CZ killed FTX, FTX was a democrat funding source, SBF went to jail, so they went after CZ harder as punishment. Binance is certainly not clean, but the case wouldn't have been prosecuted as aggressively if CZ hadn't been largely responsible for FTX going in the shitter.
"Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) played a key role in the collapse of FTX by announcing his company would sell its FTT tokens, which triggered a bank run and led to FTX's failure. After this event, Binance and FTX entered into a preliminary agreement for Binance to acquire FTX, but the deal fell through once Binance examined FTX's financials. Subsequently, FTX filed a lawsuit against Binance and CZ. "
11/04/25: --- "Incredibly, Trump told 60 Minutes, 'I don’t know who he is' and, in regard to his family’s financial connection to Binance, 'I know nothing about it.' " ---
What's TRULY incredible is that the "naive" Eric Salzman expects Trump:
To give Norah O'Donnell, failed "news actress" --- whose utterly corrupt employer, CBS, was recently forced to settle out of court and pay Trump millions of dollars after committing wholesale fraud (60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview) --- a straight answer.
Where's Eric Salzman's "outrage" column about the Biden Auto-Pen pardons? Avidly waiting for someone to post a link to that one...
Do you people ever give it up? Is this the first Racket article you have read? How are there 8 other Racket readers that enjoyed this comment?
It's a GOOD THING to have reporting exposing potential corruption, even when it's coming from your selected team. This shouldn't be a football game. It's not either or.
He's "Your guy" so he gets a pass for a bullshit answer because he's speaking to a sub-par interviewer? Would you support this logic when it's Obama or any number of shills across the aisle?
Unless you're in on the game, we're all losers when this type of shit is happening. Glad to see this article published on Racket alongside the numerous and frequent articles detailing corruption on the "other side".
I actually really like the reporting on this story, and I don't like the appearance of corruption that surrounds this whole sordid affair. All of our politicians seem to be on the grift to some extent, and it's sickening, whether they are Dem, Repub or anything else. My comment at the top of the thread was meant to point out a thesis as to why the Biden Admin went after Binance/CZ so hard, when similar BSA/OFAC/AML concerns with other entities (usually banks) didn't result in anyone being jailed.
Also the “looks around” fact that money laundering is in every big city and interstate corridor in the country. During Covid read that LA was sinking revenues from all the closed laundering shops (used the words money laundering) in the city. It’s a joke that Janet Yellen gaslights on “money laundering” after letting in roughly ten million money launderers and setting them up with free stuff from the money printing machine.
I don’t like that most or all politicians are different shades of corrupt. My personal priority is not to become a third world gang land South American mafia kleptocracy. I’ll still vote for the guy who is deporting the illegals.
Very probably a contributing factor in the corruption is low salaries, low in comparison to responsibility. For example, in the year when Barak Obama was US President at about $500,000 and announced his Dreamers immigration program (2012), the men's basketball coach at Wichita State University was paid $1,600,000 & promised a raise for the next year to $1.75 million. Members of Congress had a standard salary that year if $175,000.
11/11/25: Also waiting on Eric Salzman's "outrage" column about the BBC and its two top execu-degenerates getting fired for the fraudulent slicing of Trump speech videotapes (one of whom was directly responsible for Lyin Brian Williams when she was inexplicably the head of VIACOM'S NBC-Pravda "News" in 2015) ... I'll be here for a while, right?
11/10/15: OH, and speaking about corrupt news organizations fraudulently presenting doctored Trump videotapes --- kiss you asses goodbye, Davie and Turness at the BBC!
Also, I'm not sure why people are all right with a supposedly free country requiring that your bank report all transactions over $10,000 to the federal government and submit paperwork about your personal finances all in the name of preventing other people's crimes. We've grown numb to the constant encroachment on our freedoms made with the excuse that the encroachment is necessary to fight crime. What happened to police work, to actually identifying crimes, investigating, and getting warrants for access to the records of suspects?
We live with these invasions of our privacy not just in finance but in nearly every area of our lives. I get irritated every time that I go to the pharmacy to get some pseudoephedrine and have to show my driver's license. I have allergies. I'm not a criminal. Why are we putting allergy sufferers through this nonsense or worse? (For years, the government pushed phenylephrine as an alternative to pseudoephedrine, but it didn't work; it just raised your blood pressure without providing significant relief.)
