interview<\/a>, Democratic congressman Ro Khanna revealed that he is set to introduce legislation to ban elected officials from owning or creating cryptocurrencies. The move comes on the heels of\u00a0President Trump\u2019s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, which Khanna described as \u201cillegal.\u201d<\/p>\n\u201cThis is blatant corruption,\u201d remarked Khanna when questioned by the interviewer, saying the pardon appeared linked to Zhao\u2019s support of crypto ventures associated with the president.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t need to know a lot about cryptocurrency to understand what went on here,\u201d the congressman said. \u201cYou\u2019ve got a foreign billionaire who was basically engaged in money laundering, having money go to Hamas, having money go to Iran, having money go to child abusers. He was convicted, he served four years in prison, and then he petitions for a pardon from Donald Trump after funneling money to terrorists.\u201d<\/p>\n
While some of Khanna\u2019s statements were inaccurate, including claims that Zhao was \u201cconvicted\u201d and served \u201cfour years\u201d in prison, he went on to allege that the former Binance CEO earned clemency by agreeing to \u201cback World Liberty\u201d and \u201cfinancing Donald Trump\u2019s cryptocurrency stablecoin.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The Democrat stressed that legislation must be put in place to restrict elected officials from \u201chaving cryptocurrency and accepting foreign money.\u201d<\/p>\n
Trump\u2019s crypto ties, CZ pardon under scrutiny<\/h2>\n
Khanna\u2019s comments add to growing criticism from lawmakers over Trump\u2019s connections to the crypto industry. Throughout the year, figures such as Senator Elizabeth Warren have increased pressure over what they see as conflicts of interest tied to Trump\u2019s crypto dealings, a call that has only intensified following Zhao\u2019s pardon.<\/p>\n
However, the White House has consistently refuted claims of any conflict of interest. The president has also defended the pardon as an effort to reverse what he called the Biden administration\u2019s persecution of crypto, adding that he has no relationship with the Binance founder.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Trump family\u2019s crypto ventures are reported to have generated more than $1 billion this year, spanning digital trading cards, meme coins, stablecoins, and World Liberty Financial\u2019s WLFI token.<\/p>\n
<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Trump\u2019s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao has spurred new calls to ban elected officials from owning or creating cryptocurrencies. Summary US Representative Ro Khanna announced plans to introduce…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6558,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cryptocurrency"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14495","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14495"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14495\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14496,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14495\/revisions\/14496"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6558"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bitunikey.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}