Greetings, and a warm welcome to Regulator. In the realm of today’s relentless news cycle—where political scandals, technological upheavals, and global crises compete for public attention—only an extraordinary event, such as the catastrophic destruction of the White House itself, could eclipse the highly contentious wave of presidential pardons granted by Donald Trump last week. Among the beneficiaries were former Representative George Santos, the notorious self-mythologizer expelled from Congress for fabricating nearly every detail of his career and subsequently imprisoned for numerous counts of fraud, and Changpeng Zhao, the billionaire founder and ex-CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange Binance. Yet even this spectacle of questionable clemency was rapidly overshadowed when the White House did, in fact, suffer physical devastation—an incident that diverted the nation’s gaze from the intrigues of financial forgiveness to the smoking ruin of what had once been the East Wing.
At a deeper level, however, these seemingly unrelated crises are twin manifestations of a single overarching trend that defines Trump’s second administration: a ruthless symbiosis between political power and private capital. Trump has leveraged the vast resources of the technology sector to erode and, in some cases, literally demolish institutional norms that once underpinned American governance. In exchange, these same industries are handsomely rewarded through deregulation, access, and influence. This exchange—money for institutional malleability—lies at the heart of his governing method.
Previously, I explored how Silicon Valley titans have been channeling enormous sums into the so-called National State Ballroom Fund. Ostensibly a charitable initiative to enhance White House facilities, it effectively functions as a backdoor route to curry favor with the president himself. By donating directly to Trump’s personal vision for a grand ballroom, these corporations artfully bypass the layers of MAGA-aligned regulators and bureaucrats who might otherwise constrain them, appealing instead straight to the seat of executive power. Many of these donors probably imagined, naively or not, that Trump’s ambitions would be limited to cosmetic renovations—perhaps tearing down a few walls of the East Wing or redesigning the Rose Garden to suit his personal aesthetic. Yet anyone even peripherally familiar with Trump’s history as a real estate developer should have expected this destructive zeal. His disregard for preservation and artistry is well documented, stretching back to the construction of Trump Tower in the 1980s, where heritage and beauty often fell victim to his architectural ego.
The scale of corporate participation in this new chapter of political theater became unmistakably clear this past Sunday, when a leaked document revealed the names of thirty-seven companies financing the ballroom’s construction just as the East Wing’s rubble was being carted away under suspiciously opaque circumstances. A striking proportion of the financial backers hail from the upper echelons of the technology industry—Meta, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Microsoft, Palantir, Hewlett-Packard, and telecom giants like T-Mobile among them. These corporations now find themselves subject to the unpredictable temperament of a president who rules not through consistent policy but impulsive decree. A single surge of presidential irritation could close a critical tariff loophole; a rumor circulating on a fringe platform could doom a billion-dollar merger if Trump deems a company too progressive, too globalist, or insufficiently loyal.
Parallel to these established players are a number of crypto firms equally eager to secure the administration’s goodwill. Ripple, Coinbase, and Tether are counted among the notable corporate donors, joined by individual contributions from crypto magnates such as the Winklevoss twins and Paxos cofounder Charles Cascarilla. Yet their motivations diverge subtly from those of Big Tech. While Silicon Valley’s giants donate defensively—seeking to forestall punitive regulation—the crypto elite operate offensively, eager to shape and even write the legislative frameworks that will determine their future. Most traditional tech companies are veteran practitioners of regulatory evasion; the crypto world, by contrast, stands at the dawn of governmental scrutiny and sees in Trump’s laissez-faire ideology a rare opportunity to architect its own oversight environment.
This brings us to Changpeng Zhao, known universally as CZ. During the Biden era, he pleaded guilty to charges of violating U.S. financial sanctions and facilitating money laundering, paying a $50 million fine and serving a mere four months in federal custody—a penal outcome astonishingly lenient given the immense scale of the financial operations under scrutiny. Prosecutors justified this indulgence by emphasizing Zhao’s extensive cooperation with law enforcement throughout the inquiry. By the time Trump reclaimed the presidency, CZ had completed his sentence, remained the majority stakeholder in Binance, and still possessed billionaire status. Moreover, he and his company had cultivated close ties with the Trump family’s burgeoning crypto ventures, positioning themselves advantageously for future regulatory accommodations. The puzzle, then, is why Zhao, a free and fabulously wealthy man, expended time and political capital securing a presidential pardon that he appeared not to require.