Anyway, I mention pseudoephedrine as another example of the many small ways in which the federal government is poking its nose into the business of average people for negligible benefit. The bottom line is that though I don't use cryptocurrency, I can't stand the idea that the government believes itself to have some kind of right to track everyone's financial activity and that a business like a bank when not operating with some kind of voluntary federal backing like deposit insurance can be expected to do police work for the state by monitoring customers' transactions for potential money laundering. The whole idea is insane. People launder money for one reason, to hide the source of the profits of criminal activity. Isn't targeting the primary criminal activity the proper role for police?
Yeah, that ship sailed in the 1970's. Just like always, laws got pushed through that seemed like a good idea at the time "There is an epidemic of organized crime!" and once that stuff is deployed, it is never rolled back (See: Patriot Act). If or when digital currencies, whether crypto, stablecoins, or digitized fiat currency take hold, we will all be squeezed even tighter. Privacy is already nearly nonexistent, and it will likely get worse. Unless a bunch of us put our money where our mouth is, and start abandoning the convenience of digital payments in favor of using cash? That might slow the progression, but I don't see folks willing to deal with the friction in their lives, we are too spoiled.
It might even have sailed earlier. When was the IRS created?
I wish that I could personally give everyone a demonstration of the connection of money to control, give them vivid understanding. I lived in Beijing from 2009 to 2013, and ironically, there were many ways in which I was freer in China than in the United States. At the time, China still had a very large cash economy---my job paid me monthly with an envelope full of cash---and as a result, there was an enormous amount of street-level, unregulated petty commerce. Even the tax system was non-intrusive. There was no filing. There were two tax brackets, and people arranged with their employers to spread their pay out over the year to put them into the right tax bracket instead of using some complicated, intrusive filing system necessary for a theoretical reconciliation. Sadly, the bulk of my headache related to taxes came from America, where I didn't even owe taxes because of the large exemption for foreign income but where I still had to file. I had to spend about eight to twelve hours each year assembling documentation and completing forms.
The smart phone started to take off just as I left, and you could feel the change start to take hold. I think that now, everyone in China pays with payment applications, and the electronic payment system was immediately wired into the social credit system. You can be cut out of basic economic life with a keystroke at the discretion of a bureaucrat.
Control of money is one of the main means of political control of civil society and interpersonal relationships. We should not be accepting any control of our financial lives.
If you are moving money that aids and abets terrorists and drug cartels, there’s probably a long list of “identifiable victims.”
----------
This is the kind of nonsense that makes me furious. The author doesn't directly address the administration's claim. He just hides behind weasel wording like "if" and "probably."
This is what the left considers to be free? Submitting to government investigation to prevent crime, not fight it? The author can't name a victim, and we're all just supposed to accept that the regulation is justified by the self-serving assertion of the certain existence of victims of separate, traditional crimes.
He essentially had Leavitt get out in front of this by pre-declaring that anyone who criticizes it is guilty of spreading "misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation".
Again, no matter what political party they associate with, it's politicians using their power and influence to personally enrich themselves. Donald is definitely a politician now, despite his claims to the contrary.
The good news is that both the Democrat and Republican party's are dying a slow death.
As long as the republic has not outlawed these stable coins , any member of the public, including relatives of the president, is at liberty, authorized by god to exercise his free will and agency by issuing and using them. That politics in the big apple sweetheart.
Donald does not do “honorable”. He does what is best for the people who elected him, even if it means he is forced to accept some garishly expensive gifts of tribute from our grateful vassals. Such are the burdens of power.
Wasn't the Trump Organization basically frozen out of the banking system? Not because they couldn't repay loans, but because of their politics?
It's just hard for me to get upset about this when crimes that are far more consequential to the good of America get glossed over. It does sound like it was selective prosecution.
11/04/25: "Wasn't the Trump Organization basically frozen out of the banking system? Not because they couldn't repay loans, but because of their politics?"
That they were. They were "de-banked." Avidly waiting on Salzman to post his "expose" column About "Trump Debanked" (I must have missed it. Salzman must have written one, no?).
This is essentially the same logic employed to argue that X shouldn't be prosecuted because it's politically driven. If they committed the crime, who gives a shit? Guilt should be the only factor.
The difference here is that I don't see Salzman even calling for any further prosecution or alternative sentencing for CZ or Trump or anyone related to Trump.
Apparently even detailing an instance of actions by Trump or Trump's organization that should raise some eyebrows causes a lot of Racket readers to feel the need to declare they don't want to hear about it.
Personally, I find Racket to be the closest thing to fact based and neutral journalism still around, and I want to hear about all of it whether it's involving people or parties I generally support at the time or not.
