make dodgy money?

It's a vehicle to sell "access". The greed is only half of it.

The worst part is that they're selling access to foreign interests who pay them off. These people can't exactly show up with bags of gold to bribe King Sh*t Gibbon (yet), crypto is the next best thing.

cosmicgadget5• 9 months ago

It's industry agnostic. The Trevor Milton pardon wasn't because he loves gravity powered vehicles.

dredmorbius• 9 months ago

Additional coverage (from other HN submissions):

QZ: <https://qz.com/trump-pardon-binance-changpeng-zhao>

Reuters: <https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-convicted-bin...>

The Guardian: <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/23/binance-t...>

perihelions3• 9 months ago

Key line:

"Since Trump’s election, Binance has also been a key supporter of his family’s World Liberty Financial crypto venture, a business that has driven a huge leap in the president’s personal wealth."

"Huge leap" meaning $5 billion,

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-wlfi-world-liberty-financ... ("New crypto token boosts Trump family's wealth by $5 billion")

JKCalhoun2• 9 months ago

$5B, so far.

kentm• 9 months ago

Not sure why you quote it, that's pretty huge. I'd call any double-digit percent increase on a billionaire's wealth huge.

happytoexplain• 9 months ago

I think the parent is quoting the phrase simply because they are defining it, and not using sarcasm quotes.

perihelions3• 9 months ago

(It's a literal quote of the WSJ).

Capricorn2481• 9 months ago

They're saying it's an understatement.

pacman1337• 9 months ago

But Binance founder doesn't work for Binance anymore so why pardoning founder help Binance?

peer2pay• 9 months ago

Because it sets a precedent

nickfromseattle• 9 months ago

According to Binance, he owns 90%. Whether he is CEO or not probably doesn't prevent him from influencing Binance operations to support Trump's coin.

ardent-flareup• 9 months ago

The current head of binance (and cofounder) is Yi He. Who happens to be in a relationship with CZ and is the mother of his children.

b3ing• 9 months ago

So is Friedman next?

cool_man_bob5• 9 months ago

Didn’t he donate to the wrong guy?

spprashant2• 9 months ago

No issues. Trump can forgive almost anything for the right price.

hn_acc1• 9 months ago

I think he made public mention of "donating to the wrong guy" to get one side to like him more. IIRC, he donated similar or more to the "other" side, but just didn't make a big deal of it publicly.

tartuffe782• 9 months ago

It's a good thing Trump is as old as he is. Imagine if a 50 year old had this much influence over his party, could ignore any law, and stole this much money.

May I never live to see such a thing happen in the US, but it doesn't feel unlikely.

platevoltage• 9 months ago

We better hope JD Vance isn't able to capture the cult of personality after Trump is gone.

spprashant2• 9 months ago

JD Vance is a great debator, and might appeal to some urban Republic voters. But I don't see him having and away on the rural voters like Trump does.

bediger40002• 9 months ago

I have doubts that JD Vance can pull off a Republican realignment to himself. He's not a 2nd gen wealthy person who assumes that every one will do his bidding.

honkostani• 9 months ago

Such personality cultists usually filter for other great egos in there sphere, leaving behind burned out parties filled with syccophants. If the history of the USSR teaches us anything, the more dangerous aspirants are bookkeepers for the party, managing silently in the background, secret service personal and (checks notes) clowns? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev#Stalin's_fin...

metalliqaz2• 9 months ago

shameless corruption

mandeepj2• 9 months ago

I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon. Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else can come out of it.

SR2Z• 9 months ago

It's a consequence of the executive's power to... well, execute the law. They can simply decide to not focus prosecution on certain crimes. If they can do that, why not let them also pardon people?

malicka• 9 months ago

Unfortunately, sometimes our judges, juries, and officers are also biased or incorrect; pardons are useful when the delivery of justice was mistaken or excessive.

ImJamal• 9 months ago

Presidents can pardon to provide a check on the courts. If congress doesn't like the pardon they can impeach the president.

latexr• 9 months ago

I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon.

Won’t somebody please think of the ~~children~~ turkeys?!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Thanksgiving_Turkey_P...

Joking aside, Wikipedia does have a history of it. It goes way back, way before the USA was even a thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_United_...

jpadkins3• 9 months ago

it's part of our Christian values.

dragonwriter9• 9 months ago

I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon.

Because of the impossibility of law written in advance perfectly covering all cases and to provide a mechanism for correction of overpunishment that cannot be effectively anticipated in crafting general law. (That's more the reason why the traditional power of chief executives seen in state governments and the British government they were all more or less modeled on was retained when a federal executive was created; the US Constitution was very much not create ex nihilo in a historical vaccuum.)

Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else can come out of it.

Every viewpoint is "bias" relative to every other viewpoint, so that piece is a nullity, but it is certain;y not the case that corruption and self-interest are the only impacts or motivations for applying the pardon power.

Which isn't to say that there aren't arguments for putting more guardrails around the application of the power by the executive (or perhaps just radically changing the nature of the federal executive, to improve the application of its powers generally and not just the pardon power).

Havoc3• 9 months ago

Coffeezilla video about this is up already

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4

JKCalhoun2• 9 months ago

Holy shit, it runs deep.

boringg• 9 months ago

Its so gross.

NaomiLehman• 9 months ago

I can't believe the dominant country is running this timeline.

ethbr14• 9 months ago

Give it a few years. The US ceding its dominance by trying to re-follow its 1970s/80s playbook (now with less Volcker!) in a 2024+ world will go down as one of the biggest geopolitical own-goals of all time.

deaux• 9 months ago

It already no longer is.

txcwg002• 9 months ago

What do you think of this counterpoint from Balaji?

"CZ deserves his pardon.

His show trial of a prosecution was a combination of regulatory railroading and ethnic persecution for being Chinese-Canadian.

Imagine if Macron was held personally responsible for every crime committed by the 67M citizens of France, and you'll get the absurdity of holding CZ personally responsible for the actions of a few of the 250M+ Binance users.

Indeed, if the bureaucrats who went after CZ were similarly held accountable for every violent crime committed in their home states, they'd be in prison for eternity! But there was an insane double standard. In the physical world, the Biden admin gleefully abolished the police. Meanwhile, in the digital world they demanded that CEOs achieve impossible levels of probity.

The ethnic dimension to CZ's persecution was similarly execrable. In reality, he helped many millions of Chinese people get into Bitcoin and thereby get to freedom. And also helped millions of poor people from around the globe get out of failed currencies, and into cryptocurrency.

So he did more for practical human rights and civil liberties than most. CZ did nothing wrong, and did so many things right.

Of course, my friends at Coinbase and I were competitors of Binance. But I always respected CZ, and I congratulate him on his accomplishments, and I congratulate him on his pardon today. Well deserved."

https://x.com/balajis/status/1981423831572238856

jazzyjackson3• 9 months ago

The law says he should have prevented those bad apples from moving dirty money around, and he did not follow the law.

Do you have a rebuttal for coffeezillas assertion that 2 billion dollars of Abu Dhabi money was invested in Binance using the Trump family coin in order to buy a pardon?

The president is clearly pro crypto and doesn't think this dude did anything wrong, but he also wasn't gonna give a pardon away for free. It's a disgusting abuse of office he should be impeached over. Selling pardons, what a shit show.

hackyhacky5• 9 months ago

Changpeng Zhao broke the law and got caught. Everyone agrees on that. What you present above is revisionist history about "political persecution," which is the favorite justification of the current administration for pardoning convicted felons, even in the total absence of any evidence supporting a conclusion of political persecution. See also George Santos, J6 rioters, etc.

I don't think it's really necessary to pretend that this pardon was deserved. The pardon happened because (a) Trump wants the support of crypto billionaires and (b) Trump received a large bribe. It's really not complicated.

Painting Trump as sympathetic to ethnic discrimination is really ridiculous. No one believes that, even people who cynically use that justification to support his lawlessness.

joyeuse67012• 9 months ago

Comparing gov’t officials to civilians is a stupid comparison.

Biden abolishing police is hyperbole.

CZ enabled a lot of dark shit. He is somehow simultaneously so powerful as to help millions of Chinese, but powerless to do anything about a few thousand of criminals and pedophiles?

This is not a serious take.

neilk• 9 months ago

He's not making an argument.

With these characters, from Trump on down, discourse is not the point.

He is flexing his power by showing he can make an obviously fatuous point and get away with it. Because there are no consequences, for someone like him.

p_j_w• 9 months ago

In the physical world, the Biden admin gleefully abolished the police.

When did this happen?

more_corn• 9 months ago

How much did he pay?

tartoran4• 9 months ago

We don't know but I guess it involved quite a bit of bitcoins

bryanlarsen• 9 months ago

In contrast, SBF is still in jail despite being Biden's second biggest donor.

Hamuko• 9 months ago

I'd say that SBF is a bigger crook in contrast. He gave himself a special privilege to withdraw unlimited funds from FTX.

dmix2• 9 months ago

SBF was sentenced to 25yrs, Binance guy got 4 months.

potatototoo99• 9 months ago

Give him time, there's plenty of Trump presidency to go.

kobalsky• 9 months ago

CZ crime was not complying with anti laundering US laws, which basically meant he didn't do KYC to keep USA users out. He got 4 months.

SBF stole user funds to basically role play as a billionare.

a_ba• 9 months ago

It's high time the Republicans embrace their new leadership with a re-branding of their outfit's name and henceforth call themselves The Banana Republicans

Animats2• 9 months ago

I wonder if civil forfeiture will work against Trump once he's out of office. Trump's net worth before becoming President was under US$1 billion. Now it's over 6 billion. A civil claim for the difference based on the Emoluments Acts.

"The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars the president and other federal officials from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign State” without the consent of Congress. It reflects the framers’ desire to prevent federal officials from succumbing to foreign influence.

The Domestic Emoluments Clause provides for the president to receive a fixed salary and bars him from receiving “any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.” It was designed to insulate the president against undo pressure from Congress or any individual state."

[1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/emol...

voidfunc• 9 months ago

You dont live in a country where Rule of Law matters anymore.

krainboltgreene2• 9 months ago

Rule of law? Anymore? No president has ever been punished in any meaningful capacity in our entire history. Washington used loopholes to avoid setting his slaves free[1] for christ sake.

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/george-washington-...

dreamcompiler2• 9 months ago

I hope so. That way we can rebuild the White House the way it was and pay for it by seizing Mar-a-Lago and selling it off.

mikkupikku3• 9 months ago

Trump is a corrupt idiot and a terrible president, but the White House controversy is dumb too. I'm sure the addition will be ugly like everything Trump builds, but that building is not exactly a historic artifact that mustn't be mutated. It's been gutted more than once.