When I posed this question to Liz Lopatto, one of the foremost journalists covering the Binance trial, she offered a compelling perspective that had not occurred to me: the lingering stigma and legal disability attached to a felony conviction. In the financial world, a single criminal record imposes far-reaching prohibitions—curbing one’s capacity to lead corporations, hold executive roles, or interact with regulated financial infrastructure. Zhao, compelled by court order to resign as Binance’s CEO and banned from conducting business with the firm for three years, faced precisely such limitations. Lopatto wondered aloud whether Trump’s pardon could nullify those restrictions, effectively permitting CZ to reclaim the empire he built. For a man whose identity is inseparable from his company’s success, that possibility alone may have justified every maneuver.
The conversation naturally led us to assess the deeper motives behind Trump’s decision to grant clemency. Lopatto reminded me that Zhao’s case was remarkable not only for the leniency of sentencing but for the geopolitical and informational assets embedded within it. His cooperation likely yielded extensive insight into global crypto flows—data potentially invaluable to U.S. national security interests. She noted the parallel with other financial offenders, such as those affiliated with FTX, who received reduced sentences in exchange for testimony. The United States judicial system regularly employs such bargains to conserve prosecutorial resources and extract intelligence from insiders. Yet even in this pragmatic context, Zhao’s pardon stands out as extraordinary—particularly given the evident overlap between Binance’s commercial interests and the Trump family’s financial ventures.
Indeed, the Trump dynasty’s immersion in cryptocurrency has grown steadily more apparent. Partnerships between their brands and trading platforms allegedly connected to Binance hint at an intricate network of mutual benefit. In that light, CZ’s status as both symbol and participant becomes doubly valuable: to the Trump family, he embodies credibility within a notoriously volatile ecosystem; to Zhao, he gains political absolution and access to American financial pathways long barred to felons. Many within the crypto community revere him as a genuine believer in the decentralized ethos—standing in stark contrast to figures like Sam Bankman-Fried, viewed by purists as opportunistic interlopers from Wall Street. Thus Zhao’s public rehabilitation through a pardon not only restores his personal legitimacy but indirectly strengthens the administration’s burgeoning reputation among crypto loyalists.
This interplay of influence exposes a broader truth about the American conception of corruption. As Lopatto observed, Washington’s definition of bribery remains exceptionally narrow—limited largely to direct monetary exchanges—precisely because expanding it would implicate much of the political establishment. In reality, influence operates along subtler vectors: legislative customization, regulatory leniency, and preferential treatment serve as modern currencies of exchange. Billionaire investor Carl Icahn offers an illustrative precedent; he once openly described how relocating his corporate activities to North Dakota allowed him to champion laws tailored to his business model, all through legal lobbying and financial persuasion. Nothing in his conduct violated any statute, yet the outcome—a regional legal framework optimally calibrated to one individual’s interest—demonstrates how wealth can reshape governance far beyond the reach of ordinary citizens.
Such systemic entanglement persists because it benefits those in power. To redefine influence-peddling as corruption would oblige lawmakers to confront their own complicity, a step few seem willing to take. And so, under Trump’s rule, the boundary between patronage and policy grows ever fainter. The president stretches the political imagination to its ethical limits, converting transactional governance into an art form where loyalty, donation, and deregulation intertwine seamlessly.
In this unsettling landscape, Trump’s pardons are not isolated acts of personal mercy but performative gestures symbolizing a deeper structural shift. Money, ideology, and influence move through Washington as a single current, eroding what remains of institutional restraint. Whether the public will recognize the true cost of these exchanges—or merely marvel at their spectacle—is a question for the next news cycle.
Thus, another week closes in the age of postmodern political horror. Happy Halloween, and see you next week.
Sourse: https://www.theverge.com/column/808369/changpeng-zhao-binance-pardon-trump