It’s not that I don’t want to hear about it, it’s just that I wouldn’t support the selective prosecution of it when far more serious crimes (I don't even know if what he did WAS a crime) go unpunished, because I live in the real world.
And I don't believe Trump was guilty of any of the 91 crimes he was charged with. I studied it enough to form that opinion.
That was a bit of sarcasm. Major or minor, I care a lot about ALL election fraud. It is shocking to me to hear the left talk about "minor fraud" as not enough to swing an election so nothing to worry about. The fact is that not requiring picture ID and in-person voting at the polls or registrar's office is an invitation to fraud. Since fraud is rarely caught or prosecuted, it is impossible to quantify.
“Whataboutism” is a term used by people who like to apply double standards. I would like one standard for all, but we don’t have that - not even close.
It’s like if I were being prosecuted for stealing a coke from a convenient store by a lawyer who got away with suborning perjury in a murder trial and had let friends of his get away with other serious crimes, and I point out the injustice of that. Is that “whataboutism”?
The fact is that Trump lost a lot of net worth as a consequence of his first term in office. He may be doing some questionable things now to claw some of it back. I don’t like it, but I think it’s pretty tame comparatively and frankly I can understand it. If they’d left him and his business alone, he probably wouldn’t be involved in crypto to begin with. It’s hard to get upset about this when I see how they tried to imprison and bankrupt him over absolutely nothing - and I mean nothing.
CZ wasn't any dirtier than most crypto pioneers. If Gensler's SEC had published rules and brought crypto onshore, CZ said he would have complied.
He played the game with the minimal rules that were in place and wasn't legally required to do more, but was prosecuted anyway. I'm no fan of his actions, but I'm even less of a fan of the kind of regulation by prosecution as practiced by Gensler.
The Trump boys shouldn't have associated with him, no question that looks bad.
It takes a corrupt businessman to fix the country. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but things are getting much better for the middle class and after four ruinous years of Dr. Demento this is as good as it gets.
People who are invested, big and small, are doing better for now. Everyone else, not so much. Even 51% of Republicans don’t like his handling of tariffs. It doesn’t matter what Dems think because whatever he does they are against it. He just went TACO with China (actually a good thing) because people living paycheck to paycheck are hurting and may not turn out for the GOP come the midterms. Just say’n.
I'm afraid you might be right that this is as good as it gets, but no one should kid themselves that it's good. The bitter pill promises a cure. I'm not seeing any cure for terminal.
You're not going to stop the shenanigans with a spotlight. You'll simply induce more denials than usual. The key risk with Trump (much more so than the MAGA leaders who will follow like Vance, Rubio, Ramaswamy, etc) is corruption and "taking financial advantage" that is within the law.
There is going to be lots of that and to people of conscience it's quite bad.
But the people as a whole have seen much worse, and will be mostly uncaring. Nobody actually gave a crap about Iran-Contra in the end, while it was the biggest scandal in the world if you asked anyone at the time. If you're about to look up which President that had to do with, that proves my point.
Trump will be slightly corrupt and take financial advantage, but he'll be remembered for other things.
Lmao some of y’all really need to get Trumps dick out of your mouth. It’s ok to admit he sucks and is just like all other politicians who do a lot of shady stuff.
Edit:
Nice edit to change your comment and remove the TDS nonsense.
Whether this is dirty has no bearing on whether he cares for the people, nor does "caring" have much bearing on whether he's actually good for the people.
The entire banking industry and especially the opaque crypto world are all guilty, on a daily basis, of committing a litany of financial crimes, big and small, laundering every bad guys dough imaginable around and around the world, and incalculable acts of fraud.
Every now and again, they throw a sacrificial Lamb on the altar just for appearance’s sake, only to give them an escape hatch later.
Dog bites man. Nothing new to see here. Move along.
A strong well written piece Eric, thank you. I continually have to remind myself that Trump's victory was due to the fact that he was the least worst option. This will create quite a splash in the GOP punch bowl.
This doesn’t always work. Sliwa did not have a prayer, so the demonic nincompoop Cuomo was the least worst option in New York City, yet the Jihadi won.
What does this say about the political parties in New York?
Of the three candidates, the largest political party in the city runs a candidate advocating a socialist/communist policy-driven agenda. The other party runs a well-intentioned but lesser-known candidate because no one else is willing to run in a sanctuary city election. Lastly, the prior governor runs as an independent because he can't win his party's primary, in part because of the numerous scandals in his past.
