On Thursday, Donald Trump announced that he had pardoned Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, a convicted crypto titan who, in recent months, had been boosting Trump’s own crypto ventures, as reported by the Wall Street Journal. Zhao, who pleaded guilty to violating money-laundering requirements and subsequently saw his company banned from operating in the U.S., was released from prison last year.
At the subsequent press briefing, as reported by Mediaite, Kaitlan Collins, who is both a CNN anchor and the network’s chief White House correspondent, asked Trump about the pardon. Collins, on her show that night, “rolled tape of the fracas, then knocked down Trump’s response.”
President Trump on why he pardoned the convicted founder of the crypto exchange Binance and whether it has anything to do with his own family’s crypto business: pic.twitter.com/ugaTljBJM0
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) October 23, 2025
“Today, you pardoned the founder of Binance. Can you explain why you chose to pardon him, and did it have anything to do with his involvement in your family’s…,” Collins asked, before Trump cut her off before she finished the question. However, Trump asked “who’s that?” apparently unfamiliar with who had been pardoned that day.
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“The founder of Binance. He has involvement in your own family’s crypto business,” Collins replied.
BREAKING: Trump tells Kaitlan Collins that she “knows nothing about nothing,” after he sounded completely clueless about his pardon of crypto criminal CZ.
What an imbecile he is. Oh the Irony! pic.twitter.com/BZUBonEbMr
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) October 23, 2025
“I do pardon a lot of people. 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?,” Trump eventually said. “A lot of people say that he wasn’t guilty of anything. He served four months in jail. And they say that he was not guilty of anything that what he did.”
Collins then reminded Trump had Zhao had admitted guilt.
“Well, you don’t know much about crypto. You know nothing about — you know nothing about nothing, you fake news,” the president said, to a journalist to whom he has granted interviews in the past.
Later, on her show, Collins referenced the exchange.
“Despite what the President said there. In 2023, CZ actually pleaded guilty to these crimes, that he failed to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program for the platform. He agreed to step down as the CEO, and ended up paying a $200 million in fines,” the anchor said. “The company itself paid more than $4 billion in penalties, following that years-long investigation, that alleged Binance allowed bad actors to operate on the platform, enabling transactions linked to child sex abuse and narcotics, even failing to report transactions — transactions for financing terrorist organizations like Hamas and al Qaeda.”
Photo courtesy of the Political Tribune media library.