Matticus_Rex2• 9 months ago

No, this is pretty squarely outside the scope, and only specific amounts received from in-scope parties (i.e. governments) would be subject. And there's a standing issue. Basically the emoluments clause doesn't have real teeth for most purposes, even where it applies.

Animats2• 9 months ago

only specific amounts received from in-scope parties

Like Quatar and the used 747.

Arubis2• 9 months ago

I suspect Trump will leave office in a box, not on his feet. Such a civil claim would then have to be against his estate, which probably complicates things.

mindslight• 9 months ago

It would be against whomever is in possession of the stolen wealth, which will not likely be his estate. And yes, this should be a priority of any platform for rebuilding our country. Justice needs to be served. And by the time we're finally rid of these America-last fuckers, people still supporting the Trumps are going to be as rare as people still supporting the Iraq War.

mig392• 9 months ago

I wonder if civil forfeiture will work against Trump once he's out of office.

He's only out of office if he dies. There's no way he's leaving voluntarily.

odo12422• 9 months ago

It would work in a situation involving Supreme Court-packing, and that’s about it

dreamcompiler2• 9 months ago

I'm sure SBF and Elizabeth Holmes will be next.

therein• 9 months ago

SBF, maybe. Elizabeth Holmes, no chance.

mikkupikku3• 9 months ago

You're probably right, because she smoozed with Biden, but with Trump anything is possible with the right bribes.

moralestapia• 9 months ago

No chance SBF ever goes out (until he's done with his sentence).

Two huge factors against him:

* Most people don't even know who CZ is, so this is meh-tier. People know SBF and find him repulsive, literally. Whoever puts SBF out of jail will face a massive PR backslash, he's not important enough to be worth that.

* SBF stole from the rich, the only real crime in the US.

Very few times you see someone who is equally hated by: the law, the public and the rich. He's screwed, lol.

wmf3• 9 months ago

Only 16% but rising fast. https://polymarket.com/event/sbf-released-from-custody-in-20...

tripplyons5• 9 months ago

This particular market is too illiquid to mean anything.

Right now, there is only about $500 in liquidity if you wanted to buy in at the 20% ask with a market order. After that the next sell limit order it as 96%.

ugh1233• 9 months ago

I consider SBF's crime way less serious given that the end result actually made money for "victims"* which was the intended goal from the start.

However Binance guy knowingly commits money laundering and gets the pardon?

* Those victims who did not wait through the full asset recovery process and sold their debt to "vulture investors" for pennies on the dollar.

tripplyons5• 9 months ago

SBF already did an unauthorized interview in prison with Tucker Carslon.

giarc• 9 months ago

Holmes has nothing to offer him.

jijijijij• 9 months ago

Fraud talent.

arp242• 9 months ago

They're trying to turn it in to a culture war/"big pharma" type issue. They've been trying since he got in to office – see: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44002658

Will it work? If I had to bet then I'd say probably not. For any other president this would not even merit any thought beyond "lol" and that alone is worrying.

animitronix• 9 months ago

Lol sure she does

CyberDildonics• 9 months ago

Gislaine Maxwell will be next.

doener2• 9 months ago

"President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company."

You Americans elected a mobster as President.

trhway• 9 months ago

I feel there is some perversion happened - the American culture in particular has been strong on a hero cutting through and going across the laws and rules toward his goals (and the recent years super-hero craze is an epitome of it). And i feel that in some perverse way Trump got tuned into such a hero storyline and naturally abusing it to no end for his own gain.

nashashmi• 9 months ago

We Americans had our choices robbed of us. And we cannot think outside of the ballot sheet.

npteljes2• 9 months ago

I agree with you. The system is ridiculous, it gives the voter two options, and that's all. People point out that monopolies are bad, but a duopoly is very far from being a solution for it. Americans (and many other countries in the world) need better representation.

computerdork• 9 months ago

Well, half us Americans did:) The other half is still in total disbelief

calmworm• 9 months ago

Closer to 20% of Americans did.

LightBug12• 9 months ago

Disbelief, maybe. But you have to own it now.

Once is an aberration. Twice is your democracy speaking.

sleepybrett4• 9 months ago

You heard it everyone, crime is legal as long as you pay off the Don.

sleepybrett4• 9 months ago

If we ever get trump out of office we need to re-arrest every last one of these guys. The supremes can whine and cry as we keep them in prison. They can raise an army if the want anything different.

Serious controls need to be placed around the pardon power.

gleenn• 9 months ago

Double Jeopardy is disallowed in the United States, they would have to be convicted on new crimes.

drjasonharrison• 9 months ago

So much of what DJT is doing should be disallowed but isn't. So we can disallow them and then add an amendment to reverse all DJT executive orders and pardons.

I'm joking! Everything will be broken by then.

CuriouslyC2• 9 months ago

Name them as terrorists on bullshit nonexistent evidence and disappear them to CECOT. We already know you can get away with it.

Teever• 9 months ago

They most certainly committed other crimes which were uncovered when they were investigated for the crimes that they were charged and now pardoned of.

Also as I understand it, while the can't be tried twice for the same crime Federally, it's still possible that they can be tried in a state court for committing the same crime.

electriclove3• 9 months ago

Just the ones that Trump pardoned right?

sleepybrett4• 9 months ago

there are good pardons out there. People who were rotting in prison for small amounts of drugs, etc.

.. but if you are trying to imply hunter biden, then fuck yeah I don't fucking care, put him in prison if that's what it takes.

9dev4• 9 months ago

The moment pardons are abused, the whole concept should be abolished. Pandora’s box is open now, unless you take it away, it’ll be continued to be abused.

fallinghawks• 9 months ago

It's all transactional. Do something Trump likes, he'll help you, laws, morals, and ethics be damned.

tripplyons5• 9 months ago

The pardoning of all of over 1000 people involved in January 6th is a good example of this.

daveguy3• 9 months ago

At this point, I wouldn't touch crypto with a 10 ft pole. What happens when everyone recognizes that the whole thing has turned into a money laundering grift? Who's going to give you anything for your bozo bucks? At this rate, it's not going to take long.

toastgrave• 9 months ago

Hasn't that been apparent for years now though? It's a cool idea but really no real use that doesn't boil down to some sort of crime

daveguy3• 9 months ago

Yeah, I don't think the dominos will fall until the next flash crash when people realize it takes $100+ just to withdraw (because 7 transactions per second isn't many). As soon as confidence is lost, the reaction will be full blown tulip market. We just haven't seen the first bank run yet. And there is literally no backstop for a crypto bank run.

wmf3• 9 months ago

Maybe there's an alternate timeline where crypto was legalized and regulated into something like fair gambling... but that's not what we're getting. Anyone getting into crypto now is just a sucker to be milked dry.

marcuskane2• 9 months ago

I think like, 90% of the crypto trading volume is by people who know it's all a grift, but are hoping to get rich while the music is still playing.

People knowingly buy into pump & dumps, gambling that they're on the early (pump) side and hoping to get out before the dump.

People will happily collect commissions selling products they know are scams or will happily collect management fees for parking investor's capital into grifts.

You'll never get truly everyone to recognize it, and it only takes one sucker at the poker table to keep every seat filled.

dylan6045• 9 months ago

People knowingly buy into pump & dumps, gambling that they're on the early (pump) side and hoping to get out before the dump

I recently heard of a real estate person that wound up buying an entire neighborhood around one of the stadiums for next year's World Cup. The impetus for this decision was to jack up the rates during the tournament, and then sell them off after. Another person thinks renting a bunch of Teslas and then placing them Touro will be another get rich idea during the World Cup. There are all sorts of people that think they are smarter than everyone else and are so confident they just cannot think of any ways their idea will fail.

zer00eyz• 9 months ago

You might want to go look at CDO's... or synthetic CDOs.

In comparison, crypto looks like a rational product relative to that.

fancyfredbot• 9 months ago

The bad idea was making bad loans, putting them in CDOs, and then using flawed models to certify them as risk free. That's irrational.

Dividing up the credit risk on a pool of loans so that some people lose money only if all the loans go bad is a very good idea. You just need to make sure they are good loans.

slg• 9 months ago

What happens when everyone recognizes that the whole thing has turned into a money laundering grift?

Part of the problem is that this seems to describe most of the economy now. Maybe not specifically money laundering, but it’s all a grift whether we are talking about Binance, OpenAI, or Skydance-Paramount. There are grifts everywhere which just encourages more grifts as people see the resulting success and lack of consequences.

rvz• 9 months ago

I am sorry to tell you that the majority of the services that you may be using (Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, PayPal, etc) all have exposure or have some form of funding by crypto.

Who's going to give you anything for your bozo bucks? At this rate, it's not going to take long.

It's already here. Scan your eye-balls for some Worldcoins ($WLD) to prove you are not a LLM bot.

stusmall• 9 months ago

It won't be bozo bucks because like you said it has a real value. Having international, anonymous, instant money laundering machine is invaluable. It will take legislation to criminalize people from taking part in the money laundering machine to kill the value. That isn't happening in the next 3 years.

npteljes2• 9 months ago

What makes you think that the participants are not in on the grift? People are different, some rather supports wholesome stuff, some don't give an f. And it's not just morals that differ, risk-taking is also individually different (and can change with age and other life situation too).

WheatMillington4• 9 months ago

It's incredible that American corruption can happen out in the open like this. And this isn't a uniquely Trump phenomena. Political pardons are an amazing thing, and they have been used by presidents for a long time now with extremely little scrutiny and no possibility for repercussions. The executive being able to overrule the judiciary is an absolutely jaw-dropping American institution. So much for checks and balances.

TheBlight4• 9 months ago

There's an argument the prosecution was political. See: https://x.com/balajis/status/1981423831572238856

nativeit• 9 months ago

Because Trump couldn’t have that!

Jweb_Guru5• 9 months ago

The prosecution was not political lol, he went out of his way to support money laundering on the Binance platform. The reason he complied with the prosecution and pled guilty rather than try to fight it out in court was that they were able to produce a ton of evidence that he deliberately ignored regulators and regulations designed to prevent money laundering in order to make money off sanctioned groups and criminal organizations using the exchange as a way to circumvent KYC/AML laws. Please don't take what Balaji says about companies he invested in at face value.

j2kun2• 9 months ago

balajis is personally invested in propping up the ecosystem.

inkysigma• 9 months ago

Sorry, is this person comparing the rights and immunities of a head of a sovereign nation to those of a CEO of a company? I don't think France, as a sovereign country, is completely bound by US law whereas binance, when it is operating in US jurisdiction is. I'm not totally familiar with US finance law but I'm pretty sure a more fair comparison would be to other banks where KYC requirements and anti money laundering rules can be strict. From what I read about the prosecution, Binance ignored many warning signs from their own executives about the possibility and the lack of controls within their platform to comply with the law.

jmull6• 9 months ago

It's not much of an argument... he wasn't being held responsible for the actions of a few binance users, we was being held responsible for his own failure to implement compliance processes required by law.

