Trump’s business is corruption and business is booming

Inside the pay-for-pardon factory:

The president formally signed the pardon for Zhao a week later, setting off an uproar in Washington. Democrats—pointing to steps Binance has taken that boosted the cryptocurrency company that Trump Jr. co-founded along with his father and brothers, World Liberty Financial—said the move amounted to brazen corruption. Several Republicans, including Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina and Trump donor Joe Lonsdale, said they were alarmed by it. Trump ally Laura Loomer called it a “terrible Pardon idea.”

For Binance, it was the culmination of a nearly yearlong effort to pursue clemency for its founder. It had paid lobbyists around $800,000 to lobby for a pardon, U.S. policy changes and other matters, according to federal records. It also approached other lobbyists about a pardon, offering success fees of as much as $5 million if they could help secure one, according to people familiar with the outreach. The company pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money-laundering rules and paid a $4.3 billion fine, and Zhao served a four-month prison sentence on a related charge. A pardon could make it easier for the company to return to the U.S. market.

Tom Clare, a lawyer for World Liberty Financial, said the firm played no role in Zhao’s pursuit of a pardon and that Trump Jr. and his brother don’t serve on the board or engage in the day-to-day management of World Liberty Financial. The company “did not discuss, facilitate or influence” Zhao’s pardon, he said. All interactions between World Liberty Financial and Binance have been “routine,” he said.

A lawyer for Zhao, Teresa Goody Guillén, said that his pardon wasn’t linked to any business decision and that he was “pardoned for justice.” A Binance representative said the company had “limited involvement” with World Liberty Financial-related products that was “confined to contractual terms that are available to other projects.”

The clemency for Zhao was one in a series of pardons in recent months that have surprised even some of the president’s closest advisers. This month alone, Trump pardoned a former Honduran president, Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted of conspiring with cartels to ship 400 tons of cocaine to the U.S.; a Texas Democrat, Henry Cuellar, charged with taking nearly $600,000 in foreign bribes; and a sports executive, Tim Leiweke, who had been indicted by Trump’s own Justice Department. The men have previously denied wrongdoing. 

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In the first year of his first term, Trump granted a single pardon and commuted one sentence. He waited until his final day in office to issue around 140 additional acts of clemency. This term, he pardoned more than 1,500 people on his first day alone, and has since granted clemency to a further 87 people and companies.

The new approach—driven in part by Trump’s own experience as a criminal defendant, people close to him say—has spawned a pardon-shopping industry where lobbyists say their going rate is $1 million. Pardon-seekers have offered some lobbyists close to the president success fees of as much as $6 million if they can close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers.

A lobbying firm run by former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller and former Trump Organization executive George Sorial was paid $1 million in the first quarter to lobby for a developer convicted of bribing former Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars. He hasn’t been pardoned. The firm declined to comment, and a spokesman for the developer said he terminated his relationship with the lobbying shop this spring.

Conservative operatives Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman, who themselves pleaded guilty to felony telecommunications fraud in 2022, were paid $960,000 in the second quarter to lobby for a pardon for a former nursing-home operator who pleaded guilty to defrauding the government of $38 million. Trump pardoned the man, Joseph Schwartz, last month.

It’s about time for congressional hearings into that time Hunter Biden sold paintings for slightly-above-market rates.