[HN Gopher] Trump pardons convicted Binance founder
___________________________________________________________________
Trump pardons convicted Binance founder
Author : cowboyscott
Score : 605 points
Date : 2025-10-23 15:41 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.wsj.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.wsj.com)
| scrlk wrote:
| https://archive.ph/XRw42
| mmayberry wrote:
| Fraud is now legal
| greenpizza13 wrote:
| As long as you bow to King Trump.
| gorjusborg wrote:
| I have no proof of this, but I would bet that there will be
| some quid-pro-quo involved between Trump and the pardonee.
| Trump does not usually give things away, he leverages his
| power to get more power/money.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| He didn't pardon Maxwell despite her coming out and saying
| she didn't see Trump do anything awful with Epstein.
| cm2012 wrote:
| He had her transferred to a much nicer jail though,
| against regulations and without explanation.
| bayarearefugee wrote:
| If you're already rich and can stomach writing a flattering
| letter to Dear Leader you're leaving money on the table by not
| committing massive fraud right now.
| bayesianbot wrote:
| I feel like democrats should make it clear that if there's
| still a fair election and they regain power, they'll go after
| both the corrupt people in this admin and entities buying
| favors. The current state can't be too good for the society,
| at least there should be a clear possible downside for being
| a part of it.
| Finnucane wrote:
| Fraud has been an essential component of Trump's business his
| whole life, he clearly doesn't see it as a crime. And the
| crypto guys have spent a lot of money getting into his good
| graces. He knows a good grift when he sees it.
| wslh wrote:
| Beyond the Trump effect, a lot of fraud has always been
| "legal", mostly because the victims can't afford to go after
| the fraudsters.
| drak0n1c wrote:
| CZ was not involved in fraud, the case only found him guilty of
| not doing enough to surveil his customers to sufficiently block
| US citizens from using a crypto exchange that other people from
| sanctioned countries could use.
| taylodl wrote:
| I'm impressed. Leavitt managed to Blame the Biden administration,
| effectively asserting that Zhao's crimes were a result of the
| Biden administration's "war on crypto." Never mind that Zhao was
| engaged in criminal activity for which he was prosecuted, tried,
| and found guilty.
| nickff wrote:
| Please correct me if I'm wrong, but Zhao was convicted of
| crimes which were a direct result of his operating a crypto
| exchange, and not any other criminal activity. It may be
| possible to operate a legally-compliant crypto exchange, but I
| am not sure that any current exchange is fully compliant with
| US law. If we agree on these facts, and think that the 'war on
| drugs' is what has resulted in 'drug possession' and 'drug
| trafficking' convictions, then it seems reasonable to say that
| Zhao was convicted as the result of a 'war on crypto'.
|
| I am actually not sure that either the 'war on drugs' or a 'war
| on crypto' is a bad idea, but they do seem analogous.
| mullingitover wrote:
| > and not any other criminal activity
|
| He made a lot of money _from_ the other criminal activity.
| That 's what money laundering is: just because you're not
| directly trafficking children, for example, doesn't mean you
| have clean hands when you make significant profits from the
| people who are.
| nickff wrote:
| What you're describing is (in my view) the best _casus
| belli_ for both the 'war on drugs' and a 'war on crypto',
| but a moral case does not make a criminal case (on its
| own).
| mullingitover wrote:
| I don't even necessarily think a 'war on crypto' is
| needed. The problem is that crypto seems to function as a
| get out of jail free card for very straightforward
| financial crimes: you just do the financial crime, but
| apply a thin veneer of 'but with crypto' and the legal
| system is utterly bamboozled.
|
| Crypto's problem is that when the law is updated to deal
| with these stunts, it's suddenly just a crappy version of
| the existing financial system.
| nickff wrote:
| I completely agree that crypto is being used as an end-
| run (if you'll pardon the expression) around the existing
| financial oligopoly, whose regulatory burden is paid for
| by the monopoly rents extracted by the government-
| endorsed players. The problem is that criminal laws
| aren't being maximally applied against banks, so
| instances like this do give the appearance of
| 'unfairness'.
| XorNot wrote:
| The war on drugs creates almost all the negative
| externalities of drugs to try and stop people making
| their own choices.
|
| It is both a reason not to buy drugs now (you're
| sponsoring all that other stuff) and a reason it's a
| ridiculous and immoral policy.
|
| It is also on no way comparable to crypto.
| ClarityJones wrote:
| Except, correct me if this is wrong, but he wasn't even
| convicted of money laundering, let alone the underlying
| crimes you suggest he was launder the proceeds of. It was
| simply for failing to register / setup an appropriate AML
| system. Whether any ML occurred, by whom, and in relation
| to what... are outstanding questions. If he had done all
| that and all they got him on was a 4-month technicality,
| that tends to suggest he was probably innocent (or the
| investigation was inept).
| cthalupa wrote:
| I'm not sure you understand the point. It isn't that CZ
| himself was specifically putting forth the effort to
| launder money. It isn't that he was specifically doing
| things to try and make it easier. The point is that he
| had a legal duty to actively attempt to prevent money
| laundering. Binance was legally required to do this to
| operate in the US, and did not. The court case produced
| messages from the Chief Compliance Officer pointing out a
| myriad of ways in which they were not complying with
| various laws of this nature and they were ignored.
|
| The BSA is not a technicality and trying to reframe it as
| one is wild. It is to make sure that people that have a
| financial incentive to turn a blind eye to money
| laundering don't turn a blind eye to it. You don't need
| to be directly involved in the money laundering to be
| incentivized to let it happen.
| wmf wrote:
| The CEOs of Coinbase, Gemini, Kraken, etc. have not been
| indicted for anything. Those exchanges have had some
| compliance issues but they were minor compared to Binance,
| FTX, BitMEX, etc.
| sunshine-o wrote:
| Changpeng Zhao pled guilty for violating the Bank Secrecy Act
| and not complying with anti-money laundering requirements.
|
| That also happened to a lot of big banks over and over again.
|
| Three days ago one of the biggest was found guilty for helping
| Sudan's government commit genocide by providing banking
| services that violated American sanctions [0]. Sounds worst.
|
| Binance is a casino for millennial and gen Z and like casinos
| is used by criminal to launder money.
|
| Should Changpeng Zhao be pardoned? I don't know, I don't care
| he is a small fish.
|
| Should BNP CEO serves prison time? probably.
|
| - [0] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bnp-paribas-shares-fall-
| us-17...
| jamesblonde wrote:
| Whataboutism. Has to be called out.
| Onavo wrote:
| Doesn't make the double standards any less true.
| cjbgkagh wrote:
| What about the whataboutism of whataboutism? I.e. meta-
| whataboutism
|
| The use of whataboutism and the 'calling out' of
| whataboutisms are both mechanisms of narrative control.
| pulisse wrote:
| Sub-headline: "Pardon follows months of efforts by Changpeng Zhao
| to boost the Trump crypto company"
| verdverm wrote:
| Subtext, a convicted fraudster pardons a convicted fraudster
| drak0n1c wrote:
| CZ was not convicted of fraud or even money laundering.
| There's a reason the sentence was only 4 months. His charge
| was the first ever prosecution of a platform/bank poorly
| implementing KYC and not doing enough surveillance of its
| users to comply with the letter of AML regulations. The case
| relied on the theoretical possibility of US citizen users
| placing trades that are matched by people from sanctioned
| countries - it did not even find cases of such trades.
|
| Regardless of what you think of the circumstances of the
| pardon, the prosecution was not related to fraud and was an
| unusual case by a DOJ that was recently embarrassed by FTX
| and was arguably symbolic in intent.