The laws exist to restrict funding for countries under sanction, drug operations, terrorist organizations, etc.

We can argue about whether these laws are a good idea (either in general or in specific details), but you need to change the law, not just now follow it.

This is a terrible precedent... unless you're a con man, that is. (Balaji Srinivasan isn't stupid. I would guess he understands how real what he's arguing here is.)

Mars008• 9 months ago

And this isn't a uniquely Trump phenomena

Reminds of Biden pardoning his relatives without even saying for what. Just blanked pardon for everything. No democrat dropped his jaw.

etchalon3• 9 months ago

He was pretty explicit about the reason why.

He feared Trump would force the DOJ to prosecute them.

And, based on what Trump's done so far with the DOJ and his enemies, he was right to do so.

xpe2• 9 months ago

Reminds of Biden pardoning his relatives without even saying for what. Just blanked pardon for everything. No democrat dropped his jaw.

Everyone I talked to (more than 10, including myself) that I knew who voted for Biden was pissed, disappointed, even angry at his pardoning of Hunter.

Jweb_Guru5• 9 months ago

That was incredibly corrupt and many Democrats in fact "dropped [their] jaws." And it's not the only instance of political corruption like this, either (Bill Clinton notoriously did something similar). Neither of these cases retroactively justify Trump pardoning anyone who sends him a few million dollars.

jajuuka• 9 months ago

I mean the pardon was the check and balance on the judiciary. However it's been turned into a tool for personal gain than a saving grace for mistakes of the federal crimes convictions. Both parties have pushed for this monarchic power to be expanded over time. I think it has a place but much like a lot of the federal government it needs a complete overhaul. The checks and balances system works alright but when a unitary party controls every branch there is no one to check that power.

libertine• 9 months ago

It's like there's a new social contract that states: it's not corruption if it's done in the open.

dboreham2• 9 months ago

The US has always been kind of scammy vs other western nations. In the movie when he says "have you no shame sir?", the answer typically is "nope".

preommr• 9 months ago

It's genuinely just this.

The rise of more grass-roots news sources (podcasts, memes, social media) also leads to tons of conspiracy theories, and mistrust that builds this idea of corruption being ubiquitous, just not out in the open. And yes, that happens, but this atmosphere magnifies it 10x.

So when someone like Trump does it out in the open, people are more likely to excuse it because "everybody is already doing it, at least this is out in the open".

dragonwriter9• 9 months ago

The executive being able to overrule the judiciary is an absolutely jaw-dropping American institution.

No, its not, pardon and the closely linked power of clemency are common powers in representative democracies, often situated with the chief of state or the head of government (in the US, and other Presidential systems, the President is both), or sometimes the cabinet instead of the head of government in a parliamentary or semi-parliamentary system (in some cases, one or the other is assigned by law to a subordinate bureaucracy rather than being HoS/cabinet discretion, as is the case with pardon but not clemency in Canada.) It is generally more used in the US than other Western states, in part because the US has a much harsher criminal justice system with much longer sentences and much weaker provisions for relief other than executive pardon than other systems, but the power itself is common. [0]

The way it is used under Trump is wildly abnormal (for the US or the other representative democracies), though.

[0] see, e.g., https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-world/pardon-power-is-co... ; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon ; etc.

WheatMillington4• 9 months ago

The president just prior to Trump pardoned his own son for crimes, and pre-emptively pardoned various other family members and political allies for any possible crimes before they could be prosecuted. Again, this is not new, this is ongoing open-air corruption, and Trump's escalation is the result of everyone being OK with it before now.

dcchambers• 9 months ago

The US is a banana republic now. Absolute joke of an administration.

seany• 9 months ago

Seems like just nuking the stupid AML rules would be better.

IshKebab• 9 months ago

What if some criminal blatantly says "I'll give you $1bn if you pardon me" and Trump does it? Is that enough for something to happen? Because it seems like that's the only place we can go from here...

fudged71• 9 months ago

The bar is much lower https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-pardon-...

nerdponx2• 9 months ago

The currency here is loyalty, not USD.

covercash2• 9 months ago

It's not enough. The only thing that might make a difference will get this comment removed. And we may have even passed the point for that to have an impact.

CuriouslyC2• 9 months ago

The states are going to start engaging in economic warfare with the federal government before too long.

nerdponx2• 9 months ago

That would be technically illegal rather than merely repugnant. It would not however be illegal if the criminal dropped a hint in the news that he would donate to, say, a ballroom that was to be named after the president.

And even if it were outright illegal, the Supreme Court has now ruled that the president is personally immune from criminal prosecution as long as they claim that their illegal activity was carried out in the course of their presidential duties, and not a personal crime committed on the side. Which leaves congressional impeachment and conviction as the sole recourse against presidential misbehavior. Which becomes a problem when the majority in Congress doesn't care that the president is doing illegal things. We haven't had a constitutional crisis like this since the FDR administration.

nobody99992• 9 months ago

What if some criminal blatantly says "I'll give you $1bn if you pardon me" and Trump does it? Is that enough for something to happen? Because it seems like that's the only place we can go from here...

According to SCOTUS[0], as long as it's a "gratuity," it's not a bribe and not illegal. No. Seriously.

https://www.scotusblog.com/2024/06/supreme-court-limits-scop...

Alifatisk• 9 months ago

I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no one will say anything

The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do anything as long as you bribe them

mbfg• 9 months ago

"I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters" - Trump

j2kun2• 9 months ago

They wouldn't be fine with it if they understood it. Instead they are not paying attention and only consuming propaganda media (Fox News) that refuses to report on Trump negatively in any way.

yanslookup• 9 months ago

Not sure we can blame fox news, it has like 5MM peak daily viewership...

FB, Twitter, Tiktok on the other hand...

coliveira5• 9 months ago

We're long past the time when FoxNews was the main vector. Now the propaganda is coming from social networks and mainstream media that is afraid of consequences if they tell the truth. It's all just a big mafia system.

froggertoaster3• 9 months ago

Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.

mcmcmc• 9 months ago

If you’re not fine with criminals who get away with fraud, why vote for a well known fraudster? He’s been conning people since the 80s

vel0city• 9 months ago

Honestly, why did you vote for this then?

greenpizza133• 9 months ago

Well, you voted for it. Were you not capable of critical thought when you entered the voting booth?

leptons5• 9 months ago

You knew who he is, and you voted for him anyway. You really didn't see this kind of rampant corruption coming from his 2nd term?

HDThoreaun4• 9 months ago

Trump is the most openly corrupt leader in american history. How can you vote for him while claiming to be against corruption?

cthalupa9• 9 months ago

Serious set of questions here from someone desperately trying to understand people who voted for Trump and how to have conversations with them that can be productive. None of them are meant to be insulting or insinuate anything.

To me, this sort of behavior just seems par for the course for how he has been acting since before his presidency. Did you follow his record in business and politics closely prior to voting for him? If so, what mitigating factors were there that let you still feel comfortable in voting for him?

Is this an isolated source of issue with him? Part of a broader trend? In either case, is it/these a big enough deal for him to lose your support moving forward? For the rest of the political party supporting him?

If there has been a shift in your ability to support him, what is it that broke the camel's back?

smt88• 9 months ago

People are going to pile on you for not seeing this coming, but I really do appreciate your ability to change your mind and tell people about it.

People need space to make a U-turn. I hope you get some grace because it's a lot easier to say "I told you so" than "I was wrong."

lostdog3• 9 months ago

Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.

Welcome to the resistance!

Just curious. Since you voted for someone who is a terrible President last time, what are you planning to change about how you make voting decisions next time? Are there particular people or media you plan to listen to less, and others more? Particular aspects you will weight higher or lower?

vkou2• 9 months ago

If you think this is wrong, please, I implore you to do something about it.

Your reps (or likely preferred choice of reps, if they didn't win their district) are enabling this, and don't give two shits about anything I say.

0xTJ• 9 months ago

He was clear about how he intended to run the country in his last term. And in the lead-up to the election. You are complicit in his crimes.

froggertoaster3• 9 months ago

Thanks for all of the comments. I wasn't replying simply because I haven't seen them, but based on the comments I actually got: I feel like my words would be like yelling into a vacuum regardless of what I actually say.

coliveira5• 9 months ago

Americans cannot accept they have a corrupt government lead by a corrupt politician who is now corrupting the justice system. They prefer to continue propagating the myth of a "healthy democracy" and "open market".

leptons5• 9 months ago

I personally do not know any Americans that are as you described. 1/3 of Americans are as you describe, 1/3 are definitely not at all as you described, and another 1/3 is too apathetic to care about anything.

The recent "No Kings" protests were the largest in US history.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstra...

consumer451• 9 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias explains so much of our world.

mulmen2• 9 months ago

This is obviously false based on widespread protests and constant criticism. If you can’t find Americans who oppose Trump’s regime it’s because you don’t want to.

jpadkins3• 9 months ago

The choice was between two corrupt options (same as its been for a long time). There is a lot of evidence coming out that the Biden administration was corrupting the justice system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his family.

Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC nexus (we all know Biden wasn't running the show, and neither would Harris).

seviu• 9 months ago

You would be surprised…

Regarding CZ and Binance and the Trumps, they have kind of a symbiotic relationship.

After Binance and CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering in November 2023, for which they paid over $4 billions in fines, WLFI (which is a clone of AAVE belonging to the Trump family) launched a stablecoin called USD1. Magically on March 2025, $2 billion flowed into Binance through MGX, a state backed Abu Dhabi fund, later revealed to have been paid in USD1 (two months before it was unveiled and without at the time no effective audits), effectively propping WLFI’s coin (backed, unbacked, nobody knows, I assume backed). CZ applied for a presidential pardon inmediately after in May 2025.

WLFI now gets to earn about $60–80 million per year in yield from the USD1…

…As long as Binance doesn’t redeem those $2 billion.

I still don’t know what MGX got out of this deal, but I am pretty sure they didn’t walk empty handed.

tastyfreeze8• 9 months ago

Even if you accept it, what are you going to do? Violence is not an acceptable option for most people. So, we carry on.

dylan6045• 9 months ago

Most polls that I've seen show it closer to 40% than half

lateforwork4• 9 months ago

Yes, and that's depressing. Why are so many people not understanding what is going on?

