It would be reasonable to assume that few residents of Ludlow or Silver Grove have heard of Qiao Changpeng, a leading figure in cryptocurrency. He was worth quite a bit and pled guilty to federal charges of enabling money laundering, resulting in four months in prison and a $4 billion fine for his company, Biance.
Details of crimes dating back to 2023 are muddled in a quagmire of this country’s incomprehensible fiscal laws. As The Week pointed out, suffice it to say that Mr. Zhao sought to further enrich Binance by providing “terrorists, drug traffickers, child sex abuse material suppliers, and other criminals” with the opportunity to launder their ill-gotten gains, which the Department of Justice called a “planned and calculated effort to profit from the U.S. market without implementing the regulations required by U.S. law.”
NKyTribune Washington columnist Bill Straub was the Kentucky Post’s Frankfort bureau chief for 11 years. He is also a former White House and political correspondent for Scripps Howard News Service. A member of the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, he currently lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, and writes frequently about federal government and politics. Email us at williamgstraub@gmail.com“Binance became the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange in part because of its own crimes, and now it is paying the largest corporate fine in U.S. history,” said then-Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Somehow, the rich and jazz-loving Mr. Zhao received a pardon for his misdeeds late last month from dictator and president Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump has a habit of overlooking all manner of insurrectionists — like the Jan. 6 rioters who ransacked the Capitol on his behalf — as long as he gives proper respect to his exuberant greatness.
In this case, Mr. Zhao appears to have gotten a hard-won second chance to put even more cash into the pockets of the Mar-a-Lago lord and his family through “Mr. Zhao’s months-long effort to grow a Trump family-owned cryptocurrency company” called World Liberty Financial, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.
Binance’s deal with the United Arab Emirates, signed earlier this year, benefited World Liberty, which was founded by the family of Trump, his three sons and diplomat Steve Witkoff, in late 2024. Since Trump’s election last November, the magazine says World Liberty is “positioned to generate tens of millions of dollars a year for the Trumps.”
And now we have President Trump, who has been pardoned for making life easier for money launderers. While he helps the Trump family become richer, the old man himself sits at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. There’s no reason to believe anyone, including foreign interests, would invest in World Liberty Financial to curry favor with the president, right?
Now, that may sound corrupt to you, but oh, you of little faith. In normal times, it might seem a little inappropriate for a president to pardon a confessed felon and then help him deposit millions of dollars into the bank accounts of his relatives. But this is president and dictator Donald J. Trump we’re talking about here, and as usual, he’s getting a free ride from the gutless and amazing Republicans who control both the House and Senate.
And let’s not forget that Chief Justice John Roberts and the Supreme Court issued Donald a get-out-of-jail-free card last year, declaring that former presidents are immune from any criminal charges for their actions while in office.
Worst decision since Dred Scott.
Regardless, this situation has raised some eyebrows. Last Sunday on “60 Minutes,” Norah O’Donnell asked him about it.
President Trump said of Zhao: “I don’t know who he is.” “I know he was sentenced to four months in prison or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.”
Otherwise, Trump said, “I don’t know anything about it…”
Here we must turn to that world-famous wily man, Rep. James Richardson Comer Jr. (R-Who Knows and Who Cares), who chairs the House Oversight and Accountability Committee, which is charged with investigating such matters. Comer just released a report arguing that a series of pardons issued by Trump’s Democratic predecessor, Joe Biden, late in his term should be invalidated because by the end of his term, he was too shaken up to know what was up and what was down, and was incapable of making such decisions. In the Comer world, someone used an autopen device to attach John Hancock to a document without his consent.
“The Biden presidency will be remembered as one of the greatest political scandals in American history,” Comer asserted.
I agree. Not as long as Trump is alive.
Of course, as the Democratic committee noted in its minority report, “14 former White House officials and aides gave nearly 60 hours of testimony. Their consistent first-hand testimony uniformly contradicts Republican claims and portrays President Biden as fully engaged and competent throughout his presidential term.”
They said Comer “has not presented any credible evidence to support his claims, demonstrating once again that he favors partisanship over true oversight.”
After a bogus investigation into a former president who can now do no harm to anyone, one might think that an investigation into a legitimate pardon scandal involving a 79-year-old sitting president who is showing signs of diminishing mental acuity and who coincidentally signed a completely unfamiliar document to shore up his family’s bank accounts might attract the committee’s attention.
Don’t be naive. We’re talking about Jamie Comer here. This is the most hack of all hacks.
While Trump and the boys continue to stuff green plants into their jeans, Comer prefers to bully the long-departed Joe Biden, continuing to find ways to avoid pursuing the dozens of outrages that the president and dictator continues to heap on the political landscape.
Last week on CNN, Jake Tapper asked Comer about a Reuters report claiming that the Trump Organization’s revenue rose from $51 million to $864 million in the first half of this year, about $800 million of which came from cryptocurrencies, and that Trump himself stands to grab a significant portion of that revenue once he leaves office.
Comer said he has read about it, but doesn’t seem too concerned about the possibility that President Trump is making millions of dollars from investors in crypto businesses over which he has regulatory authority.
Now, you may remember that in the two years since he took over as chairman of the House Oversight Committee in January 2023, Comer has been trying to send Biden to Leavenworth as the head of what he calls the Biden crime family. Hunter, the troubled president’s son, was involved in many business deals, mostly in Asia, which brought in millions of dollars for his family. Comer insisted that President Biden is the real chief executive and accused him of spreading influence.
Comer claimed that Biden used his position as vice president to rake in millions of dollars, attended at least one dinner with his son’s clients and occasionally called Hunter when he was meeting with potential investors.
As you may have realized by now, eating dinner or calling your son doesn’t make you Al Capone. And there are no laws on the books regarding influence propaganda. Although the investigation was a complete failure and Mr. Comer proved himself to be a fool, no impeachment or criminal charges were brought against President Biden. He had no involvement in his son’s business and there was no evidence of wrongdoing.
Here, the president himself may be involved in the business, potentially pardoning a crypto expert who is supporting Trump’s own crypto business. The business is currently raking in millions of dollars, even though it is run by a large group of Jamoks, mostly his sons, with no experience in the field.
Comer said, “The Trump family’s approach is different from the Biden family’s approach. They acknowledge what they’re doing. The president was campaigning as a businessman…”
Comer went on to say that he was not defending the practice and that ethics regulations could be strengthened.
“As long as you disclose your income and disclose your sources, I think that’s acceptable,” Comer said.
He added, “This is my position…as long as the president is disclosing this, as long as they’re filling out disclosure forms and answering questions, the president is answering questions. If you ask about that, about cryptocurrencies…”
None of this makes any sense. Biden could not disclose his income or source of income from his son’s business dealings. Because there was nothing to disclose and Mr. Biden was not involved. But Comer pursued him for two years over that crap.
There’s at least a hint here that Trump helped expand his cryptocurrency business in exchange for pardoning someone he claims he doesn’t know. Have you heard about pardons and Kentucky Governor Matt Bevin? Our boy Jamie would rather indict Biden’s autopen.
As you can see, Comer is such a goofball that you’ll get warts if you touch him.