| verdverm wrote:
| The amount of corruption around this is crazy
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
| koolba wrote:
| > Zhao, in November 2023, pleaded guilty in Seattle federal court
| and agreed to step down as Binance CEO as part of a $4.3 billion
| settlement by the company with the Department of Justice.
|
| Did he already pay the $4.3 billion? That's a lot of money, even
| for the federal government.
| al_borland wrote:
| From what I can tell, Binance had to pay the $4.3B, while Zhao
| had to pay $50M.
|
| The status of each isn't something I can readily find.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| I understand that the commutation of George Santos means he
| does not have to pay the court ordered restitution to the
| people he defrauded.
|
| Puts an even grosser spin on this incineration of the rule of
| law.
|
| Penalties within plea deals likely have different rules but
| given a pardon is a higher rung of absolution I am horrified to
| wonder if he could clawback any personal financial penalties he
| has paid or even seek compensation.
| keernan wrote:
| >>Representatives of the Trump family have held talks to take a
| financial stake in the U.S. arm of Binance.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| Most corrupt president in living memory (ever?) pardons convicted
| corrupt businessman, while directly profiting from said corrupt
| businessman's industry
|
| Years ago people would have thought you were talking about the
| DRC, Haiti or Uzbekistan. Today's it's the USA.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| Don't kid yourself, US political corruption pre-dates Trump.
| This is just bringing it to a new level.
| bena wrote:
| Yes, he clearly said "most corrupt", not "first corrupt".
| bdavisx wrote:
| Serious question - it seems that many of this Administrations
| activities are illegal in some way or the other. I know that
| government officials are shielded from a lot of actions so they
| can not be prosecuted.
|
| What actions that have been taken could actually be prosecuted?
| For example, I would have to assume that the ballroom demolition
| and build-out is illegal, there were $0 appropriated from
| Congress for this, and it doesn't seem like direct donations
| would be legal either. They are donations to the government and
| Congress has to appropriate that money too.
|
| NOTHING is going to happen while the Republicans control
| congress, period. What could be done when the next administration
| comes in? Not just about the ballroom, but the various other
| things like this pardon. What of these actions are prosecutable?
| ksherlock wrote:
| "Well, when the president does it ... that means that it is not
| illegal" -- Richard Nixon (1977)
|
| "Well, when the president does it ... that means that it is not
| illegal" -- SCOTUS (2024)
|
| That leaves impeachment as the only legal remedy, which you've
| correctly identified as not a possibility with the current
| congress.
| shoemakersteve wrote:
| His two previous impeachments don't seem to have slowed him
| down, so it seems unlikely that a third would be any
| different. Not to mention his felony conviction.
| stetrain wrote:
| The actual legal remedy is impeachment + conviction by the
| senate. That hasn't happened yet and seems unlikely unless
| he actually loses the support of his own party.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _it seems that many of this Administrations activities are
| illegal_
|
| Many are. This one is not. The President has sweeping pardon
| powers.
|
| The solution is to strike the final phrase in Article 2,
| Section 2, Clause 1 of the U.S. Constitution: "and he shall
| have Power to grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offences against
| the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment." [1].
|
| There isn't a place for one-man pardons in a republic. If the
| courts overreach, address it through legislation. (Even the
| _imperium_ -obsessed Romans didn't give their dictators, much
| less consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special
| legislation to overrule the law.)
|
| With Presidents of both parties having so recently abused
| pardons, we may be in a place where a wave could pass a
| Constitutional amendment at the federal level, allowing it to
| be punted to the states.
|
| [1]
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Two_of_the_United_Stat...
| thijson wrote:
| It seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly
| doesn't want to change the system they inherited. I remember
| Trudeau talking about eliminating first past the post in
| Canadian elections. But once he got into power he forgot
| about it.
|
| We need a way to vote for popular ideas via referendum at the
| federal level. That might get it through.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _seems like whatever party gets into power, suddenly
| doesn 't want to change the system_
|
| "The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall
| deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this
| Constitution" [1].
|
| No President. No courts. Partisanship may work to our
| advantage in a divided government. What you would need,
| however, to reach two thirds is some members of the
| President's party signing on. That could happen if the
| President is taking a dump in the polls, and the opposition
| looks likely (but isn't yet assured) to gain the Presidency
| next term.
|
| > _We need a way to vote for popular ideas via referendum
| at the federal level_
|
| We need a plebiscite institution. But that can be done at
| state level for Constitutonal amendment approval. What we
| don't want is direct democracy proposing amendments.
| California is a modern example of why republics are more
| stable than pure democracies, for anyone who forgot about
| Athens.
| GuinansEyebrows wrote:
| > What we don't want is direct democracy proposing
| amendments. California is a modern example of why
| republics are more stable than pure democracies, for
| anyone who forgot about Athens.
|
| speak for yourself. the proof of the pudding is in the
| eating, as evidenced by the current political climate in
| the US.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _the proof of the pudding is in the eating, as
| evidenced by the current political climate in the US_
|
| We're not a direct democracy. You can't find proof of a
| pudding in a taco bowl.
|
| Direct democracies fail in self-reinforcing factionalism.
| "When a majority is included in a faction, the form of
| popular government...enables it to sacrifice to its
| ruling passion or interest both the public good and the
| rights of other citizens." This has _consistently_
| happened across history, even in small direct
| democracies, it 's one of the essential takeaways from
| the Athenian experiment [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trial_of_Socrates
| mrguyorama wrote:
| >California is a modern example of why republics are more
| stable than pure democracies
|
| California is one state among 50. People using it as an
| example of some sort of government being bad are
| objectively in bad faith.
|
| Please inform me how my state's citizen referendums are
| bad? We are about to have a vote on voter ID laws, which
| I do not approve of, but what's important is that the
| people who care are able to have their will made
| manifest, and it will actually go up for a vote.
|
| Meanwhile nordic countries have vastly more direct
| democracies and don't have the problems you insist.
|
| If you cannot make your argument without california, you
| do not have an argument, because california's shitty
| government predates democrat control, because it was
| always built as this crazy world where rich and connected
| people had control. California's government is built
| wrong, not because of democracy, but against it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _inform me how my state 's citizen referendums are
| bad?_
|
| Straw man. Nobody claimed this.
|
| > _nordic countries have vastly more direct democracies
| and don 't have the problems you insist_
|
| What are you referring to? "Finland has traditionally
| relied on the representative form of government, with
| very limited experience of the deployment of the
| referendum in national decision-making" [1]. And while
| Sweden and Norway have referenda, neither has binding
| referenda on demand or even a requirement for referendum
| to amend the constitution [2].
|
| > _if you cannot make your argument without california,
| you do not have an argument_
|
| California features the largest and most powerful direct-
| democratic institution, its referenda, in America. It's
| going to come up when we discuss direct democracy.
|
| That said, I have no idea how you reach my comment and
| conclude that California is not only the only argument I
| make against direct democracy, but even essential to it.
|
| > _california 's shitty government predates democrat
| control_
|
| Are you mixing up direct democracy and rule by Democrats,
| the party?
|
| [1] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-349-2
| 4796-7_...
|
| [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Referendums_by_country
| everfrustrated wrote:
| In history generally the only way governments are ever
| restructured is through civil war (or invasion).