Voters get the government they deserve. On the day after, the voters get to open the box of Cracker Jack and find their prize.
Elizabeth Warren stepped out of the 2020 race in exchange for a deal that her ghouls would occupy the White House in the Biden Admin. They punched the lights out of people in the crypto industry. CZ took a plea, I think, to avoid a toxic Biden prosecution. Chokepoint 2.0 was real. I agree with the comment that CZ tanked FTX and SBF, and they were going to come for him. Stop trying to make this about a pay to play and take the time to understand how grim Chokepoint 2.0 really was and who got caught up in it.
I have more questions than answers about this article. CZ founded Binance the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange which is basically exchanging dollars for Crypto. He was convicted for not having an Anti-money laundering program (AML) which is required of traditional money exchanges and for this he paid a 4.3 billion dollar fine and served 4 months in prison (the judge sounded sympathetic to CZ and somewhat skeptical of the case by the Biden Admin).
Trump has a pardon committee headed by a pardon czar Alice Johnson…. did they recommend this pardon? Is there a comment from Eric Trump whose WLF Stablecoin was used in the Binance settlement? Was the pardon related to the deregulation of Crypto? Does Crypto Czar David Sacks have a comment on the pardon and the administration’s Crypto deregulation? My guess is the pardon allows CZ to resume his role at the largest Cryptocurrency exchange and helps the Trump Admin’s push for Crypto deregulation as they compete with China for Crypto innovation.
Matt, you’re way off base here. Binance was never greenlit to do business in the US until late in 2024. Lizzie Warren was using her power to do Biden’s bidding here with Chokepoint 2.0. Lizzie bankrupted Silicon Valley bank when it was liquid and did the same with Metropolitan bank. She’s a POS and should be in prison. The wall st journal needs some education into how blockchain works too. This is a big nothing burger. Let’s not feign outrage here especially over something 90% of the US doesn’t understand. I’ve been investing in crypto now for well over 5 years and there is no illegality here.
This is a good point. What Biden and his cronies did was patently illegal. What Hillary Rotten Clinton did was patently illegal. Trump hasn’t done anything illegal. Yet.
Pardons were definitely a mistake, and they have been administered in a pretty loose way, too. Need a constitutional amendment to just get rid of them.
Cops need absolute power to be dicks during an arrest because anything else and the criminals are calling the shots. The abuses of that power don't mean you remove the power.
Presidents need the ability to pardon because the justice system can be abused in a political way. However, it creates the ability for the pardon to be used politically or for personal/party benefit. That's unfortunately a necessary evil because the alternative, wide misuse of the DoJ for political reasons, is worse.
Better for some guilty ones to skate free than for innocents to face political persecution.
CZ killed FTX, FTX was a democrat funding source, SBF went to jail, so they went after CZ harder as punishment. Binance is certainly not clean, but the case wouldn't have been prosecuted as aggressively if CZ hadn't been largely responsible for FTX going in the shitter.
"Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao (CZ) played a key role in the collapse of FTX by announcing his company would sell its FTT tokens, which triggered a bank run and led to FTX's failure. After this event, Binance and FTX entered into a preliminary agreement for Binance to acquire FTX, but the deal fell through once Binance examined FTX's financials. Subsequently, FTX filed a lawsuit against Binance and CZ. "
11/04/25: --- "Incredibly, Trump told 60 Minutes, 'I don’t know who he is' and, in regard to his family’s financial connection to Binance, 'I know nothing about it.' " ---
What's TRULY incredible is that the "naive" Eric Salzman expects Trump:
To give Norah O'Donnell, failed "news actress" --- whose utterly corrupt employer, CBS, was recently forced to settle out of court and pay Trump millions of dollars after committing wholesale fraud (60 Minutes Kamala Harris interview) --- a straight answer.
Where's Eric Salzman's "outrage" column about the Biden Auto-Pen pardons? Avidly waiting for someone to post a link to that one...
Do you people ever give it up? Is this the first Racket article you have read? How are there 8 other Racket readers that enjoyed this comment?
It's a GOOD THING to have reporting exposing potential corruption, even when it's coming from your selected team. This shouldn't be a football game. It's not either or.
He's "Your guy" so he gets a pass for a bullshit answer because he's speaking to a sub-par interviewer? Would you support this logic when it's Obama or any number of shills across the aisle?
Unless you're in on the game, we're all losers when this type of shit is happening. Glad to see this article published on Racket alongside the numerous and frequent articles detailing corruption on the "other side".