Reminds me of this Bill Gates quote: "We were a bit naive: we thought the internet, with the availability of information, would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people would seek out—kind of a niche of misinformation—we were a bit naive."

ilikecakeandpie• 9 months ago

It's not half. I think close to 32% were fully supportive (voted for him) and around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won.

I don't know which is worse, that 32% were in support of the corrupt leader or that 68% in total are either supported him or didn't care enough to support anyone else

thunky4• 9 months ago

around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever won.

Or, they were not fine with whoever won.

We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not a great one.

I'd like to believe at least some of those 36% would vote for a decent candidate/party. But once you lose faith in the system, and realize that it doesn't represent you, you might just stop participating in it.

Workaccount2• 9 months ago

He pardoned the guy from Nikola, Trevor Milton, that staged a product demo to trick investors.

Why? Milton hired Pam Bondi's (the US attorney general's) brother to represent him.

jimmydoe• 9 months ago

King has to show his power by doing bad things constantly. If he only does good, he's just a people pleaser.

gchamonlive• 9 months ago

I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader

It's because you are still thinking of the USA as a democracy. Musk helped buy the election for Trump. It's an open oligarchy since companies were allowed an opinion as if they were citizens.

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...

Havoc3• 9 months ago

I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader?

Don't think fox news is going to report that he enriched the prez...

madmountaingoat• 9 months ago

I think most actually know and don't think it's all that much different from what other have done for decades. I'm not saying they are correct to think it, just that they do think it. They think it's refreshing that the corruption is in the open. It's a societal boy-cried-wolf numbness. People are tired of the of finger pointing and screaming about every thing and now don't listen when the real stuff goes down.

mightyham• 9 months ago

Is the irony not lost you that Joe Biden pardoned his own son for crimes he was absolutely guilty of. I don't see how that is any less corrupt. This isn't whatboutism either because I'm not trying to say that what Trump is doing is okay, I'm pointing out that this behavior is not particular to Trump and his supporters. The large majority of Americans are fine with corruption as long as it's their team.

darkarmani• 9 months ago

One can not be happy with that and understand that Trump would have found ways to lock up his son for 20 years. No one thinks this dude was going to be punished for political reasons.

cthalupa9• 9 months ago

Biden pardoning his son was widely condemned by Democrats.

This is despite the fact that Hunter was gone after on a charge that is basically never enforced alongside a media and political campaign ramping up all sorts of lies and half-truths and trying to draw connections to things he was never on trial for, much less convicted of, with an incoming president that had spoken extensively about his desire to weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.

I don't like that Biden pardoned his son, but I also think the idea that it is at all comparable to the pardons Trump has issued that are blatantly corrupt is absurd. Meanwhile, Jan6 pardonees have a whole Wikipedia section detailing all of the crimes they have gone on to commit since being pardoned.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_Sta...

swader999• 9 months ago

Biden didn't pardon, the auto pen did.

HDThoreaun4• 9 months ago

1. There is no evidence that Joe partook in hunter's scheme. No evidence of misuse of office or government resources. It was more conspiracy to engage in corruption than actual corruption.

2. Hunter's pardon was still wrong and widely condemned by dems.

Biden misused the office to pardon his son but he was not corrupt.

afavour3• 9 months ago

You talk as if corruption is a binary: corrupt or not corrupt.

I’m not supportive of Biden pardoning his son. But it’s inarguable that the Trump administration is orders of magnitude more corrupt than Biden’s was. To say “they’re both corrupt” is to flatten everything out to meaninglessness.

hypeatei5• 9 months ago

Hunter Biden and the Biden family were investigated for years in various political witch hunts and Hunter was charged with filling out a gun form incorrectly in the end. Trump made it clear he was going on a revenge tour with the DOJ in his second term so I don't blame Joe for the pardons.

adastra223• 9 months ago

Only had of Americans vote, only half of them voted for Trump, and his approval rating is down significantly since inauguration.

It is not accurate to say that half of Americans are ok with this. It’s just our system doesn’t allow for doing anything about it except wait.

vkou2• 9 months ago

Arguing over whether half or a third are okay with this is splitting hairs anytime that isn't an election (where these margins matter).

That even a third is okay with this is a clear enough signal. He represents their values.

krior• 9 months ago

It’s just our system doesn’t allow for doing anything about it except wait.

"Healthy democracy"

mulmen2• 9 months ago

Half of America isn’t fine with Trump. Only 22.3% of Americans voted for him and his approval rating has gone down significantly since then.

groby_b2• 9 months ago

Another 36% could've voted against him and chose not to. Even accounting for some amount literally unable to reach the poll booth, yeah, half of America.

rhetocj23• 9 months ago

Its difficult to digest lol. Im from Europe but damn I feel the Americans - its legit embarrassing to watch.

meowface2• 9 months ago

Everything about him since 2015 has been absolutely egregious. Anyone who hadn't realized it by 2016 will never change their tune. Even if he declares martial law for no good reason they're all still going to justify it somehow. Anyone who's hung on this long will be along for the ride forever.

holmesworcester• 9 months ago

I know HN viscerally hates crypto, and yes Trump is embarrassingly corrupt, but the charges against CZ were a greater wrong than whatever quid pro quo happened in the pardon.

This is the most embarrassing part of all of it. The US is ping ponging between two very different ways of misusing state power.

CZ was charged with violating a highly technical US securities law that is not common to most countries despite not being a US citizen or ever setting foot in the US. His crime was letting his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just because they run a website) tell crypto whales they could use VPNs to get the non-US, non-nerfed version of Binance.

The public's interest in protecting crypto whales from Binance is extremely tenuous. Unsophisticated users would hit the geofence. These were whales using Binance because they wanted to, not because they were tricked.

The US's right to enforce arcane securities law outside its own borders is also very tenuous. If every country pulls this level of aggressive enforcement of atypical law on every website (even geofenced ones!) we will have total chaos. Should China, Russia, or India be able to hunt you down for violating some arcane law? No? Then why should the US?

This is also happening in the context of an active public debate over the application of this law within the US, one cryptocurrency supporters won fairly definitively in the last election.

Whatever discretion the law provides US enforcers, they should have recognized that it was wrong to use that discretion and left CZ alone once Binance made reasonable gestures at compliance.

Instead, once their political coalition signaled that they should put symbolic heads on platters, they went about scoring career points. This is the kind of misbehavior that drove Aaron Swartz (a friend of mine) to suicide. We should be clear that it's wrong.

And here we are. A choice between venal corruption and cruel punching down at immigrants on one side, and a blind, symbolic use of power for power and ideology's sake on the other.

yunohn• 9 months ago

I don’t think the problem is HN’s hate of crypto - it’s the horrendously ignorant takes like these that people dislike.

Surely you don’t believe that CZ was charged for shits and giggles, just because he happened to make a website that Americans use?

dylanfw• 9 months ago

his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just because they run a website)

Employees of financial businesses are absolutely obligated to learn the laws of every country where they provide services.

JumpCrisscross14• 9 months ago

cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this corrupt leader?

They've normalized corruption irrespective of magnitude. That's partly a problem of the little corruption existing in the first place. But it's also a problem of education and tribal populism being given this much power.

charles_f• 9 months ago

It is disconcerting. Having discussed openly with people who were supportive of similar politicians, their logic is often in the line of "all of them are corrupt, but at least his politics are different". Now when you point that certainly corruption exists, but this is another level, they're getting into non-logical territory. People perceive times as grim and will take whomever offers something else than the status-quo baseline politician I guess. Even if they grift throughout and everyone's worse off in the end.

On a baser level, if you go on twitter, there's a whole slew of delusional people who either don't believe this because of "fake news", another portion that's in the same "Clinton/Obama/Biden were even worse", and the rest just doesn't even care so long as "the libs are owned".

SmirkingRevenge• 9 months ago

The thing is, most won't hear about this at all. It's always amazing to talk to a Trump voter and realize they don't actually hear about most of this stuff

And if it does break through the right info bubbles, right-wing media pundits and influencers will be on-the-ready to quickly rationalize or what-about it away and coax their audiences back to their "happy" places, where they can nurse their favorite grievances about the left, the media, the trans people, etc

godelski• 9 months ago

Because it isn't about actions, it is about sides. Tribalism.

It is the loss of complexity. Many cannot understand that by choosing the lesser of two evils does not mean you support evil. It means your choices are limited. We have turned the political issues into good and evil, rather than disagreements in how to achieve our mostly shared goals. We can no longer see the other side as friends and family, creating a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Anyone countering this can just proclaim "both sides" and in some sense they will be right, they have evidence and people do abuse that framework. But at the same time that destroys the bridge between us. The abuse of calling both sides evil along with the accusation that all use cases are instances of abuse. It binarizes the environment, creating a simple world where there are only two choices. Which is easy to do when everything is so complex, as we're so tired and don't want to think.

It's also why this administration's strategy is so effective: overload the opposition. After all, Brandolini's Law states: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it." They've weaponized it. It's an effective strategy, and hard to defend against. I'm sure someone will offer a solution, "it's so simple, you just..." and we perpetuate the game.

russellbeattie• 9 months ago

It's easy to explain: They have no idea what's happening.

Most people can't keep up with the firehose of news and don't really want to. This particular bit of unethical behavior is just one more bit of inconsequential news which will have completely disappeared from the headlines by tomorrow. It basically never happened to 95% of the country, regardless of political leaning.

Secondly, conservatives live in their own highly filtered and mutated information bubble. Good news is amplified, bad news is either downplayed, justified (pure fiction is acceptable) or simply ignored. So even if they do hear about this, it won't be a big deal.

In short, most people won't care, and conservative media will actively work to overlook or more often, rationalize this sort of unethical behavior to the point where it somehow is totally fine. (Simply read this thread to watch it happen in real time.)

cols• 9 months ago

Watching the Great Brainwash happen in real time has given me (I hope) a lot of insight into how anti-fascist Germans must have felt before WWII. It's a hell of a thing to watch half the people you know fall victim to the deluge of simplistic, feral propaganda that's been pouring out of our media sources for quite some time now. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and other socials being the primary driving force. All platforms that are incentivized to spread rage and misinformation, and yet we can't seem to quit them as a culture. We rationalized their existence and non-regulation because BUSINESS and FREE MARKET. It's a real sad time for America. We should have known better. It's all of our faults, collectively. For not being big enough to shun the pressure and money. For not doing what was right all along. Now, we'll reap the whirlwind.