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _In history generally the only way governments are ever
| restructured is through civil war (or invasion)_
|
| This is total crap. _Tale of Two Cities_ is set against
| the backdrop of Britain's reforms, in contrast to the
| French Revolution. America has peacefully seen through
| Teddy Roosevelt's trust busting, FDR's New Deal and the
| Civil Rights Era, each peaceful restructurings of how our
| government works.
|
| Revolutions transfer and consolidate power. Reforms
| broaden them. Those who miss this lesson of history and
| fall for glorified fictions of peasants' revolts earn a
| consistent fate across millennia of human history.
|
| Side note: strongly recommend
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6E4_Bcmscg&t=14s
| lovich wrote:
| Every amendment to the constitution restructured the
| government. We are certainly in an era of high
| divisiveness and a Congress that had abdicated all of its
| powers to the other branches so that they're never caught
| actually holding a position, but the US government system
| has restructuring built into it
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| Uhm, the Republicans will change their mind quickly when
| the next Democrat president takes control with the expanded
| powers they inherited from the Trump administration (even
| the Supreme court doesn't like to contradict itself so
| quickly). I'm pretty sure...if America survives at all, we
| will have a constitutional convention really soon that push
| through changes because the current status quo has become
| an unstable mess.
| selectodude wrote:
| I trust the gang of six's use of the shadow docket is
| cleverly designed to make sure only a republican
| president meets their unitary executive theories.
| jamesblonde wrote:
| Do you think they will let the Democrats take control
| given the risk to them if they take control? I see
| Gerrymandering after the supreme court annuls the voting
| rights acts. And then more shennanigans for a third term.
| seanmcdirmid wrote:
| That's why I premised this with "If America survives at
| all". There is definitely a possibility that the whole
| country just falls apart. A constitutional convention is
| more of a best case scenario.
|
| Gerrymandering is only relevant for congressional house
| elections, it can't protect the senate and doesn't
| influence the presidency. Usually one party will take
| control of all three branches in a huge swing in power,
| the house is the just the first to flip usually because
| it is re-elected every 2 years.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _constitutional convention is more of a best case
| scenario_
|
| Constitutional Convention is the abort button. It means
| giving a group of people basically limitless power to
| amend our Constitution, which in practice, means to do
| anything to the law. If we called one today, with most
| states in Republican hands [1], we'd be essentially
| handing complete control of our government--over and
| above the Constitution--to the GOP.
|
| [1] https://www.ncsl.org/about-state-legislatures/state-
| partisan...
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Constitutional Convention is the abort button. It means
| giving a group of people basically limitless power to
| amend our Constitution
|
| No, it doesn't.
|
| It gives a group of people basically limitless power to
| _propose Amendments to the Constitution_.
|
| Any Amendments so proposed still require 3/4 of states to
| ratify them, either by votes of their legislature or by
| ratification conventions called in the states (at the
| option of Congress when calling the Convention at the
| request of states.)
|
| Unless by "group of people" you mean not just the people
| _in_ the national convention, but the people in the state
| legislatures or conventions, as well. But, at that point,
| you might as well say that by _including_ an amendment
| process, the Constitution itself "gives a group of people
| basically limitless power to amend our Constitution".
| perihelions wrote:
| > _" Many are. This one is not. The President has sweeping
| pardon powers."_
|
| I understand it's debatably _possible_ to prosecute the
| public corruption that motivated a pardon, even though the
| pardon act itself is unreviewable. I.e., the DoJ attempted a
| criminal bribery investigation of Bill Clinton 's pardon of
| the donor Marc Rich,
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2001/02/15/us/us-is-beginning-
| crimin... ( _" U.S. is beginning criminal inquiry in pardon
| of Rich"_ (2001))
|
| > _" Some lawyers have said that proving such a case could be
| exceedingly difficult because bribery cases usually required
| the cooperation of one of the parties. Moreover,
| contributions to political parties or to Mr. Clinton's
| library foundation are legal, and the president's pardon
| authority is unreviewable."_
|
| I assume similar logic might apply to World Liberty Financial
| and Trump's CZ pardon.
| vunderba wrote:
| Between sweeping abuse of executive orders, declaring
| emergency powers, and the pardon system (there's a reason it
| used to be called the "royal pardon"), my only hope is that
| this will finally open the public's eyes to the MASSIVE
| overreach that a US president has. It needs to be heavily
| curtailed.
|
| The pardon system in particular really pisses me off. The
| argument that one rando at the top of the pyramid somehow
| magically knows better than the entire judicial system is
| such a load of horsecrap. For any injustice that the pardon
| system might be able to correct, it can and does just as
| easily introduce more injustices.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| > For example, I would have to assume that the ballroom
| demolition and build-out is illegal, there were $0 appropriated
| from Congress for this, and it doesn't seem like direct
| donations would be legal either.
|
| Maybe it's funded by the $230M he's demanding from the
| Department of Justice?
| anigbrowl wrote:
| Assuming a normal election where the pendulum swings back and a
| normal transfer of power (no certain things), the outgoing
| President could pardon everyone from his chiefs of staff and
| cabinet officers to low-level federal law enforcement on the
| way out, and then the Democrats would wring their hands and say
| there's nothing they can do, bar some large scale political
| realignment where Republicans lost control of numerous state
| legislatures and governorships by a large margin, as well as in
| Congress.
|
| The best opportunity for a major restructuring of the legal
| environment would bea Constitutional Convention, but because
| Republicans have pursued this as a strategic goal for a while,
| Democrats invested all their relevant energies in being against
| it rather than developing any kind of strategy of their own,
| guaranteeing that they would get rolled if one actually took
| place because they went in with wholly defensive mindset and no
| plan to win. The fundamental flaw of the modern Democratic
| party is that it sees itself as a vehicle for competent
| management of the status quo, not a force for implementation of
| its voters' political aspirations. Thus is pays lip service of
| what its supporters want but operates to dampen and delay those
| same supporters whenever it gets into office in the name of
| continuity and responsibility. It operates on a combination of
| political rent seeking and fundamental conflict aversion.
|
| This is why I find myself increasingly impatient with self-
| styled moderates. Wanting to talk things out and compromise is
| good, but it only works when there is mutuality between
| counterparties. When the political opposition is indifferent to
| questions of truthfulness or corruption, moderation degrades
| into appeasement; moderates will sell out their own supporters
| in the name of peace and quiet, while giving away the strategic
| initiative over and over. The previous Trump administration
| engineered a mob overrunning Congress in an attempt to stay in
| power, and only failed because the Vice President declined to
| aid the scheme; a mistake the current one surely doesn't intend
| to repeat. The incoming administration spent a great deal of
| energy prosecuting every footsoldier they could find who set
| foot inside the Capitol, but shied away from going after the
| people who actually organized it. The results speak for
| themselves.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| Why it is even accepted that pardons can be issued before
| conviction?
| Scrapemist wrote:
| Yes, this also seems bonkers to me.
| iLemming wrote:
| > NOTHING is going to happen while the Republicans control
| congress, period
|
| For anyone interested, for the past 30 years, Republicans
| dominated for 22 years in total, while Democrats only 8.
| TrackerFF wrote:
| Some problems: Trump has already argued that if what he does
| falls under official acts, it's essentially absolute immunity.
| Trump also tried to argue that everything he did while during
| his presidency, was official acts. The supreme court agreed
| that if something is and official act, it is protected by
| absolute immunity.
|
| So my guess is that whatever Trump is doing now, he'll later
| argue was done as a president.
|
| Second, should be convicted of anything, the best shot is if
| it's a state law violation. I'm going to bet everything I own
| that Trump will either pardon himself, all his cronies, and/or
| when the time comes, step down and have Vance pardon him. So
| with that all federal crimes become pardoned.