I actually really like the reporting on this story, and I don't like the appearance of corruption that surrounds this whole sordid affair. All of our politicians seem to be on the grift to some extent, and it's sickening, whether they are Dem, Repub or anything else. My comment at the top of the thread was meant to point out a thesis as to why the Biden Admin went after Binance/CZ so hard, when similar BSA/OFAC/AML concerns with other entities (usually banks) didn't result in anyone being jailed.
Also the “looks around” fact that money laundering is in every big city and interstate corridor in the country. During Covid read that LA was sinking revenues from all the closed laundering shops (used the words money laundering) in the city. It’s a joke that Janet Yellen gaslights on “money laundering” after letting in roughly ten million money launderers and setting them up with free stuff from the money printing machine.
I don’t like that most or all politicians are different shades of corrupt. My personal priority is not to become a third world gang land South American mafia kleptocracy. I’ll still vote for the guy who is deporting the illegals.
Very probably a contributing factor in the corruption is low salaries, low in comparison to responsibility. For example, in the year when Barak Obama was US President at about $500,000 and announced his Dreamers immigration program (2012), the men's basketball coach at Wichita State University was paid $1,600,000 & promised a raise for the next year to $1.75 million. Members of Congress had a standard salary that year if $175,000.
I have no tears for congress.
11/05/25: Your call is very important to us. Please stay on the line until an operator can assist you.
11/11/25: Also waiting on Eric Salzman's "outrage" column about the BBC and its two top execu-degenerates getting fired for the fraudulent slicing of Trump speech videotapes (one of whom was directly responsible for Lyin Brian Williams when she was inexplicably the head of VIACOM'S NBC-Pravda "News" in 2015) ... I'll be here for a while, right?
11/10/15: OH, and speaking about corrupt news organizations fraudulently presenting doctored Trump videotapes --- kiss you asses goodbye, Davie and Turness at the BBC!
BBC fiasco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a948WgitIAM ---
BBC fiasco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BYHJnEDw9s ---
BBC fiasco: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLmSrqMKycw ---
BBC fiasco: https://www.yahoo.com/news/inside-nbc-debacle-theres-much-185329758.html
Also, I'm not sure why people are all right with a supposedly free country requiring that your bank report all transactions over $10,000 to the federal government and submit paperwork about your personal finances all in the name of preventing other people's crimes. We've grown numb to the constant encroachment on our freedoms made with the excuse that the encroachment is necessary to fight crime. What happened to police work, to actually identifying crimes, investigating, and getting warrants for access to the records of suspects?
We live with these invasions of our privacy not just in finance but in nearly every area of our lives. I get irritated every time that I go to the pharmacy to get some pseudoephedrine and have to show my driver's license. I have allergies. I'm not a criminal. Why are we putting allergy sufferers through this nonsense or worse? (For years, the government pushed phenylephrine as an alternative to pseudoephedrine, but it didn't work; it just raised your blood pressure without providing significant relief.)
Anyway, I mention pseudoephedrine as another example of the many small ways in which the federal government is poking its nose into the business of average people for negligible benefit. The bottom line is that though I don't use cryptocurrency, I can't stand the idea that the government believes itself to have some kind of right to track everyone's financial activity and that a business like a bank when not operating with some kind of voluntary federal backing like deposit insurance can be expected to do police work for the state by monitoring customers' transactions for potential money laundering. The whole idea is insane. People launder money for one reason, to hide the source of the profits of criminal activity. Isn't targeting the primary criminal activity the proper role for police?
Yeah, that ship sailed in the 1970's. Just like always, laws got pushed through that seemed like a good idea at the time "There is an epidemic of organized crime!" and once that stuff is deployed, it is never rolled back (See: Patriot Act). If or when digital currencies, whether crypto, stablecoins, or digitized fiat currency take hold, we will all be squeezed even tighter. Privacy is already nearly nonexistent, and it will likely get worse. Unless a bunch of us put our money where our mouth is, and start abandoning the convenience of digital payments in favor of using cash? That might slow the progression, but I don't see folks willing to deal with the friction in their lives, we are too spoiled.
It might even have sailed earlier. When was the IRS created?
