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Binance co-founder Changpeng Zhao (CZ) is considering a libel suit against Democratic Senator Elizabeth Warren for alleged defamation, the New York Post reported.
That’s after the Senator criticized US President Donald Trump’s decision to pardon the crypto billionaire last week.
“CZ pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge and was sentenced to prison,” Warren said in an X post shortly after the pardon was confirmed. “But then he financed President Trump’s stable coin and lobbied for a pardon. Today, he got it. If Congress does not stop this kind of corruption, it owns it.”
Warren and Democratic Senator Adam Schiff have also put forward a resolution condemning the move and calling on Congress to “use its authority to stop this form of corruption.”
CZ Did Not Plead Guilty To Money Laundering
CZ’s action would be founded on the fact that he was not convicted of money laundering, as Warren claimed, but of violating the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to implement proper controls against potential illicit financial activity on Binance.
The New York Post story said lawyer Teresa Goody Guillen will on CZ’s behalf call on Senator Warren to retract her statement. Without a formal retraction, Guillen said that her client plans to file the defamation lawsuit imminently.
“Mr. Zhao will not remain silent while a United States Senator seemingly misuses the office to repeatedly publish defamatory statements that impugn his reputation,” CZ’s lawyer wrote in a draft letter that the newspaper said it had seen. “Accordingly, Mr. Zhao respectfully immediately requests the retraction of these false statements, both within the resolution and on X.”
“Mr. Zhao reserves his right to pursue all legal remedies available to address these false statements,” Guillen added.
In an earlier response to Senator Warren’s X post, Guillen said that such defamatory statements are only a form of protected speech when spoken on the Senate floor, and not in a public space such as a social media platform.
Worth remembering Hutchinson v. Proxmire, 443 U.S. 111 (1979). The Speech or Debate Clause protects debate/legislative acts—not false and misleading information. The court held that the Clause does not protect the transmittal of allegedly defamatory material in press releases and…
— Teresa Goody Guillén (@teresagoody) October 24, 2025
Guillen reiterated that there was “no money laundering charge.”
An X community note has been added to Senator Warren’s X post. “CZ pleaded guilty to violating the Bank Secrecy Act for failing to implement an effective anti-money laundering program. He did not plead guilty to money laundering,” the note reads.
Trump-Binance Connections
Binance has listed the USD1 stablecoin, which is a token created by a Trump-backed DeFi platform called World Liberty Financial. More recently, the leading crypto exchange has also listed the project’s native WLFI token, and has the highest trading volume around the token of all of WLFI’s current markets.
Binance has the highest trading volume for WLFI (Source: CoinMarketCap)
Because of that, Warren and other politicians have argued that Trump’s pardon of CZ was inappropriate. Representatives for CZ and Trump have reportedly denied that, arguing that links between the President’s family and CZ’s operations are incidental.
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