_jsmh4• 9 months ago

I want to understand what you said.

You assumed the leader is corrupt, possibly assumed the leader has bad intentions, and that the world can't possibly be more complex than these assumptions. Assumed the leader made this choice instead of a team behind him.

Then presented a generality. Possibly assumed he doesn't know more than you and "everyone who won't say anything".

Called an entire administration a circus. Another generality.

Suggested bribery without evidence.

How does one respond constructively to a comment like this?

ThrowMeAway16185• 9 months ago

How does one respond constructively to a comment like this?

How indeed? You certainly didn't.

seydor• 9 months ago

I don't get the hate.

He served 4 months for a laundering case , and has built the most successful exchange. There are bankers and vcs doing far worse things. He deserved the pardon , and no, he doesn't control bitcoin

LightBug12• 9 months ago

Well, considering the incredible service Zhao has brought to the American people, this is totally understandable.

drak0n1c4• 9 months ago

He was convicted for allowing US citizens to sign up and place trades that could theoretically be matched by people from sanctioned countries. Technically an incredibly bad service for American people who must be protected from such liberties.

carnufex3• 9 months ago

I mean is it any different than Joe Biden given blanket pardons hundreds of people for crimes that they may have committed over a 10 year span?

bobro• 9 months ago

Is it? What do you think?

carnufex3• 9 months ago

I dont agree with the pardoning just making a point that presidents have done this for a long time of pardoning controversial people. Democrats and republicans are both corrupt so it isnt suprising.

thinkharderdev• 9 months ago

Yes

lostdog3• 9 months ago

Yes

odo12422• 9 months ago

Yes

BaconPackets2• 9 months ago

This is such a weird redirect. Biden seems to have pardoned a large amount of low level marijuana offenders.

So yes, there is a difference between what Trump is doing and what Biden is doing.

carnufex3• 9 months ago

You missed what I stated, pardoning someone for a specific crime vs what biden(if he was actually doing it) pardoned his son for all crimes he may have done over a 10 year span. Oh wait, that was actually one of the only pardons he actually signed.

edit:

He actually pardoned 5 family members for all non-violent offenses from jan 2014 to jan 2025, does 1 billionaire = 5 biden family members?

kbd• 9 months ago

The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether.

dboreham2• 9 months ago

Agree. It seems to have (never had?) any positive benefit.

guywithahat2• 9 months ago

I mean there are lots of people arrested on effectively political charges, and it's good to be able to reflect on it years later and get them out of jail. I'm not convinced Changpeng Zhao's charges would have ever been brought against him if the Biden admin didn't go so hard against crypto, I'm happy to see him pardoned. Hopefully next Trump can get whistle blowers like John Kiriachou

cogman10• 9 months ago

IDK, I think Carter's pardon of draft dodgers was a pretty good use of the pardon power.

The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that case. For example, I (hope to) see a future where people jailed for MJ related crimes get a mass pardon.

soraminazuki• 9 months ago

Chelsea Manning. Prosecuting her and other whistleblowers instead of the officials they blew the whistle on was a mockery of justice. Though that wasn't the stated reason for the commutation, it was long overdue.

FuriouslyAdrift• 9 months ago

Obama commuted the sentences of 1,715 individuals and issued 212 pardons for non-violent fedral drug convictions.

dylan6045• 9 months ago

Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion.

collingreen2• 9 months ago

If we can't figure out how to get a Congress that most people believe in then I worry that is the beginning of the end for this government.

Hopefully we get to try from scratch a third time if that happens but I worry that collapse will be too tempting for Russia or China to not step in.

Maybe we can be lucky and get conquered by Canada first in that case? What a weird thing to think...

JumpCrisscross14• 9 months ago

Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of constitutional reviewing in my opinion

States can reject dumb amendments. Congress proposes amendments, the states ratify them [1].

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-5/

eqvinox4• 9 months ago

The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy. The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the populace is already badly split into warring camps.

ratelimitsteve10• 9 months ago

I feel like we'd have a better idea of what congress is qualified to do if they ever actually tried to do something but they seem to have broadened their role from "prevent executive overreach and govern" to "prevent govern". Congress is where you send something if you want to be sure it doesn't happen.

That being said, there's always the option of just getting rid of the president's ability to overrule the people on criminal matters. We could probably go after state governors as well, that's just as rife with abuse.

mig392• 9 months ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism

Sounds reasonable. This is ok for Trump to do because of Hunter Biden.

Conscat• 9 months ago

The Hunter Biden pardon was necessary because it was clear that despite his admission of guilt, he was not going to receive a fair punishment. The Republican party leadership was very open in expressing their intentions for him, and had _already_ circumvented the judicial system to give him cruel and unusual punishment.

collingreen2• 9 months ago

Would be nice if Trump only pardoned people who the incoming administration explicitly said they would target, after years of constant harassment and misinformation.

I think I would support those pardons even though I think Trump and his family and his cronies are acting the way really bad people act.

Taking the above scenario as license to sell pardons for person gain is such a stretch it looks like bad faith to me.

IAmGraydon2• 9 months ago

The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice. How anyone ever thought this should be a thing, I have no idea.

munk-a• 9 months ago

I think a congressional pardon power to allow national leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed as unjust might be worth holding onto. It being such a casual presidential power has made it ripe for corruption for a long time but I would weigh that with civil rights era pardons for sham trials - I think we do still need a national sanity check relief valve for local injustices.

And the dysfunction of congress probably works in our favor here since pardons should be exceptional - not routine. A routine pardon is just a demonstration of the justice department failing at a systemic level.

dragonwriter9• 9 months ago

The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it does is show that the President overrides the department of justice.

The Department of Justice is subordinate to the President as part of the executive branch with or without the pardon power; if you want something other than "the President overrides the Department of Justice" as a matter of Constitutional law rather than an intermittently-observed convention of restraint (which Trump absolutely has not observed outside of the pardon power), you need a fundamental reformation of the Constitutional structure of government, far beyond the elimination of the pardon power.

FridayoLeary• 9 months ago

I heard the intention was that sometimes it's against the public good to prosecute some people even though they have comitted crimes. Good examples of it being used as intended was pardoning the perpetrators of the whiskey rebellion, the confederate army, vietnam draft dodgers and more controversially, Nixon. I guess it's also intended in cases where obvious miscarriages of justice have been committed. It made sense in 1785 or whenever but along with lots of the rest of the constitution it's long obsolete and has been twisted, stretched and mangled into a hideous caricature of itself over the centuries.

JumpCrisscross14• 9 months ago

pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or strip it altogether

Strip it. I also started on the line of Congressional review (or pardons only activating on the consent of the Senate). But I concluded the entire power is out of place.

If the courts overreach, address it through legislation. Congress can annul sentences through law, no special pardon power needed. If a law is unfair or being applied unfairly, moreover, it should be fixed comprehensively.

There isn’t a place for one-man pardons in a republic. Even the imperium-obsessed Romans didn’t give their dictators, much less consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special legislation to overrule the law.

Biden abused pardon power. So has Trump. Both parties have good reason for passing an amendment through the Congress. This is probably in my top 3 Constitutional amendment we need in our time. (Multi-member Congressional seats, popular election of the President and changing “the executive Power shall be vested in a President” to “the President shall execute the laws of the United States.”)

lapcat6• 9 months ago

The pardon power has been so abused these past few administrations

Past few?

How about Ford pardoning Nixon? Or George H.W. Bush pardoning a bunch of Iran-Contra conspirators, thus covering his own ass?

Arainach4• 9 months ago

Both of those were very bad, but nothing compared to the raw corruption in Trump's pardons.

actionfromafar8• 9 months ago

The way this is going, the President won’t need using any pardon powers, because the judges will all ask the President what the judgement should be in advance.

And the prosecutors will ask who to prosecute.

Finally only fair justice!

mktemp-d• 9 months ago

Your forget to insert the part where the President asks the convicted defendant if they want to finance their pardon with Klarna or Affirm in the Presidential Library's checkout page

1oooqooq• 9 months ago

if they were going to pardon everyone, at least this save costs. i guess doge was really saving us money after all /s

selcuka• 9 months ago

This is currently how it works in some countries that are supposed to be (and were) democratic. Sadly the US is moving in the same direction.

bamboozled• 9 months ago

Lord Eric ?

duxup• 9 months ago

Yeah we already have judgments that the executive branch has gone well beyond it's allowed limits and the majority of SCOTUS stance has been:

"Yeah well let the legal process play out ... in the meantime our guy gets to do whatever he wants, and you're still fired / kicked out of the country / funding cut / an so on".

If it is at all inconvenient for the most powerful folks in the country, they get any limits on their actions protected by SCOTUS ... at the cost of the people.

Yizahi3• 9 months ago

This is by the way literally word for word official statements of the ruzzian officials. The conviction rates in ruzzian courts are above 99% every year and the official explanation is that the prosecutors and police are so amazing and great, that only real criminals make it to the court. :)

davidw• 9 months ago

It has. But the breadth and depth of how they're being used by this one in particular is really far, far worse than other recent ones of both parties.

davidguetta3• 9 months ago

Wide pardoning with autopen was both heavy and illegal

ajross6• 9 months ago

these past few administrations

I remain amazed at how, again and again, no matter how specific and unique an abuse by the Trump administration is, it is always, invariably, Really Joe Biden's Fault. Like, the frame has been adopted by the MAGA base, but also the cranky left. The media does it too. Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack".

But it leads to ridiculous whoppers like this, and ends up in practice excusing what amounts to the most corrupt regime in this country in over a century, if not ever.

No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?

torgoguys• 9 months ago

But it leads to ridiculous whoppers like this, and ends up in practice excusing what amounts to the most corrupt regime in this country in over a century, if not ever.

Amen. Preach it, brother!

No, this is just bad, on its own, absent any discussion about what someone else did. There was no equivalent pardon of a perpetrator of an impactful crime in a previous administration I can think of. I'm genuinely curious what you think you're citing?

I don't know what the poster was referring to, but I AM mad at Biden for pardoning his family. It's a molehill of an issue compared to the current administration though.

LexiMax3• 9 months ago

Here on HN bothsidesism is a shibboleth that denotes "I'm a Serious Commenter and not a Partisan Hack".

HN users don't necessarily do that because they want to. They might do it as a pre-emptive defense mechanism against the brigades of de-facto censors that roam the site.

Moderation via populism is an anti-feature on its face, but Hacker News has the worst possible version of that sort of feature by making downvoted/flagged comments completely hidden unless you are logged in and showdead.

