Donald Trump Claims He Doesn’t Know Who the Binance Founder Is!

The United States President Donald Trump has claimed that he doesn’t know who Changpeng Zhao is. The cryptocurrency billionaire and founder of Binance was pardoned by Donald Trump 10 days ago. Zhao, who is also known as “CZ,” is the founder of the Binance crypto exchange, and he helped World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s own venture, make billions of dollars just before the president pardoned him. In the latest interview on CBS, President Donald Trump told Norah O’Donnell that he doesn’t know who CZ is, and the only thing he knew was that he got a four-month sentence or something like that.

On November 2, 2025, an interview on CBS’s 60 Minutes, the interviewer, Norah O’Donnell, claimed that Binance was involved in facilitating and helped World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin purchase worth $2 billion. Donald Trump rejected those allegations and said, “I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.” Donald Trump commented that the pardon was a necessary and important decision to keep the United States competitive in crypto. After defending pardoning CZ, Trump added that if they didn’t do it, crypto was going to go to China, and according to him, crypto was no different than AI. 

The United States President Donald Trump pardoned Changpeng Zhao 10 days ago after he pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering in 2023. After the allegation, CZ stepped down as the CEO of Binance as part of a $4.3 billion settlement with the Justice Department. He also served four months in prison. Norah O’Donnell asked Trump why he had pardoned CZ, who had caused “significant harm to U.S. national security,” essentially by allowing terrorist groups like Hamas to move millions of dollars around. Trump replied and blamed the previous Biden administration for disrespecting and marginalizing a successful guy like him. Trump answered that the man had been treated really badly by the Biden administration, that he had been given a jail term, that he was highly respected, and that he was a very successful guy, adding that they had sent him to jail and had really set him up.

“I Don’t Know the Man At All. I Don’t Think I Ever Met Him”. Says Donald Trump

Norah O’Donnell asked Trump about crypto’s richest man, a billionaire known as C.Z., who, in that context, had helped to make his family millions of dollars and had pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating anti-money laundering laws. Trump denied the former government’s accusations against CZ and said the labeling he got as “significant harm to U.S. national security” was a result of the Biden government’s anti-crypto attitude.

Trump replied to Norah that he didn’t know the man at all and didn’t think he had ever met him, although he mentioned that maybe he had or that someone had shaken his hand. He stated that he had no idea who he was and that he had been told the man was a victim, just like he was and like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.

He denied CZ’s and Binance’s association with World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin and Changpeng Zhao’s collaboration with his sons. The interviewer confronted Trump and asked how he addressed the appearance of pay for play, noting that in 2025, C.Z.’s crypto exchange, Binance, had helped facilitate a $2 billion purchase of World Liberty Financial’s stablecoin and that he had then pardoned C.Z. Trump claimed that he knew nothing about it because he was too busy doing other things. He told Norah that his sons were into crypto and that he was glad they were because it was probably a great industry, crypto, and he thought it was good, adding that they were running a business and not in government.