|
| The supreme court has been very frank about this: The only, and
| I do mean _the only_ mechanism is a successful impeachment. And
| even if Trump by some miracle is successfully impeached, we
| have no way of knowing how that will play out. The current
| supreme court majority are seemingly true believers of the
| unitary executive theory, so I 'm guessing that with time -
| we'll just see Trump get more and more unchecked power. And
| since it's going to be done via the shadow docket, it'll likely
| be valid for Trump only.
|
| I think for all intents and purposes - and I don't mean to
| sound defeatist when I'm saying this - people should just
| accept the fact that Trump will be untouchable for the rest of
| his life.
| WheatMillington wrote:
| This is not "good guys versus bad guys", the democratic party
| are not going to wash all this badness away. They have been
| guilty of basically the same things, even if at a lesser scale.
| Biden tried to appropriate billions outside of congress for
| student loan forgiveness. Political pardons have been a factor
| since the beginning of the US experiment. Pelosi has been using
| her position for self-enrichment in the open for decades now.
| covercash wrote:
| We need them all gone. Anyone who makes "politician" a career
| is precisely the wrong type of person to be an elected
| official. It should never be about personal gain. Wipe them
| all out, implement campaign finance reform, set term limits,
| prioritize election security & availability...
|
| We need a reset.
| 9dev wrote:
| What about the acts of piracy (in the classic, seafaring way)
| and coldblooded murder of foreign citizens, carried out by US
| soldiers, claimed to be "drug dealers" (like that was a capital
| offence anyway)?
|
| I'm curious if any of the involved personell will ever be tried
| for that.
| jpadkins wrote:
| > What of these actions are prosecutable?
|
| The President must first be impeached by both parts of
| Congress.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impeachment_in_the_United_Stat...
|
| The Senate runs a trial for the "high crimes" with the supreme
| court justice presiding. They can sentence a sitting president
| IIRC (or just remove him from office in which the DOJ can then
| prosecute normally).
| skm12 wrote:
| - Zhao has ties to World Liberty Financial, a crypto venture that
| Trump and his sons Eric and Donald Jr. launched in September.
|
| - Trump's most recent financial disclosure report reveals he made
| more than $57 million last year from World Liberty Financial
| dgrr19 wrote:
| they just reported 1B from crypto ventures, so 57m seems like
| lunch money...
| jb1991 wrote:
| I wonder what those ventures actually are and how that money
| is made?
| cedws wrote:
| Is there any way to read this other than Trump is cuddling up to
| crypto because it's a tool for him and his cronies to make dodgy
| money?
| zeld4 wrote:
| in this particular case maybe. but i don't think he's pardoning
| only crypto people. as long as criminals can offer sth useful
| to him, they will get above the law.
| EgregiousCube wrote:
| Yes - he campaigned on making America more crypto-friendly in
| general; this could also be read as part of making good on that
| promise.
| csto12 wrote:
| I hope this is satire. Only a moron would think this.
| frogpelt wrote:
| It answers the question posed. Unless you think only morons
| have opinions that differ from yours.
| yoyohello13 wrote:
| Moronic opinions are still moronic and should be called
| out as such. Making America more crypto friendly by
| pardoning fraudsters is an objectively stupid take.
| righthand wrote:
| This makes me hate cryptocurrency more and make me support
| candidates that want feel the same, that we should be
| prosecuting cryptocurrency fraud. How is that making it more
| friendly?
| estearum wrote:
| Just like being bank-friendly means allowing criminality in
| bank management. And being transportation-friendly means
| allowing people to drive drunk!
| crispyambulance wrote:
| > ...it's a tool for him and his cronies to make dodgy money?
|
| It's a vehicle to sell "access". The greed is only half of it.
|
| The worst part is that they're selling access to foreign
| interests who pay them off. These people can't exactly show up
| with bags of gold to bribe King Sh*t Gibbon (yet), crypto is
| the next best thing.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| Additional coverage (from other HN submissions):
|
| QZ: <https://qz.com/trump-pardon-binance-changpeng-zhao>
|
| Reuters: <https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-
| convicted-bin...>
|
| The Guardian:
| <https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/oct/23/binance-t...>
| perihelions wrote:
| Key line:
|
| > _" Since Trump's election, Binance has also been a key
| supporter of his family's World Liberty Financial crypto venture,
| a business that has driven a huge leap in the president's
| personal wealth."_
|
| "Huge leap" meaning $5 billion,
|
| https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-wlfi-world-liberty-financ... (
| _" New crypto token boosts Trump family's wealth by $5 billion"_)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| $5B, so far.
| kentm wrote:
| Not sure why you quote it, that's pretty huge. I'd call any
| double-digit percent increase on a billionaire's wealth huge.
| happytoexplain wrote:
| I _think_ the parent is quoting the phrase simply because
| they are defining it, and not using sarcasm quotes.
| perihelions wrote:
| (It's a literal quote of the WSJ).
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| They're saying it's an understatement.
| pacman1337 wrote:
| But Binance founder doesn't work for Binance anymore so why
| pardoning founder help Binance?
| peer2pay wrote:
| Because it sets a precedent
| nickfromseattle wrote:
| According to Binance, he owns 90%. Whether he is CEO or not
| probably doesn't prevent him from influencing Binance
| operations to support Trump's coin.
| ardent-flareup wrote:
| The current head of binance (and cofounder) is Yi He. Who
| happens to be in a relationship with CZ and is the mother of
| his children.
| b3ing wrote:
| So is Friedman next?
| cool_man_bob wrote:
| Didn't he donate to the wrong guy?
| spprashant wrote:
| No issues. Trump can forgive almost anything for the right
| price.
| andrewinardeer wrote:
| But does SBF have any money?
| delfinom wrote:
| His parents do. He was already a trustfund baby when he
| started.
| bmitc wrote:
| His parents are retired Stanford professors. Despite
| their criminal involvement in FTX, that isn't exactly the
| type of people Trump coddles too.
| electriclove wrote:
| You sure? What else do you know about his parents?
| overfeed wrote:
| Surely, they can't be worse than the Qataris?
| hn_acc1 wrote:
| I think he made public mention of "donating to the wrong guy"
| to get one side to like him more. IIRC, he donated similar or
| more to the "other" side, but just didn't make a big deal of
| it publicly.
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| It's a good thing Trump is as old as he is. Imagine if a 50 year
| old had this much influence over his party, could ignore any law,
| and stole this much money.
|
| May I never live to see such a thing happen in the US, but it
| doesn't feel unlikely.
| platevoltage wrote:
| We better hope JD Vance isn't able to capture the cult of
| personality after Trump is gone.
| spprashant wrote:
| JD Vance is a great debator, and might appeal to some urban
| Republic voters. But I don't see him having and away on the
| rural voters like Trump does.
| cool_man_bob wrote:
| I'm very confused. Rural voters can connect with a dynastic
| NYC real estate developer, but Vance at least has origins
| much closer to typical Americans.
|
| Is it just media nostalgia? Trump was on the TV shows they
| liked and so they trust him more?
| cg5280 wrote:
| A lot of politicians have tried to replicate Trump's
| style with limited success. We could probably debate
| forever what it is about Trump that makes him unique. I
| think his crude and abrasive personality won people over;
| it felt authentic and cathartic. Nowadays I think he has
| immense inertia.
| sieep wrote:
| I remember hearing a lot of sentiment mid-2010s about how
| since he was a successful businessman that he will make
| good decisions in the White House. America was longing
| for someone that wasn't 'status quo', so to say.
|
| I agree with you on the personality side, but I also
| think his overall fame from TV, real estate, etc. is just
| as big a factor to his political success.