It's a pretty horrendous system if you're interested in good faith and honest debate.

hypeatei5• 9 months ago

This comment is a perfect explanation of my observations on here too. Thanks.

Karrot_Kream7• 9 months ago

When Obama really increased the number of pardons, a lot of contemporary opinion writers said stuff along the lines of "this is a dangerous precedent and we're lucky that the pardons are fairly popular and sane." Now we're seeing unpopular, not sane pardons.

When democratic norms erode like pardons becoming more acceptable, it's like laying tinder and kindling for a fire. You still need a fire; a bad actor who is willing to light the material on fire. That bad actor is Trump. But the warnings from abusing these limitations from previous administrations was exactly for this moment. Nobody is saying Trump isn't the bad one, he is. But the conditions were laid for him. Now we need to survive him.

When we look back at Roman Senators and Emperors, it's often hard as modern people to point to one, single bad figure because we don't have a lot of contemporary thought or reading from the time. But when we look back we can see the seeds of "decline" in eras rather than single figures.

goodluckchuck• 9 months ago

No, government is the greatest threat to liberty. If the guy in charge of prosecuting feels the need to not just not prosecute, but actively protect someone from the state, then we really really don’t want (who? his unelected subordinates?) prosecuting people. It’s supposed to be an “err on the side of” failing to prosecute criminals. The whole point is yes… sometimes we want criminals to get away with crime, because it’s better than the alternatives.

What is the alternative? One of them is the public vote for a leader, the state destroys that leader (or his allies, etc) and then what? Do we think the public just says “Oh, well, I guess we didn’t pick the right guy?”

aaronbrethorst3• 9 months ago

"boooooth siiiiiiides" screamed the reactionary centrist.

davidguetta3• 9 months ago

Yes.

sojournerc2• 9 months ago

Biden pardoned his son for clear crimes, yes!

apstls• 9 months ago

Genuinely curious: what were the abuses by the Biden and Obama administrations?

TiredOfLife• 9 months ago

Biden promised not to pardon his son and then pardoned his son. And not simply pardoned. Pardoned also for crimes not yet discovered

alfiedotwtf• 9 months ago

While you’re changing the constitution, include:

  - double dissolution to sack the government
  - make the election a public holiday

vessenes2• 9 months ago

That might be true, but CZ is a good candidate for a pardon. Did you know before Gensler went after him at the SEC he asked CZ for a job and was rejected?

ethbr14• 9 months ago

What does that have to do with anything? Executive branch leaders can have both individual lives and public responsibilities.

If anything, it's better he was rejected for the job, as getting it would have provided an incentive to bury the prosecution.

ratelimitsteve10• 9 months ago

honestly? I think between this and hunter biden you could probably drum up some bipartisan support as long as you don't let either side find out that they accidentally agree with the other. I'm of a mind that the power of the pardon is one of many (many, many, many) ways that the so-called "egalitarian" founding fathers made sure to preserve the power of the aristocracy over that of the people. After all, a conviction has to come from a jury, and that means that a pardon is by definition the powerful elite overruling the people.

Steven420• 9 months ago

I'm waiting to see if he pardons the diddler

president_zippy• 9 months ago

Despite abuses of it, there are still too many reasons to need it, like when President Franklin Pierce pardoned an abolitionist for harboring fugitive slaves, or when George Washington pardoned Revolutionary War vets involved in the Whiskey Rebellion.

Better yet, there are a ton of cases since the 1980s prosecutors exploiting technicalities and mandatory minimum sentencing laws to get nonviolent drug offenders imprisoned for 10+ years on simple possession (not to to sell drugs, not PWID, just possession).

JumpinJack_Cash2• 9 months ago

A part of me despises this orange guy,

another part is thankful that he is there as a proof that you can get to a high status and high relevance role in society and still mantain your humanity, your inner child alive, not being robotic and just have a blast doing whatever the f you want.

There is no point getting to the top if you then lose all your humanity and playfulness.

Like if the condition to become President were to become a robot like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, thanks no, I pass....Trump on the other hand is the best of both worlds.

doener2• 9 months ago

I see child, I don‘t see humanity.

JumpinJack_Cash2• 9 months ago

They are synonymous really.

deathanatos• 9 months ago

and still mantain your humanity

I am getting Poe's Law'd … right?

He's sending people to concentration camps & bombing boats in the Caribbean and Pacific. He's deported American children. Treatment of asylum seekers, treatment of immigrant's children, wanton discrimination against minority groups…

Humanity? Playfulness?

cestith4• 9 months ago

I’m not sure he’s maintained his humanity by maintaining his playfulness with the very lives of people being his playthings.

bena2• 9 months ago

I don't say this lightly and I understand that it's neither a thorough nor an explicit question, however, I mean this in all seriousness:

What the fuck?

moogly• 9 months ago

That is a strange way to spell "malignant narcissism".

hodgehog112• 9 months ago

I mean, did Kim Jong Un not qualify for this role to you? Or is that one actually horrifying and you put up some arbitrary distinction because... Trump?

martythemaniak• 9 months ago

COLLINS: Today you pardoned the founded of Binance. Can you explain why you did that?

TRUMP: Which one was that?

COLLINS: The founder of Binance

TRUMP: I believe we're talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people. I don't know. He was recommended by a lot of people.

https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m3v6mnpkb52i

fxwin• 9 months ago

actual puppet

hshdhdhehd3• 9 months ago

Fuck. Guys. Psst. You have another demented leader.

annexrichmond2• 9 months ago

I agree this isn't a very satisfying answer, but realistically how else do you expect Presidential pardons to go? Trump has pardoned over 1000 people and Joe Biden has pardoned over 4000. Do we expect them to know the intricate details of every single case?

And I mean, wasn't the last Administration effectively Autopen? Yes, the President receives recommendations and tries to make the best judgement on those.

What would Biden's answer be for pardoning Fauci?

cosmicgadget5• 9 months ago

What would Biden's answer be for pardoning Fauci?

Leticia James. Lisa Cook. James Comey. Also he didn't break any laws?

Trump has pardoned over 1000 people and Joe Biden has pardoned over 4000.

The numbers don't really mean much when it's pardoning classes of people (marijuana convictions, insurrectionists, etc.).

angst• 9 months ago

“Today you pardoned the founder of Binance,” Collins began. “Can you explain why you chose to pardon him, and did it have anything to do with his involvement in your family's —

“Which one, who was that?” Trump asked.

“The founder of Binance,” Collins continued. “He has involvement in your own family’s crypto business.”

“The recent one? I believe we’re talking about the same person, because I do pardon a lot of people,” Trump said. “I don’t know. He was recommended by a lot of people. A lot of people say that — Are you talking about the crypto person? A lot of people say he wasn’t guilty of anything, he served four months in jail, and they say that he wasn’t guilty of anything.”

As Collins attempted to clarify, Trump jumped in, saying, “Well, you don’t know much about crypto — you know nothing about nothing, you fake news!”

Trump then continued answering the question.

“He was somebody, as I was told — I don’t believe I have ever met him — but I’ve been told he had a lot of support. And they said what he did is not even a crime. That he was persecuted by the Biden administration. And so I gave him a pardon at the request of some very good people.”

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/trump-scolds-kaitlan-col...

flipfluck• 9 months ago

Are we great again?

wnevets• 9 months ago

This Administration loves criminals.

tartoran4• 9 months ago

This Administration is criminals.

edmundsauto2• 9 months ago

This Administration loves itself.

rts_cts• 9 months ago

I'm not sure it will be a problem for Changpeng Zhao but let's say I was convicted of a felony in the US, served time in prison and then was pardoned by the president. What would my employment prospects be in comparison to someone who didn't receive a pardon?

tokioyoyo• 9 months ago

“You must have very good connections and network, definitely a good hire for the future.”

Calavar• 9 months ago

Likely bad because the conviction will still show up in background checks. (A pardon doesn't entail expungement.) As you said, this won't be an issue for CZ because he's not going to be looking for the kinds of positions where HR screens the resumes

hshdhdhehd3• 9 months ago

Poor drug dealers: Extrajudicial murder in international waters.

Rich drug dealers: Freedom.

Be a rich drug dealer.

captainkrtek• 9 months ago

More generically:

Poor criminal: jail/death penalty/etc.

Rich criminal: freedom

paulryanrogers4• 9 months ago

Famous and rich criminal: the presidency

charcircuit• 9 months ago

CZ already paid a fine and finished serving his time in jail. He was already free before the pardon.

paulryanrogers4• 9 months ago

Wasn't he barred from working in financial services? I imagine a full pardon would remove any pesky details that might stand in the way.

harrisi• 9 months ago

Is there any proof that any of the Venezuelan boats were drug dealers? Any proof in court, ideally?

enraged_camel• 9 months ago

There is not.

nailer4• 9 months ago

Submarines generally aren’t fishing.

miohtama2• 9 months ago

For the accurate context:

CZ was pardoned for a single charge of failure to have an effective compliance program. No fraud, no victims, no criminal history. No money laundering.

CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in U.S. history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-related charge. The judge found no evidence that he knew of any illicit transactions and that it was reasonable for him to believe there were no illicit funds on the platform.

Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad, but the underlying crime was "compliance."

raincole• 9 months ago

I hope HN has a way to vouch a comment before it's flagged, because I know this one would be (for being correct.)

ls612• 9 months ago

In china the party just declares people it wants to imprison guilty. In the US we have “compliance”. Both serve the same purpose against the people.

refurb5• 9 months ago

I don't get the outrage either.

He was sentenced to 4 months in prison. He already served that time and got out.

So what does a parden get him? No criminal record?

This pardon seems rather minor to me.

disgruntledphd25• 9 months ago

He can run Binance again.

disgruntledphd25• 9 months ago

Sorry, this is not true. All financial institutions are required to have AML controls, which cost a lot of money.

These controls are mostly performative, but Binance wildly flouted them. This pardon means that basically no crypto company needs to worry about AML now, which is bad for the world.

The reason that nobody gets convicted for this is because they have somewhat adequate controls, whereas Binance basically welcomed money launderers with open hands.

miohtama2• 9 months ago

The point being, no money laundering was pointed out to the court, although I sure this happened to some scale. Binance works with the police, before and after the conviction, it's not a laundromat like some Russian cryptocurrency exchanges.

But you are right the AML controls were weak, and CZ was convicted for this. KYC requirements arrived to Binance very late. But they were not convicted of fraud (like Sam Bankman-Fried from FTX). No users lost money. A lot of commenters get this wrong.

The US banks get slapped for similar compliance breaches all the time e.g.:

https://qz.com/bank-of-america-bofa-occ-bank-secrecy-act-bsa...

