It’s fair to assume that very few folks in Ludlow or Silver Grove have ever heard of a cryptocurrency kingpin named Changpeng Zhao, who is worth a whole lotta dough and happens to have pleaded guilty to a federal charge of enabling money laundering, resulting in a sentence of four months in the can and a $4 billion fine assessed on his outfit, Biance.
The details of the offense from back in 2023 are muddled in the muck and mire of the nation’s incomprehensible finance laws. Suffice to say Zhao sought to make Binance even wealthier by, as The Week pointed out, providing an opportunity for “terrorists, drug traffickers, purveyors of child sexual abuse material and other criminals’’ to launder their ill-gotten gains. The Justice Department called it a “deliberate and calculated effort to profit from the U.S. market without implementing controls required by U.S. law.’’
“Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of the crimes it committed – now it is paying one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history,” said then Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Somehow, being rich and all that jazz, Zhao late last month received a pardon for his misdeeds from President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump, who has a habit of letting all sorts of reprobates off the hook – like the Jan. 6 rioters who ransacked the Capitol in his behalf – as long as they pay appropriate homage to his gushing wonderfulness.
In this case, it appears Mr. Zhao earned his second chance by toiling to put more cash in the pockets of the Lord of Mar-a-Lago and his family through, as the Wall Street Journal reported, “months of efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family’s own crypto company,’’ called World Liberty Financial.
A deal between Binance and the United Arab Emirates, consummated earlier this year, benefitted World Liberty, established by Trump and his three sons along with the family of diplomat Steve Witkoff in late 2024. Since Trump’s election last November, according to the Journal, World Liberty is “poised to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps.’’
And now they have some dude Trump pardoned for the crime of making life easier for money launders. He’s helping the Trump clan get richer while the old man himself sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. No reason to believe anyone – including foreign interests — would ever invest with World Liberty Financial to gain the president’s favor, is there?
Now, that may sound corrupt to you but, oh, ye of little faith. In normal times, a president providing a pardon for a confessed felon who then helps deposit potentially millions of dollars in the bank accounts of said president’s kin might be considered a bit inappropriate. But this is President-cum-Dictator Donald J. Trump we’re talking about here and, as usual, he’s getting a free ride from the gutless wonder Republicans who control both the House and the Senate.
And let’s not forget Chief Justice John Roberts and a Supreme Court that handed The Donald a get out of jail free card last year when it declared former presidents are immune from any criminal charges for actions taken in office.
The worst decision since Dred Scott.
Anyway, the situation has raised a few eyebrows. Last Sunday on 60 Minutes, Nora O’Donnell asked the man himself about it.
“I don’t know who he is,” Trump said of Zhao. “I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”
Otherwise, Trump said, “I know nothing about it…’’
Now we must turn to that world-renowned nitwit, Rep. James Richardson Comer Jr., R-Whoknowsandwhocares, chair of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, the panel charged with probing such matters. Comer just released a report asserting that a series of pardons issued by Trump’s predecessor, Democrat former President Joe Biden, late in his tenure should be found null and void because the man was so addled by the time his term ended that he didn’t know down from up and was incapable of making such determinations. In Comer world, someone used an autopen device to attach his John Hancock to the documents without his consent.
“The Biden Autopen Presidency will go down as one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history,” Comer asserted.
Yeah, right. Not as long as Trump is alive.
Of course, as noted by committee Democrats in a minority report, “14 former White House officials and aides provided nearly 60 hours of testimony. Their consistent, firsthand accounts uniformly contradict Republican claims and portray President Biden as fully engaged and capable throughout his presidency.’’
Comer, they said, “has produced no credible evidence to substantiate his assertions, demonstrating once again his preference for partisanship over genuine oversight.’’
After a phony-baloney investigation into a former president now incapable of doing harm to anyone, you might think a look into a legitimate pardon scandal involving a 79-year-old in-office president who is exhibiting signs of eroding mental acuity and who signed a document he knew nothing about that, coincidently, enhanced the family bank accounts, might attract the committee’s attention.
Don’t be naïve. We’re talking about Jamie Comer here, the hackiest hack of them all.
While Trump and the boys continue to stuff their jeans with greens, Comer continues to look for ways to avoid probing any of the dozens of outrages the president-cum-dictator continues to heap on the body politic, preferring to pick on long-gone Joe Biden.
On CNN last week, Jake Tapper questioned Comer about a Reuters report claiming that the Trump Organization’s income from the first half of this year increased from $51 million to $864 million, that about $800 million of it stems from crypto and Trump himself stands to grab a good chunk of the lucre once he leaves office.
Comer said he’s reading about it but doesn’t seem too concerned that Trump is potentially making millions of dollars from investors in a crypto business that he holds the power to regulate.
Now, you may recall for two years after assuming the House Oversight Committee chair in January 2023, Comer sought to send Biden to Leavenworth for serving as the capo di tutti capi of what he called the Biden Crime Family. The president’s troubled son, Hunter, was engaged in a number of business deals primarily in Asia that brought in millions of dollars to the family. Comer claimed President Biden was the real head honcho and accused him of influence peddling.
Comer asserted Biden, as vice president, was was using his position to rake in millions, that he attended at least one dinner with his son’s clients and occasionally called him on the telephone when Hunter was meeting with potential investors.
You may have figured out by now that eating dinner and calling your son does not make you Al Capone. And there is no law on the books about influence peddling. The investigation was a disaster, Comer proved himself to be a fool and there was no impeachment or criminal charges pressed against President Biden. He was not involved in his son’s enterprise and there existed no evidence of wrongdoing.
Now here you have the president himself involved in a business and the possibility – just the possibility, mind you – that he provided a pardon to a crypto savant who is aiding Trump’s own crypto business, which is now pulling in millions even though it’s being run by a bunch of jamokes, mainly his sons, with no experience in the field.
“The difference between the way the Trump family operates and the way the Biden family did, they’re admitting they’re doing this,’’ Comer said. “The president campaigned as a business guy…’’
Comer went on to say he isn’t defending the action and that enhanced ethics regulations are a possibility.
“As long as you disclose your income and disclose your sources, I think that’s acceptable,’’ Comer said.
He added, “It’s my position…as long as the president (is) disclosing this and they’re filling out disclosures and they’re answering questions, he’s answering questions, about it if you ask him about it, crypto…’’
None of this makes sense. Biden couldn’t disclose his income or sources of incomes in his son’s business dealings because there was nothing to disclose – he wasn’t involved. But Comer pursued him for two years over that nonsense.
Here at least you have a hint that Trump traded a pardon to someone he claims he doesn’t know for help expanding his crypto business. Have you ever heard of pardons and Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin? Our boy Jamie would rather prosecute Biden’s autopen.
As you can see, Comer is such a toady that if you touch him, you get warts.