| telchior wrote:
| Yeah the whole "successful businessman" schtick is pretty
| much a trope in US elections. Before Trump it was Ross
| Perot, before Perot it was others like Wendell Wilkie.
| Trump had that going for him AND the celebrity status
| like Reagan. These things are basically status buffs for
| elections in the US.
| CrimsonCape wrote:
| Trump opponents might cringe at thinking about Trump as a
| leader, but it is the origin of his success. The L word
| is generally over-used and over-ascribed. For example,
| leadership _might_ correlate with being a "hero" or
| being moral/just/fair,etc however there's lots of proof
| they don't correlate. It's a fallacy to think that a
| leader is also a hero. But some people do (fallaciously)
| ascribe these positive traits to leadership.
|
| That said, in his domain, Trump leads; he generates the
| headlines and everyone else follows them.
|
| Is JD Vance generating headlines? Barely. Is anyone else
| generating headlines? Lets consider a few:
|
| - Tim Walz: mainstream media tries to meme Walz into
| being a headline generator, but he isn't, and poses no
| serious contention
|
| - Mumar Gaddafi, Sadam Hussein, Hitler, Mussolini, etc:
| i'm not sure there has been a dictator that _did not_
| generate headlines.
|
| - Steve Jobs: strong headline generator, such that he
| could have run for president and likely won
|
| - pewdiepie: for a spell he was generating headlines, but
| mainstream media had no solid editorial narrative for the
| guy (and his hundreds of millions of followers) which
| posed a social risk. The more they discussed him, the
| more risk of society penduluming in some unpredictable
| way either by martyring him or amplifying his politics,
| so they chose the "ignore him and let whither" as a
| strategy which seemed to work, as he has drifted into
| Japan and been off-the-radar
|
| - Luigi Mangione: a nonzero number of liberal voters
| would decry Trump in one breath and cast a vote for
| Mangione to be a politician despite evidence he is a
| cold-blooded murderer. This probably won't change much
| after conviction.
|
| In conclusion, intelligent people are forced to lament
| the state of humanity in which leadership is game-ified
| so easily and yet so difficult to achieve. "How does one
| consistently generate headlines" is a difficult question
| to answer and seems to be one of the core essence of
| humanity. And, as described above, the origin of people's
| feelings of why a given person is successful.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Trump is also not afraid to say what a lot of people
| think. Telling a reporter they are "terrible" or talking
| about making America great. The way he does it resonates
| with a lot of folks.
| tartuffe78 wrote:
| My wife's aunt has been having delusions Trump wants her
| to help run the country, and maybe preparing for her to
| run for senate. She's bought "Trump Coins" that will make
| her rich when we does something in the future...
|
| It's a cult of personality that has taken over people's
| lives.
| JuniperMesos wrote:
| Yeah, I think this is probably a factor. In particular,
| the fact that Trump appeared a lot on professional
| wrestling TV has been cited as something that made many
| people in demographics who consume a lot of pro wrestling
| content familiar with him and inclined to view him
| favorably.
| ambicapter wrote:
| "I was told there wouldn't be fact-checking" is a great
| debater?
| bediger4000 wrote:
| I have doubts that JD Vance can pull off a Republican
| realignment to himself. He's not a 2nd gen wealthy person who
| assumes that every one will do his bidding.
| 9dev wrote:
| And trump himself isn't exactly that?
| bediger4000 wrote:
| He is precisely that, and I believe it's the secret of
| his success. Vance doesn't have that. Sure, he's wealthy
| now, but he didn't grow up with wealthy, narcissistic
| parents himself. Vance won't be able to command obedience
| reflexively, automatically, like Trump can, with attitude
| and habit alone.
| honkostani wrote:
| Such personality cultists usually filter for other great egos
| in there sphere, leaving behind burned out parties filled
| with syccophants. If the history of the USSR teaches us
| anything, the more dangerous aspirants are bookkeepers for
| the party, managing silently in the background, secret
| service personal and (checks notes) clowns? https://en.wikipe
| dia.org/wiki/Nikita_Khrushchev#Stalin's_fin...
| metalliqaz wrote:
| shameless corruption
| mandeepj wrote:
| I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to pardon.
| Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else can
| come out of it.
| SR2Z wrote:
| It's a consequence of the executive's power to... well,
| execute the law. They can simply decide to not focus
| prosecution on certain crimes. If they can do that, why not
| let them also pardon people?
| jdlshore wrote:
| No, it's based on English clemency.
| https://govfacts.org/explainer/the-presidential-pardon-
| power... has a nice explanation of the power and its
| history.
| malicka wrote:
| Unfortunately, sometimes our judges, juries, and officers are
| also biased or incorrect; pardons are useful when the
| delivery of justice was mistaken or excessive.
| mandeepj wrote:
| > pardons are useful when the delivery of justice was
| mistaken or excessive
|
| If you look at a slew of the recent pardons, the
| beneficiaries had already pleaded guilty. In those cases,
| the pardons should be ineligible. I think the most a
| President could do - should be - give defendants the
| ability to appeal the case to a new judge or jury. It's
| wrong and should be corrected! _Added it to my todo list_
| metalliqaz wrote:
| A guilty plea doesn't really mean actual guilt in the
| modern justice system. The state is overwhelmingly
| powerful in the cases it brings.
| garciasn wrote:
| Unfortunately, very often the best thing to do is just
| let them have their way and walk away with a lot less of
| a punishment than would be the case should you dare to
| fight them.
|
| Financially and personally, it's what they do to pressure
| you into submission. It happens from criminal cases all
| the way down to fucking family court. It's absurd and
| it's broken.
|
| I truly believe that almost every single attorney should
| have to lose sleep at night over how their actions impact
| others.
| fitblipper wrote:
| Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to
| operate outside of the rule of law without
| repercussions.Having one individual with strong incentives
| to enable their team stay in power as much as possible
| retain the power is shocking.
|
| Judges and juries are at least superficially removed from
| that sort of corrupt incentive system.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > Pardons only enable presidents to direct their goons to
| operate outside of the rule of law without repercussions.
|
| It is clear that they don't _only_ do that, as that has
| not been their principal (or even a common) use for most
| of the history of the pardon power.
|
| It is equally clear, however, that they _do_ allow that;
| the check on that, like on most discretionary
| Presidential powers, is the Congressional power of
| impeachment; obviously, that is not a meaningful
| constraint when the Congress and the President are
| _aligned_ on abuses, but the entire point of having
| separately elected bodies is to make it less likely that
| things that the public would see as abuses are supported
| by both political branches simultaneously. (Obviously,
| the fact that one whole house of Congress and 1 /3 of the
| other are elected at the same time as the President, and
| that the weighting of the electoral college for the
| President are a blend of the apportionment to the House
| and Senate makes those elections _less_ independent than
| one might want, even before considering the way the
| electoral structure contributors to partisan duopoly,
| though.)
| dymk wrote:
| That's not an argument for pardons, it's an argument for a
| better appeals process.
| ImJamal wrote:
| Presidents can pardon to provide a check on the courts. If
| congress doesn't like the pardon they can impeach the
| president.
| latexr wrote:
| > I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to
| pardon.
|
| Won't somebody please think of the ~~children~~ turkeys?!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Thanksgiving_Turkey_P.
| ..
|
| Joking aside, Wikipedia does have a history of it. It goes
| way back, way before the USA was even a thing.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_pardons_in_the_United_.
| ..
| jpadkins wrote:
| it's part of our Christian values.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > I'm not sure why Presidents were given the ability to
| pardon.