NoLinkToMe• 9 months ago

Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad, but the underlying crime was "compliance."

Yes.

If a CEO of any major US or EU bank would overnight decide to terminate its mere 'compliance' program, they would absolutely get convinced.

Big banks spend more than $1 billion each a year on compliance, i.e. abiding by the law. CEOs of banks that don't, get convinced, period.

It's like saying hospitals have been hiring people without credentials as doctors, or airlines hiring people with no credentials as pilots etc etc, and they were convinced for this 'compliance' issue, even though the case did not (try to) determine victims, criminal history or fraud. Yes, that's absolutely normal.

Financial institutions must put in place measures to prevent money laundering, if they don't, they get convinced, even without having to determine whether money laundering took place. Just like a hospital gets convinced if it knowingly as a policy hires people as doctors without credentials, even without having to determine if there were victims. This is completely normal.

jmspring2• 9 months ago

Of course he did. Republicans can’t complain about Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich any more.

robinhoode• 9 months ago

Of course they can. Republicans (well MAGA in particular) don't are about hypocracy. They make exceptions for Trump on everything.

jmull6• 9 months ago

I mean, that was one pardon 25 years ago and widely criticized across the political spectrum.

It's hard to count how many purely political and money-based pardons Trump has done this term, and there is essentially no pushback on his side.

elicash• 9 months ago

I was aware of the allegations that Marc Rich's ex wife gave money to Clinton ($450k to the library) is what led Clinton to pardon, but I never really dug into it.

Per wikipedia, Clinton's defense was that it was actually a favor to Israel, given Rich helping to finance their intel services. Maybe everybody else knew this, I didn't.

jmspring2• 9 months ago

I’ve read the same, I can’t see any net benefit here aside from grift.

I mean, in all honesty, if our system is going to allow the grift and one is amoral enough to do so, have at it. It may catch backup later.

nextworddev• 9 months ago

seems like not enough anger in this thread is directed at CZ

netfortius• 9 months ago

Unpopular opinion: America needs/ed this. They nerve truly believed that a Ceaușescu, Hitler, Stalin, Mao were possible in the US. Maybe one or two generations will suffer, but this is a required lesson, for the future maturity of the nation, long term. Assuming they come out in one piece at the other end, of course.

pedroma3• 9 months ago

You believe the US on the path to killing tens of millions of its own citizens for the sake of some ideology like Mao, Stalin, and Hitler because a non-violent white collar criminal was given a shortened sentence? Interesting.

LunaSea2• 9 months ago

You can kill someone without weapons.

And just like the Great Leap Forward, America is well on its way to letting many thousands die from lack of healthcare.

wyre2• 9 months ago

Do you not believe the GOP eliminating SNAP, medicare, and social security will lead to the deaths of millions of Americans?

Do you not believe that Trump, who threatened extrajudicial killings of drug smugglers today [1], isn't going to abuse that power to murder any citizen he doesn't like?

Do you not believe Trump is a fascist, white supremacist, rapist, 34 time convicted felon, rapist, and pedophile?

timeon5• 9 months ago

This is not rhetorical question: did accelerationism ever worked?

aspenmayer• 9 months ago

If only we could ask Baudrillard.

Accelerationism is to a simulacrum as the thing being accelerated (society) is to the simulation thereof (our idea of society).

Accererationism is what accelerationism does. It disrupts the status quo, for good/bad/otherwise, and largely independently of our personal stance on the goodness, badness, and/or desirability of said disruption.

The current volatility in the market is one aspect of accelerationism, and it seems to be working, in that the markets are still open for trading; many are making out like bandits. Perhaps that volatility as a market opportunity is the point.

Whether or not banditry is occurring is left as an exercise to the reader.

1970-01-01• 9 months ago

Good news: This shows they absolutely need any and all money they can get.

Bad news: They are getting the kickback money.

malfist• 9 months ago

Does it? Trump famously cashed a 17¢ check

_jsmh4• 9 months ago

Words and sentences can easily be misconstrued in threads like these.

I truly want to know of a better way to have discussions on a topic of this importance.

chris_wot2• 9 months ago

Don't let Trump pardon anyone? People are outraged because it is outrageous.

jayd16• 9 months ago

Or better yet, prosecute corruption.

_jsmh4• 9 months ago

Can you imagine positive reasons why the pardon wouldn't be outrageous? This might be a more thought-provoking question. Is there no nuisance to this pardon?

fogzen• 9 months ago

Better headline: Convicted criminal Trump pardons convicted criminal Binance founder

LunaSea2• 9 months ago

Crime is legal

hmate9• 9 months ago

I’m sure it’s pure coincidence that the Trump family made millions from Binance, CZ, and donations from Trevor Milton and Paul Walczak right before those pardons.

locallost• 9 months ago

At least the FBI director broke the big news in crime fighting today, how a couple black basketball players were arrested for sports betting.

cosmicgadget5• 9 months ago

It is amazing this investigation went forward during a shutdown.

dmitrygr• 9 months ago

Pardon count per president:

   President                Count
   --------------------------------
   Joe Biden               ~8,064  | 
   Donald Trump             ~237   | 
   Barack Obama            ~1,927  | 
   George W. Bush            ~200  | 
   Bill Clinton             ~459   | 
   George H.W. Bush          ~77   |

qingcharles• 9 months ago

Even if the numbers were correct, the numbers are absolutely no use without context, except perhaps to allow partisan mud-slinging on Twitter.

Biden pardoned thousands of non-violent low-level marijuana convictions, which is why the numbers look like that. Trump pardoned a large number of violent protesters.

BaconPackets2• 9 months ago

This is meaningless without context.

righthand2• 9 months ago

Not attacking you but using your message to say to anyone reading: Is there a lesson here about what our AI future looks like? The OG thread comment is using summarized information to induce anxiety. When everyone has a 'suped-up AI bot running around the net for them, how much more noise like this is there going to be? How many people will have armies?

anigbrowl5• 9 months ago

Don't come here and lie. You almost doubled the number for Joe Biden (the vast majority of which were pardons for simple possession of marijuana) while omitting the extremely well-known fact that Trump pardoned ~1500 people who were convicted for offenses committed on January 6, thus deflating his total by >80%.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra...

edot• 9 months ago

Median net worth of pardonees? 6500 of Biden’s are for marijuana offenses. Not exactly corruption there.

W0lfEagle• 9 months ago

Seems not right

kevin_thibedeau• 9 months ago

Just wait until the blanket pardon comes out for all of his staff.

insane_dreamer3• 9 months ago

The USA is officially a banana republic.

deadbabe2• 9 months ago

The only way to get around the pardon power being abused is to punish crimes by death, quickly and on the spot.

paulryanrogers4• 9 months ago

Can't we just amend the constitution to remove pardon power? Or at least shift it to Congress?

deadbabe2• 9 months ago

Maybe we can just ignore it entirely. Laws don’t matter.

MrToadMan2• 9 months ago

The swamp is now a protected wetland.

casey2• 9 months ago

Even more depressing reading the comments that think this hasn't always been the case. It's red guy, it's blue guy, no it's orange guy facepalm

LatteLazy• 9 months ago

Unpopular opinion: the case against him/binance was always that as a non us citizen, outside the us, he failed to obey US law and in a paperwork and licensing sense not a violent or otherwise serious manner.

I don’t like trump. But “CZ” basically paid a ransom to let Binance come in from the cold. Why shouldn’t he pay another to get a clean slate and maybe go back to being CEO?

moneycantbuy• 9 months ago

our culture is ill

annexrichmond2• 9 months ago

It feels like HN is slowly turning into reddit with the comment section becoming mostly snide remarks

Instead of just commenting about being dismayed with the state of things, how about step back and speculate as to why he did this pardon, and what the implications of it are.

I don't know the answer to either, but I surely didn't learn much from what used to be an insightful, intelligent crowd

telchior2• 9 months ago

You're being downvoted but I get where you're coming from.

The dismay is from not needing to speculate, wonder or theorize about why he did this pardon. It's a quid pro quo pardon for helping the Trump family make billions of dollars in under a year using the office of the president. The corruption is entirely flagrant and open.

Yeah, it's a forum of smart people, but none of those smarts are oriented to dealing with this kind of problem. There's a system but it's non-functional, laws but they're ignored, the tools are raw political and social power. It's going to take a while to figure out what to say and do about the slide from normal, functioning democracy into semi-theocratic banana republic.

wyre2• 9 months ago

I don't think we need to speculate much. He did the pardon because CZ bribed him with a lot of money. The implications are that Trump will keep abusing his power to keep receiving bribes.

BLKNSLVR• 9 months ago

Is white collar crime / financial fraud just not going to be a crime in the US any more?

rglover• 9 months ago

As always, that depends on how much you're already worth.

tartoran4• 9 months ago

Maximum sentence allotted for small fries and lenience for the bigger conman who share a piece of their own pie to clean the slate. Fair game in Crookville.

danans5• 9 months ago

That already officially happened a few months ago. In addition to stopping all cryptocurrency fraud investigations, the administration stopped prosecuting white collar crimes under the FCPA:

https://www.connecticutcriminallawyer.com/blog/trump-adminis...

If you have access to people in positions of government influence, it's a good time to accept bribes from foreigners, especially via cryptocurrency. But if that is you then you probably already know that.

hrimfaxi4• 9 months ago

If you have access to people in positions of government influence, it's a good time to accept bribes from foreigners,

FCPA addresses bribery of foreign governments...

cosmicgadget5• 9 months ago

Depends, are you voting to keep interest rates where they are? Are you a DA who successfully prosecuted the president?

refurb5• 9 months ago

He already served his sentence and was released a while ago.

What do you mean it's not a crime? The only thing the pardon does is remove his criminal record.

JohnTHaller2• 9 months ago

As long as you "donate" enough to Trump/Republicans, fraud won't be prosecuted

yalogin• 9 months ago

If one leaves all integrity and morals the president of the richest country in the world can really amass a ton of wealth. I actually suspect that the shares the “US” government s getting from intel and other companies actually goes to trump somehow. Everything is up for sale with this administration. Just sad, the high moral ground the country occupied is just wiped out and it’s now just like any other corrupt Asian country

danans5• 9 months ago

and it’s now just like any other corrupt Asian country

Seems like we are getting the worst aspects of countries like China (anti-democratic 1 party rule, state directed oligarchy, targeting of ethnic minority groups) with none of the best aspects of China: strong investment in education, research, and modern infrastructure like high speed trains and zero carbon electricity production.

Maybe mimicking authoritarianism isn't the answer to our problems.