I wish that I could personally give everyone a demonstration of the connection of money to control, give them vivid understanding. I lived in Beijing from 2009 to 2013, and ironically, there were many ways in which I was freer in China than in the United States. At the time, China still had a very large cash economy---my job paid me monthly with an envelope full of cash---and as a result, there was an enormous amount of street-level, unregulated petty commerce. Even the tax system was non-intrusive. There was no filing. There were two tax brackets, and people arranged with their employers to spread their pay out over the year to put them into the right tax bracket instead of using some complicated, intrusive filing system necessary for a theoretical reconciliation. Sadly, the bulk of my headache related to taxes came from America, where I didn't even owe taxes because of the large exemption for foreign income but where I still had to file. I had to spend about eight to twelve hours each year assembling documentation and completing forms.
The smart phone started to take off just as I left, and you could feel the change start to take hold. I think that now, everyone in China pays with payment applications, and the electronic payment system was immediately wired into the social credit system. You can be cut out of basic economic life with a keystroke at the discretion of a bureaucrat.
Control of money is one of the main means of political control of civil society and interpersonal relationships. We should not be accepting any control of our financial lives.
From the article:
----------
If you are moving money that aids and abets terrorists and drug cartels, there’s probably a long list of “identifiable victims.”
----------
This is the kind of nonsense that makes me furious. The author doesn't directly address the administration's claim. He just hides behind weasel wording like "if" and "probably."
This is what the left considers to be free? Submitting to government investigation to prevent crime, not fight it? The author can't name a victim, and we're all just supposed to accept that the regulation is justified by the self-serving assertion of the certain existence of victims of separate, traditional crimes.
Now, that's bullshit.
Quite interesting
For those of us who forgot about the Bankman-Fried scandal, here is a link to an Investopedia article on FTX. https://www.investopedia.com/ftx-exchange-5200842
Yes, but Sam was put in jail by a Dems administration, so ya can’t blame CZ for that 😉
No, Binance is certainly not clean. I am really sick and tired of these people. Lock them all in the shitter and lose the key.
Donald is not afraid to openly use his office to personally enrich himself.
That makes him like 95% of the politicians in the world.
The only difference is the "openly" part.
True if it was a Democrat doing it, it would just be declared misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation. And Russia is behind it.
He essentially had Leavitt get out in front of this by pre-declaring that anyone who criticizes it is guilty of spreading "misinformation, disinformation, or malinformation".
Again, no matter what political party they associate with, it's politicians using their power and influence to personally enrich themselves. Donald is definitely a politician now, despite his claims to the contrary.
The good news is that both the Democrat and Republican party's are dying a slow death.
As long as the republic has not outlawed these stable coins , any member of the public, including relatives of the president, is at liberty, authorized by god to exercise his free will and agency by issuing and using them. That politics in the big apple sweetheart.
Donald does not do “honorable”. He does what is best for the people who elected him, even if it means he is forced to accept some garishly expensive gifts of tribute from our grateful vassals. Such are the burdens of power.
I'm fully aware that Donald and his offspring have the right to exercise their "free will" to profit off of the family name and connections.
Kleptocracy
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/kleptocracy
That doesn't make it honorable or ethical.
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?"
I truly can't decide if tolerating brazen criminality is better or worse than tolerating underhanded deceit.
Wasn't the Trump Organization basically frozen out of the banking system? Not because they couldn't repay loans, but because of their politics?
It's just hard for me to get upset about this when crimes that are far more consequential to the good of America get glossed over. It does sound like it was selective prosecution.
11/04/25: "Wasn't the Trump Organization basically frozen out of the banking system? Not because they couldn't repay loans, but because of their politics?"
That they were. They were "de-banked." Avidly waiting on Salzman to post his "expose" column About "Trump Debanked" (I must have missed it. Salzman must have written one, no?).
This is essentially the same logic employed to argue that X shouldn't be prosecuted because it's politically driven. If they committed the crime, who gives a shit? Guilt should be the only factor.
The difference here is that I don't see Salzman even calling for any further prosecution or alternative sentencing for CZ or Trump or anyone related to Trump.
Apparently even detailing an instance of actions by Trump or Trump's organization that should raise some eyebrows causes a lot of Racket readers to feel the need to declare they don't want to hear about it.
Personally, I find Racket to be the closest thing to fact based and neutral journalism still around, and I want to hear about all of it whether it's involving people or parties I generally support at the time or not.
It’s not that I don’t want to hear about it, it’s just that I wouldn’t support the selective prosecution of it when far more serious crimes (I don't even know if what he did WAS a crime) go unpunished, because I live in the real world.
And I don't believe Trump was guilty of any of the 91 crimes he was charged with. I studied it enough to form that opinion.
No one seems to care about minor election fraud, so why should anyone care about minor fraud?
I would say election fraud is far more than minor.