|
| Because of the impossibility of law written in advance
| perfectly covering all cases and to provide a mechanism for
| correction of overpunishment that cannot be effectively
| anticipated in crafting general law. (That's more the reason
| why the _traditional_ power of chief executives seen in state
| governments and the British government they were all more or
| less modeled on was retained when a federal executive was
| created; the US Constitution was very much not create _ex
| nihilo_ in a historical vaccuum.)
|
| > Besides corruption, bias, or self-interest, nothing else
| can come out of it.
|
| Every viewpoint is "bias" relative to every other viewpoint,
| so that piece is a nullity, but it is certain;y not the case
| that corruption and self-interest are the only impacts or
| motivations for applying the pardon power.
|
| Which isn't to say that there aren't arguments for putting
| more guardrails around the application of the power by the
| executive (or perhaps just radically changing the nature of
| the federal executive, to improve the application of its
| powers generally and not just the pardon power).
| Havoc wrote:
| Coffeezilla video about this is up already
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Holy shit, it runs deep.
| boringg wrote:
| Its so gross.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| No America is greater now! Heil Trump
| NaomiLehman wrote:
| I can't believe the dominant country is running this timeline.
| more_corn wrote:
| How much did he pay?
| tartoran wrote:
| We don't know but I guess it involved quite a bit of bitcoins
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| In contrast, SBF is still in jail despite being Biden's second
| biggest donor.
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'd say that SBF is a bigger crook in contrast. He gave himself
| a special privilege to withdraw unlimited funds from FTX.
| dmix wrote:
| SBF was sentenced to 25yrs, Binance guy got 4 months.
| potatototoo99 wrote:
| Give him time, there's plenty of Trump presidency to go.
| kobalsky wrote:
| CZ crime was not complying with anti laundering US laws, which
| basically meant he didn't do KYC to keep USA users out. He got
| 4 months.
|
| SBF stole user funds to basically role play as a billionare.
| a_ba wrote:
| It's high time the Republicans embrace their new leadership with
| a re-branding of their outfit's name and henceforth call
| themselves The Banana Republicans
| Animats wrote:
| I wonder if civil forfeiture will work against Trump once he's
| out of office. Trump's net worth before becoming President was
| under US$1 billion. Now it's over 6 billion. A civil claim for
| the difference based on the Emoluments Acts.
|
| _" The Foreign Emoluments Clause bars the president and other
| federal officials from accepting "any present, Emolument, Office,
| or Title, of any kind whatever, from any King, Prince, or foreign
| State" without the consent of Congress. It reflects the framers'
| desire to prevent federal officials from succumbing to foreign
| influence.
|
| The Domestic Emoluments Clause provides for the president to
| receive a fixed salary and bars him from receiving "any other
| Emolument from the United States, or any of them." It was
| designed to insulate the president against undo pressure from
| Congress or any individual state."_
|
| [1] https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-
| reports/emol...
| voidfunc wrote:
| You dont live in a country where Rule of Law matters anymore.
| krainboltgreene wrote:
| Rule of law? Anymore? No president has ever been punished in
| any meaningful capacity in our entire history. Washington
| used loopholes to avoid setting his slaves free[1] for christ
| sake.
|
| [1]: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/george-
| washington-...
| lukevp wrote:
| What about Nixon's impeachment and resignation? What about
| Trump being a convicted felon 5 ways to Sunday (yes they
| overturned this since he won again, but I doubt it would
| have gone this direction if he'd lost.)
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| I hope so. That way we can rebuild the White House the way it
| was and pay for it by seizing Mar-a-Lago and selling it off.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| Trump is a corrupt idiot and a terrible president, but the
| White House controversy is dumb too. I'm sure the addition
| will be ugly like everything Trump builds, but that building
| is not exactly a historic artifact that mustn't be mutated.
| It's been gutted more than once.
| yodsanklai wrote:
| > I'm sure the addition will be ugly like everything Trump
| builds
|
| Maybe it will serve as a reminder
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Bit like suggesting the controversy over bombing boats in
| the Caribbean is dumb because the U.S. has bombed ships
| before. The _way_ it 's happening is completely
| unprecedented and absurd.
| xpe wrote:
| My main issue is how Trump said one thing and did another:
|
| > "It won't interfere with the current building," Trump
| said on July 31. "It'll be near it, but not touching it,
| and pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm
| the biggest fan of." - NBC
|
| It seems probable he ignored any number of laws about how
| he did it, too.
| UncleMeat wrote:
| Just _imagine_ if Biden did this.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| No, this is pretty squarely outside the scope, and only
| specific amounts received from in-scope parties (i.e.
| governments) would be subject. And there's a standing issue.
| Basically the emoluments clause doesn't have real teeth for
| most purposes, even where it applies.
| Animats wrote:
| > only specific amounts received from in-scope parties
|
| Like Quatar and the used 747.
| Matticus_Rex wrote:
| It should apply there, though the first Trump admin argued
| a very narrow interpretation that mostly exempts the
| president in the first term, at the end of which the case
| was declared moot (leaving us in suspense about what SCOTUS
| would have said). Great commentary on emoluments and needed
| reforms in light of this here:
| https://www.execfunctions.org/p/trump-20-and-the-foreign-
| emo...
| Arubis wrote:
| I suspect Trump will leave office in a box, not on his feet.
| Such a civil claim would then have to be against his estate,
| which probably complicates things.
| mig39 wrote:
| > I wonder if civil forfeiture will work against Trump once
| he's out of office.
|
| He's only out of office if he dies. There's no way he's leaving
| voluntarily.
| odo1242 wrote:
| It would work in a situation involving Supreme Court-packing,
| and that's about it
| dreamcompiler wrote:
| I'm sure SBF and Elizabeth Holmes will be next.
| therein wrote:
| SBF, maybe. Elizabeth Holmes, no chance.
| mikkupikku wrote:
| You're probably right, because she smoozed with Biden, but
| with Trump anything is possible with the right bribes.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Does SBF have any ability to pay a bribe at this point?
|
| I suppose one might assume he has some funds stashed
| offshore somewhere.
| moomoo11 wrote:
| The Ivy League colleges should start campus on prisons
| for their alumni and other inmates who could learn and
| continue the grift.
| arandr0x wrote:
| His parents might but I don't think they're accepting
| bribes from Stanford profs. Maybe CZ can advocate for him
| to have a rival again.
| cestith wrote:
| Is it called a bribe at this point, or is it tribute?
| moralestapia wrote:
| No chance SBF ever goes out (until he's done with his
| sentence).
|
| Two huge factors against him:
|
| * Most people don't even know who CZ is, so this is meh-tier.
| People know SBF and find him repulsive, literally. Whoever
| puts SBF out of jail will face a massive PR backslash, he's
| not important enough to be worth that.
|
| * SBF stole from the rich, the only real crime in the US.
|
| Very few times you see someone who is equally hated by: the
| law, the public and the rich. He's screwed, lol.
| tripplyons wrote:
| I would add that SBF was at one point the 2nd largest donor
| to Democrats.
| jmull wrote:
| SBF/FTX was also a massive donor (using customer money)
| to Republicans. They routed that money through Ryan
| Salame, I guess to avoid appearing to be as unprincipled
| as they actually were.
|
| The common theme to the donations ("payoff" or "bribe"
| might be more accurate), whether to D or R was to weaken
| any push for crypto regulations.
| tripplyons wrote:
| Correct. I think it is fair to say that SBF would rather
| be associated with Democrats based on how he wanted to
| hide the donations to Republicans.