Aspos• 9 months ago

Hey, corruption is rampant on each and every continent, except Antarctica. Asia is not the worst by far. Why are you singling out Asia specifically?

noisy_boy• 9 months ago

There should be a limit on the number of pardons a president can do during their tenure so that they have to at least think a bit before using it. It is a very powerful tool that actually allows a last resort. But this kind of egregious abuse of it's power means it needs to be kept in check.

cosmicgadget5• 9 months ago

It'd take a constitutional amendment. So all we can do is not elect someone who will trade pardons for money (on this scale).

estearum3• 9 months ago

Eh, or the next POTUS can just drone strike whoever has been pardoned by the previous one. Immune for official acts and all that.

Terr_9• 9 months ago

There should be a limit

There is, and the Constitution says the limit is impeachment and removal from office by Congress. That won't happen unless we fix how we talk about the ones responsible, to wit:

The Republican Party pardoned these criminals. The Republican Party is snatching Americans off the streets. The Republican Party is using the military to murder people on boats. The Republican Party is demolishing down the White House. The Republican Party is deporting people over free speech. The Republican Party has imposed the biggest tax increase in living memory with tariffs/import-taxes. The Republican Party is going pay itself your tax dollars in "lawsuit settlements".

There were 4 years of his first term and now 10 months of... all this. Today there is zero possibility of an oversight or mistake, any legislator who won't impeach and convict is choosing to support these things.

Nothing will improve while those legislators believe the blame will sail past them and stick solely to Trump.

brianwawok2• 9 months ago

I don’t think the majority of voting Americans have problems with any of those acts though. Think Joe you pass in Walmart cares about what happens to the White House ballroom?

antonvs2• 9 months ago

the Constitution says the limit is impeachment and removal from office by Congress

Why do you think most US presidents wait until the end of their term to pardon people?

squidgyhead• 9 months ago

Or just not have pardons at all.

ebcase• 9 months ago

This.

bobbyprograms• 9 months ago

I get it but it is imperative that this never happen. The reason is that a pardon is the only recourse the people have against the supreme court

sagarm• 9 months ago

Lincoln pardoned basically the entire Confederacy. I'm not sure what the expert opinion is on that but it seems legit.

joyeuse67012• 9 months ago

Well, after killing many of them.

Spivak2• 9 months ago

Right, the ability to pardon is a diplomatic tool. Sad that it's being used as a get your buddies out of jail free card or a way to collect donations.

I think at this point whatever policy differences between us are probably secondary to just putting people in power, literally anyone, who aren't so corrupt it would be called too heavy handed in fiction.

eviks2• 9 months ago

How would that help? They'll reserve the pardons only for corruption and leave the regular folks, eg with fake convictions , without justice. You're not checking any power without addressing the cause

thisislife22• 9 months ago

The Indian constitution too gives the President the power to pardon someone convicted. However, the Supreme Court has since clarified that this power is not absolute, and the court can subject it to a judicial review. ( https://compass.rauias.com/current-affairs/pardoning-powers-... ).

SanjayMehta2• 9 months ago

You're comparing our (flawed) democracy with a fake democracy.

noobermin• 9 months ago

Add this to the list of abuses this admin has done. This is just one of the legal ones.

account422• 9 months ago

As opposed to the previous President? Pardon abuse is not something Trump invented.

DeusExMachina2• 9 months ago

Pardons by American presidents:

  - Bill Clinton: 459
  - George W. Bush: 200
  - Barack Obama: 1,927
  - Donald Trump (first term): 237
  - Joe Biden: 4,245
  - Donald Trump (second term): 1,600

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people_pardoned_or_gra...

drooopy• 9 months ago

Off the top of my head regarding Biden's numbers: https://apnews.com/article/biden-commutes-2500-nonviolent-dr...

"he is seeking to undo “disproportionately long sentences compared to the sentences they would receive today under current law, policy, and practice.”

otterley2• 9 months ago

Numbers matter less than reasons. We should be asking why, not how many.

lawn2• 9 months ago

Should just do away with the system entirely.

Ankaios• 9 months ago

If you have Republican senators or a Republican House rep, call their offices and tell them what you think of this.

khazhoux3• 9 months ago

Yes! This will be the time they finally push back on Trump.

amanaplanacanal3• 9 months ago

Midterms are coming up next year. If they are afraid their association with Trump might take them down, they'll crack.

Honestly I suspect fear of Trump is really their only motivation right now.

JohnTHaller2• 9 months ago

They're all complicit in this. They'll do nothing. And Susan Collins will be very "concerned".

khazhoux3• 9 months ago

Genuine question:

If one wanted to get in on the Trump grift, and had no moral qualms, how would you do it?

Can you come up with a realistic fast path to snag, say, $5 million within 2 years from Trumpland?

CamperBob22• 9 months ago

I don't think the direct approach to Trump or his inner circle would be ideal, considering how crowded the field of professional grifters and griefers surrounding him is. You'd really have to stand out to get noticed.

But they've recently lost a key connection to the broader MAGA youth movement. A quick-witted young person with good public-speaking skills and a psychopath's morals could step into that role without much difficulty, perhaps acting as a bundler for GOP political contributions that could then be skimmed. The retirement plan sure sucks, though. And you wouldn't want to be too overt about it, or you'd risk ending up like Steve Bannon.

It may also be possible to get in with the Girardist movement associated with Peter Thiel and J. D. Vance. A few weeks' intensive study would likely allow you to sling eschatological BS with the best of them. You'd get paid on the lecture circuit, again following the trail blazed by Charlie Kirk, spreading the good news about mimetic theory and the bad news about Greta Thunberg.

Then there's the covert approach. Karl Rove has long since quit the field, Lee Atwater is dead, and Roger Stone isn't getting any younger. There's always money on the table if you're willing to do what the other guy won't. Trouble is, there are plenty of people willing to do anything for Trump, now that the rewards have become so transparently obvious. The same question keeps coming up... in a field full of seasoned crooks, what can new talent do to get noticed by the right people and overlooked by the rest?

khazhoux3• 9 months ago

Dude, that's a lot of work. I don't think any of us can become the next Charlie Kirk just to ride a quick drift.

It's gotta be more low-effort and high-confidence. I'm thinking more like: incorporate a company with a mission of "Providing AI without woke bias." The product would be simply GPT-OSS behind a system prompt of "You are a Fox News host" and a simple guardrail, wraped in a generic web and mobile UI. It'd be a couple of days of vibe coding and setting up AWS backend. Now, how do you legally funnel a few million into your pockets from that?

ajdlinux• 9 months ago

It's bizarre to me, an Australian, how the pardon power is used in the US. Our federal, state and territory executive governments all have a pardon power, inherited from English law, that is, formally, unlimited (like the US federally and indeed it's less restrictive than many US states for state crimes).

It is a power used very sparingly, even though legally it is unlimited - the state of New South Wales is, as far as I know, the only one which publishes details about uses of the pardon power; in an average year there are 0 successful pardon/commutation applicants, and it's an exceptionally merciful year if they grant 2 or more. Other states and the federal government may or may not be a bit more generous, but we're talking very small numbers. Most pardons are for reasons of unsafe convictions where for whatever reason no remaining avenues of appeal are available (rare, these days, because each state has introduced laws to enable post-conviction reviews).

Historically, particularly in the 19th century convict era, the pardon power was much more important, and was indeed abused for political reasons on a number of occasions, but it seems that for the most part it quietly exists in the background and only gets significant public attention once every blue moon for a high-profile murder case or similar.

What explains the difference? Is it the requirement for sign-off by the King's viceroys that prevents abuse? Collective Cabinet governance that is accountable to Parliament? Maybe our political culture means politicians' friends tend to end up in prison less often and thus there's less opportunity for the abuse of pardons specifically? It's not particularly clear to me - if anyone's got some good comparative studies send me links!

isaacremuant• 9 months ago

As an Australian? Dude, your country is the most authoritarian of the current English speaking "western" countries.

The parliamentary countries like Australia just have made it so that they forever encroach in civil liberties and hide it all in bureocracy and pretend things work as intended and that democracy is working but when it was covid time they utterly crashed dissent. Same with most cases of effective opposition to power. The first in line to try and control the internet, speech and more from its citizens who don't even notice it that much because it's so ingrained in the culture of self censorship.

Having said that, yes, the pardon powers are ridiculous and they're being used more and more in ridiculous ways like this one from trump or the "pardon for everything just in case, for future and past" from Biden.

usisdoomed• 9 months ago

So the lesson is that if you have enough money to buy US president, you can buy freedom

burnt-resistor3• 9 months ago

Pedophile felon destroys takes a wrecking ball to half of the White House without saving historical materials or objects, furiously pardons all sorts of crooks and fraudsters, and talks about not getting into heaven. Sounds like an admission of 6-8 months left to live.

refurb5• 9 months ago

Wait, this guy was already out of prison? From what I read he was fined $50M and 4 months in prison.

So the pardon only removes the criminal conviction?

It has zero impact on the time he served.

This doesn’t seemed like the outrageous situation from reading comments.

ExpertAdvisor01• 9 months ago

At least pardons are public in the us .

Tade0• 9 months ago

Conservatives around the world seem to be comparing notes because over here the now former president pardoned quite a few high-profile cases and at least one before the sentence was given, which was bizarre, as you can't do that and the president, holding a PhD in law, should have known this.

In any case it appears that not only funds are safu, but Zhao is safu as well.

hedayet• 9 months ago

Pardon follows months of efforts by Changpeng Zhao to boost the Trump crypto company

How is this not outright corruption?

remify• 9 months ago

It is and you'll not doing much against it

ghtbircshotbe• 9 months ago

I am having trouble understanding the rational for these pardons. The best I can come up with is that they've decided that there is literally nothing that would cause them to lose the support of Republican voters, and the actions are being instigated by right wing trolls.

stunt• 9 months ago

We are allowing this to happen. For so many years corrupt politicians have avoided any consequences so it grows and becomes new normal.

Market manipulation has been the norm for many years because nobody did anything to stop it.

Pardoning criminals is becoming the new normal. Next normal is going to be launching wars to distract public and is going to cost a lot of lives.

Bombthecat• 9 months ago

As the sub on Reddit would go: I voted for this!

Idiots... They see as a positive thing or just ignore it

thr0waway001• 9 months ago

See you guys later on the ‘Trump pardons Diddy’ thread.

_jsmh4• 9 months ago

The administration says CZ wasn't guilty and was persecuted by the previous administration.

https://x.com/WatcherGuru/status/1981457002921677059

Trump pardons convicted Binance founder

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