That was a bit of sarcasm. Major or minor, I care a lot about ALL election fraud. It is shocking to me to hear the left talk about "minor fraud" as not enough to swing an election so nothing to worry about. The fact is that not requiring picture ID and in-person voting at the polls or registrar's office is an invitation to fraud. Since fraud is rarely caught or prosecuted, it is impossible to quantify.
What-aboutism, I’d say.
“Whataboutism” is a term used by people who like to apply double standards. I would like one standard for all, but we don’t have that - not even close.
It’s like if I were being prosecuted for stealing a coke from a convenient store by a lawyer who got away with suborning perjury in a murder trial and had let friends of his get away with other serious crimes, and I point out the injustice of that. Is that “whataboutism”?
The fact is that Trump lost a lot of net worth as a consequence of his first term in office. He may be doing some questionable things now to claw some of it back. I don’t like it, but I think it’s pretty tame comparatively and frankly I can understand it. If they’d left him and his business alone, he probably wouldn’t be involved in crypto to begin with. It’s hard to get upset about this when I see how they tried to imprison and bankrupt him over absolutely nothing - and I mean nothing.
CZ wasn't any dirtier than most crypto pioneers. If Gensler's SEC had published rules and brought crypto onshore, CZ said he would have complied.
He played the game with the minimal rules that were in place and wasn't legally required to do more, but was prosecuted anyway. I'm no fan of his actions, but I'm even less of a fan of the kind of regulation by prosecution as practiced by Gensler.
The Trump boys shouldn't have associated with him, no question that looks bad.
I think it's the selective outrage that people are objecting to.
Keep the spotlight on and hopefully prevent any more blatant shenanigans. This administration is doing too much good work to let them go wayward.
It takes a corrupt businessman to fix the country. It’s a tough pill to swallow, but things are getting much better for the middle class and after four ruinous years of Dr. Demento this is as good as it gets.
People who are invested, big and small, are doing better for now. Everyone else, not so much. Even 51% of Republicans don’t like his handling of tariffs. It doesn’t matter what Dems think because whatever he does they are against it. He just went TACO with China (actually a good thing) because people living paycheck to paycheck are hurting and may not turn out for the GOP come the midterms. Just say’n.
You should read Salena Zito's reporting and think about how blue collar workers in Pennsylvania are doing.
Sorry for the late response. I had already read Zito’s reporting. I'm glad things are working well for blue-collar workers in Pennsylvania.
I'm afraid you might be right that this is as good as it gets, but no one should kid themselves that it's good. The bitter pill promises a cure. I'm not seeing any cure for terminal.
You're not going to stop the shenanigans with a spotlight. You'll simply induce more denials than usual. The key risk with Trump (much more so than the MAGA leaders who will follow like Vance, Rubio, Ramaswamy, etc) is corruption and "taking financial advantage" that is within the law.
There is going to be lots of that and to people of conscience it's quite bad.
But the people as a whole have seen much worse, and will be mostly uncaring. Nobody actually gave a crap about Iran-Contra in the end, while it was the biggest scandal in the world if you asked anyone at the time. If you're about to look up which President that had to do with, that proves my point.
Trump will be slightly corrupt and take financial advantage, but he'll be remembered for other things.
After all the lawfare, what credibility does any Biden DOJ prosecution have?
Lmao some of y’all really need to get Trumps dick out of your mouth. It’s ok to admit he sucks and is just like all other politicians who do a lot of shady stuff.
Edit:
Nice edit to change your comment and remove the TDS nonsense.
"some of y’all really need to get Trumps dick out of your mouth"
Yeah, no TDS there.🙄
No class either.
You make a good point about the Biden lawfare, but Eric Salzman wrote this. I assume Matt greenlighted it.
About as blatantly corrupt as a pardon could possibly be. Yet people still are delusional enough to think Trump cares about the people lol.
Whether this is dirty has no bearing on whether he cares for the people, nor does "caring" have much bearing on whether he's actually good for the people.
If he cared about people,he wouldn’t pardon people who enable narcos and terrorists
Hell, there are those that still think Barack Hussein Obama cares about people. People will believe anything if they want to.
Remember the Devils Candy
The entire banking industry and especially the opaque crypto world are all guilty, on a daily basis, of committing a litany of financial crimes, big and small, laundering every bad guys dough imaginable around and around the world, and incalculable acts of fraud.
Every now and again, they throw a sacrificial Lamb on the altar just for appearance’s sake, only to give them an escape hatch later.
Dog bites man. Nothing new to see here. Move along.