| jmull wrote:
| I'll bet he's kicking himself now... he made the wrong
| bet associating himself with Democrats, who let justice
| take its course despite the donations, when these days
| Trump will just take a payoff and issue a pardon.
| paulbjensen wrote:
| I watched this documentary:
|
| https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2023-ruin-ftx-
| documentary...
|
| The way CZ managed to tie up FTX in a knot was a
| masterclass. (about 59min in).
| Fnoord wrote:
| SBF was/is left (and I suppose mostly signaled rich in that
| camp), Ulbricht libertarian, but they were caught and
| therefore had to serve time in jail regardless. That is how
| our system works. SBF specialized in large scale grifting
| (like Madoff), Ulbricht in providing an anonymous platform
| for trafficking. They're competitors of Trump, but given
| their experience, intelligence, and disadvantage (jail
| time) if bend loyal they're an asset.
|
| It isn't about any of these people though. Trump is about
| only one thing: himself (a trade he shares with someone
| like KJU of North Korea). Specifically, as a narcissist,
| Trump is all about his image: business and might makes
| right, no matter the rules. Trump therefore hates the left,
| truth, honesty, ethics, empowering the weak and minorities,
| et cetera. Most importantly, he is signaling here: 'if you
| do business with me, we do the criminal path, and you get
| caught then I have the power to pardon your sentence.'
|
| Whether Trump is currently a criminal or not, he was and is
| a convicted felon.
|
| The above is also why I very much suspect Ghislaine Maxwell
| has dirt on Trump.
| cestith wrote:
| What are the odds Shkreli gets a pardon so he can be an
| officer of a publicly traded company again?
| toephu2 wrote:
| He's already out. Livestreaming his stock trades on X
| everyday. Probably has less interest in being an officer.
| He can still short pharma companies freely now.
| cestith wrote:
| A pardon has effect on more aspects of a sentence than
| the carceral period.
| jbmchuck wrote:
| Regarding your first point - how about George Santos? I
| suspect Santos was more well known than any of the crypto-
| scammers, was clearly guilty, was derided by both ends if
| the political spectrum - yet Trump commuted him.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Commute != pardon. Santos is still convicted and guilty
| of all of those charges. He just doesn't have to serve
| the rest of the sentence. I'm not sure if those were
| felony charges, but if they were and he's in a state that
| doesn't allow felons to vote...
|
| A pardon makes it all go away. None of the baggage of
| convictions follow. Finding a job or a place to live is
| something they can do, as well as voting again.
| timeon wrote:
| > massive PR backslash
|
| Personally I do not believe there can be PR backslash for
| convicted criminal voted in as president.
| wmf wrote:
| Only 16% but rising fast. https://polymarket.com/event/sbf-
| released-from-custody-in-20...
| tripplyons wrote:
| This particular market is too illiquid to mean anything.
|
| Right now, there is only about $500 in liquidity if you
| wanted to buy in at the 20% ask with a market order. After
| that the next sell limit order it as 96%.
| noitpmeder wrote:
| 2m in outstanding volume on Kalshi:
| https://kalshi.com/markets/kxtrumppardon/trump-
| pardons/kxtru...
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| That's the total market volume, not the volume on SBF.
| wslh wrote:
| I imagine at least one guy that could create the market for
| you and then get the profit.
| ugh123 wrote:
| I consider SBF's crime way less serious given that the end
| result actually _made_ money for "victims"* which was the
| intended goal from the start.
|
| However Binance guy knowingly commits money laundering and
| gets the pardon?
|
| * Those victims who did not wait through the full asset
| recovery process and sold their debt to "vulture investors"
| for pennies on the dollar.
| peter422 wrote:
| If your definition of "making money" is turning bitcoins
| into USD at bitcoins low point, and then paying that back
| to them in 2 years, alright.
|
| You can have whatever opinion you want about the bankruptcy
| process, but FTX was most certainly insolvent, due to
| fraud, and at that point whatever happened after the
| recovery to make people as whole as possible (which for
| many was not even close) really shouldn't get credited to
| SBF.
| sejje wrote:
| If he gets the blame for buying them, he gets the credit,
| too.
| jaredklewis wrote:
| Call me crazy, but if my bank tells me that my deposits
| are in safe assets like treasuries, but then the CEO
| takes the money to Vegas and puts it all on red, even if
| the CEO wins that bet, I'm very ok with that CEO going to
| jail.
|
| Of course, if the bank is upfront that they take customer
| deposits to Vegas, then its fine.
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| So he intended to get caught and have his investments
| seized and go up in value while seized. Noble.
| ugh123 wrote:
| Not necessarily. I think the intention was to drive up
| the value of FTX assets by investing in companies and
| coins that increased said value of the FTX platform. The
| value of held FTT was dependent on the value of FTX.
| tripplyons wrote:
| SBF already did an unauthorized interview in prison with Tucker
| Carslon.
| giarc wrote:
| Holmes has nothing to offer him.
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| Gislaine Maxwell will be next.
| doener wrote:
| "President Trump has pardoned Changpeng Zhao, the convicted
| founder of the crypto exchange Binance, following months of
| efforts by Zhao to boost the Trump family's own crypto company."
|
| You Americans elected a mobster as President.
| trhway wrote:
| I feel there is some perversion happened - the American culture
| in particular has been strong on a hero cutting through and
| going across the laws and rules toward his goals (and the
| recent years super-hero craze is an epitome of it). And i feel
| that in some perverse way Trump got tuned into such a hero
| storyline and naturally abusing it to no end for his own gain.
| nashashmi wrote:
| We Americans had our choices robbed of us. And we cannot think
| outside of the ballot sheet.
| npteljes wrote:
| I agree with you. The system is ridiculous, it gives the
| voter two options, and that's all. People point out that
| monopolies are bad, but a duopoly is very far from being a
| solution for it. Americans (and many other countries in the
| world) need better representation.
| computerdork wrote:
| Well, half us Americans did:) The other half is still in total
| disbelief
| calmworm wrote:
| Closer to 20% of Americans did.
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Disbelief, maybe. But you have to own it now.
|
| Once is an aberration. Twice is your democracy speaking.
| etchalon wrote:
| Eggs were so expensive though. /s
| sleepybrett wrote:
| You heard it everyone, crime is legal as long as you pay off the
| Don.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| If we ever get trump out of office we need to re-arrest every
| last one of these guys. The supremes can whine and cry as we keep
| them in prison. They can raise an army if the want anything
| different.
|
| Serious controls need to be placed around the pardon power.
| gleenn wrote:
| Double Jeopardy is disallowed in the United States, they would
| have to be convicted on new crimes.
| drjasonharrison wrote:
| So much of what DJT is doing should be disallowed but isn't.
| So we can disallow them and then add an amendment to reverse
| all DJT executive orders and pardons.
|
| I'm joking! Everything will be broken by then.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| Name them as terrorists on bullshit nonexistent evidence and
| disappear them to CECOT. We already know you can get away
| with it.
| sleepybrett wrote:
| that's for the gravy seals.. i mean ice gestapo. Send them
| where they sent the largely innocent.
| Teever wrote:
| They most certainly committed other crimes which were
| uncovered when they were investigated for the crimes that
| they were charged and now pardoned of.
|
| Also as I understand it, while the can't be tried twice for
| the same crime Federally, it's still possible that they can
| be tried in a state court for committing the same crime.
| electriclove wrote:
| Just the ones that Trump pardoned right?
| sleepybrett wrote:
| there are good pardons out there. People who were rotting in
| prison for small amounts of drugs, etc.
|
| .. but if you are trying to imply hunter biden, then fuck
| yeah I don't fucking care, put him in prison if that's what
| it takes.