It’s a club and we’re not in it.
🛎️🔨
A strong well written piece Eric, thank you. I continually have to remind myself that Trump's victory was due to the fact that he was the least worst option. This will create quite a splash in the GOP punch bowl.
One corrupt administration after another. I guess the Executive needs to keep up with Congress.
Just like Trump said
Hillary not changing the tax laws cause all her friends are using the same loophole
This doesn’t always work. Sliwa did not have a prayer, so the demonic nincompoop Cuomo was the least worst option in New York City, yet the Jihadi won.
What does this say about the political parties in New York?
Of the three candidates, the largest political party in the city runs a candidate advocating a socialist/communist policy-driven agenda. The other party runs a well-intentioned but lesser-known candidate because no one else is willing to run in a sanctuary city election. Lastly, the prior governor runs as an independent because he can't win his party's primary, in part because of the numerous scandals in his past.
Voters get the government they deserve. On the day after, the voters get to open the box of Cracker Jack and find their prize.
Rules of common sense do not apply in NYC.
Who’d be left inside the Beltway if the rule of law was upheld? I’ll wait for the explanation of his inexplicable comment. Should be entertaining.
It’s always fun to watch administration spokesmen (and women) come up with convoluted rationalizations for their bosses.
Massie(?)
Elizabeth Warren stepped out of the 2020 race in exchange for a deal that her ghouls would occupy the White House in the Biden Admin. They punched the lights out of people in the crypto industry. CZ took a plea, I think, to avoid a toxic Biden prosecution. Chokepoint 2.0 was real. I agree with the comment that CZ tanked FTX and SBF, and they were going to come for him. Stop trying to make this about a pay to play and take the time to understand how grim Chokepoint 2.0 really was and who got caught up in it.
this couldn’t be dirtier.
I have more questions than answers about this article. CZ founded Binance the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange which is basically exchanging dollars for Crypto. He was convicted for not having an Anti-money laundering program (AML) which is required of traditional money exchanges and for this he paid a 4.3 billion dollar fine and served 4 months in prison (the judge sounded sympathetic to CZ and somewhat skeptical of the case by the Biden Admin).
Trump has a pardon committee headed by a pardon czar Alice Johnson…. did they recommend this pardon? Is there a comment from Eric Trump whose WLF Stablecoin was used in the Binance settlement? Was the pardon related to the deregulation of Crypto? Does Crypto Czar David Sacks have a comment on the pardon and the administration’s Crypto deregulation? My guess is the pardon allows CZ to resume his role at the largest Cryptocurrency exchange and helps the Trump Admin’s push for Crypto deregulation as they compete with China for Crypto innovation.
Matt, you’re way off base here. Binance was never greenlit to do business in the US until late in 2024. Lizzie Warren was using her power to do Biden’s bidding here with Chokepoint 2.0. Lizzie bankrupted Silicon Valley bank when it was liquid and did the same with Metropolitan bank. She’s a POS and should be in prison. The wall st journal needs some education into how blockchain works too. This is a big nothing burger. Let’s not feign outrage here especially over something 90% of the US doesn’t understand. I’ve been investing in crypto now for well over 5 years and there is no illegality here.
This is a good point. What Biden and his cronies did was patently illegal. What Hillary Rotten Clinton did was patently illegal. Trump hasn’t done anything illegal. Yet.
If Trump really doesn't know who he pardoned, it sounds like the autopen continues to hum away on autopilot in the White House.
Why do we have pardons at all? It undermines the justice system and is completely arbitrary, as this case shows.
Pardons were definitely a mistake, and they have been administered in a pretty loose way, too. Need a constitutional amendment to just get rid of them.
Is that right? I didn’t know it was part of the constitution.
Yep, it’s in there, Article II, Sec II:
… he shall have Power
to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States,….
Cops need absolute power to be dicks during an arrest because anything else and the criminals are calling the shots. The abuses of that power don't mean you remove the power.
Presidents need the ability to pardon because the justice system can be abused in a political way. However, it creates the ability for the pardon to be used politically or for personal/party benefit. That's unfortunately a necessary evil because the alternative, wide misuse of the DoJ for political reasons, is worse.
Better for some guilty ones to skate free than for innocents to face political persecution.
It’s ironic that all the news articles about CZ’s pardon call him Canadian. He’s as Canadian as the British Viceroy to India was Indian.
If you have money, you can be the citizen of whatever country you choose.
Is that why they called it World Liberty? Tycoons Without Borders might have been too obvious.