| 9dev wrote:
| The moment pardons are abused, the whole concept should be
| abolished. Pandora's box is open now, unless you take it away,
| it'll be continued to be abused.
| fallinghawks wrote:
| It's all transactional. Do something Trump likes, he'll help you,
| laws, morals, and ethics be damned.
| tripplyons wrote:
| The pardoning of all of over 1000 people involved in January
| 6th is a good example of this.
| TheBlight wrote:
| What about pardoning 8,000 people by autopen?
| bmandale wrote:
| Is autopen a particular sore point in the US for some
| reason?
| TheBlight wrote:
| There's a potential implication that the president wasn't
| the one making the decisions and they were political
| favors doled out by unnamed and unaccountable staff. If
| the president felt strongly about that perception he
| could've signed them himself. But he seemingly didn't.
| etchalon wrote:
| The autopen has been widely used without controversy,
| including by Trump.
| gottorf wrote:
| The controversy with Biden is that the autopen was
| allegedly used without the President's knowledge or
| directive. Nobody has a problem with POTUS's signature
| getting on a piece of paper without his hand actually
| holding the pen; that's not the point here.
| etchalon wrote:
| There is absolutely no evidence it was used without his
| knowledge.
| mlyle wrote:
| "Allegedly" is the key word here. Alleged by people who
| allege a whole lot of untrue things and don't seem to
| have any evidence for this particular thing.
| tripplyons wrote:
| I think the conspiracy is that someone pardoned people
| without Joe Biden's approval right before Trump was
| inaugurated.
| topaz0 wrote:
| There's a conspiracy theory that Biden wasn't competent
| enough to sign stuff, at least for some period at the end
| of his term, with the implication being that none of
| those presidential acts are valid. Anybody who believes
| this is mired in an impenetrable misinformation bubble
| and should be dismissed out of hand.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Yet you can decide that the secret documents store in
| your toilet are declassified with a thought?
| CyberDildonics wrote:
| There is not, but right wing propaganda avoids lots of
| actual news, events and statements because it doesn't
| look good.
|
| To fill the time there are lots of narratives about non
| issues without evidence.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| Ah yes. Pardoning folks who were imprisoned for possession
| of marijuana is exactly the same--worse even, because
| "autopen"--as pardoning folks who were imprisoned for
| insurrection / political violence in support of the guy
| doing the pardoning. Very smart take.
| TheBlight wrote:
| No one was imprisoned for "insurrection." The vast
| majority were charged only with entering restricted
| grounds.
| the_gastropod wrote:
| 18 were charged with seditious conspiracy. Over 500 were
| charged with assaulting, resisting, or impeding law
| enforcement officers. And many more were still awaiting
| trial, including Daniel Ball, who was accused of throwing
| explosives at police officers, were also pardoned by
| Trump. Many of these pardoned individuals have gone on to
| commit further felonies, including Daniel Ball, who was
| just arrested for plotting to murder Hakeem Jeffries.
|
| But again, you seem to be missing the point: a president
| pardoning people who support him is very different than
| pardoning ordinary people who were imprisoned for crimes
| that are no longer crimes.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Biden issued several blanket pardons for any crimes that
| people may have committed for a period of a decade. That
| doesn't strike me as particularly discerning.
| hobs wrote:
| Your comments don't strike me as engaging with the
| material of anyone elses unless you can score political
| points, why are you here?
| Hikikomori wrote:
| Was he bribed to do so?
| xpe wrote:
| > What about pardoning 8,000 people by autopen?
|
| Is there more to this comment than whataboutism? The core
| concern raised in this part of the thread is Trump's
| outsized corruption:
|
| > It's all transactional. Do something Trump likes, he'll
| help you, laws, morals, and ethics be damned.
| daveguy wrote:
| At this point, I wouldn't touch crypto with a 10 ft pole. What
| happens when everyone recognizes that the whole thing has turned
| into a money laundering grift? Who's going to give you anything
| for your bozo bucks? At this rate, it's not going to take long.
| toastgrave wrote:
| Hasn't that been apparent for years now though? It's a cool
| idea but really no real use that doesn't boil down to some sort
| of crime
| daveguy wrote:
| Yeah, I don't think the dominos will fall until the next
| flash crash when people realize it takes $100+ just to
| withdraw (because 7 transactions per second isn't many). As
| soon as confidence is lost, the reaction will be full blown
| tulip market. We just haven't seen the first bank run yet.
| And there is literally no backstop for a crypto bank run.
| snek_case wrote:
| Will definitely be entertaining to watch if it happens.
| tadfisher wrote:
| Oh, there will be runs.
|
| If they remove the guardrails keeping crypto out of the
| regulated financial industry (read: KYC and AML
| requirements), your bank deposits will absolutely be
| comingled with toxic crypto assets, because it will be way
| cheaper to avoid paying compliance people than the
| transaction fees.
| mrb wrote:
| It doesn't take $100 to transfer. Fees are currently around
| $1. You are off by a factor 100!
|
| Also, Bitcoin can process far more than 7 tps through the
| Lighting network.
|
| I wonder where your misconceptions come from?
| wmf wrote:
| Maybe there's an alternate timeline where crypto was
| legalized and regulated into something like fair gambling...
| but that's not what we're getting. Anyone getting into crypto
| now is just a sucker to be milked dry.
| marcuskane2 wrote:
| I think like, 90% of the crypto trading volume is by people who
| know it's all a grift, but are hoping to get rich while the
| music is still playing.
|
| People knowingly buy into pump & dumps, gambling that they're
| on the early (pump) side and hoping to get out before the dump.
|
| People will happily collect commissions selling products they
| know are scams or will happily collect management fees for
| parking investor's capital into grifts.
|
| You'll never get truly everyone to recognize it, and it only
| takes one sucker at the poker table to keep every seat filled.
| dylan604 wrote:
| > People knowingly buy into pump & dumps, gambling that
| they're on the early (pump) side and hoping to get out before
| the dump
|
| I recently heard of a real estate person that wound up buying
| an entire neighborhood around one of the stadiums for next
| year's World Cup. The impetus for this decision was to jack
| up the rates during the tournament, and then sell them off
| after. Another person thinks renting a bunch of Teslas and
| then placing them Touro will be another get rich idea during
| the World Cup. There are all sorts of people that think they
| are smarter than everyone else and are so confident they just
| cannot think of any ways their idea will fail.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| You might want to go look at CDO's... or synthetic CDOs.
|
| In comparison, crypto looks like a rational product relative to
| that.
| fancyfredbot wrote:
| The bad idea was making bad loans, putting them in CDOs, and
| then using flawed models to certify them as risk free. That's
| irrational.
|
| Dividing up the credit risk on a pool of loans so that some
| people lose money only if all the loans go bad is a very good
| idea. You just need to make sure they are good loans.
| scrps wrote:
| The irony being it would actually help lower the barrier
| for entry a little to get a home loan on the consumer end
| of the spectrum but as you said they dropped that barrier
| subterranean and then predatory crap like payment-option
| ARMs and a massive lack of informed consent.
| slg wrote:
| > What happens when everyone recognizes that the whole thing
| has turned into a money laundering grift?
|
| Part of the problem is that this seems to describe most of the
| economy now. Maybe not specifically money laundering, but it's
| all a grift whether we are talking about Binance, OpenAI, or
| Skydance-Paramount. There are grifts everywhere which just
| encourages more grifts as people see the resulting success and
| lack of consequences.
| rvz wrote:
| I am sorry to tell you that the majority of the services that
| you may be using (Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic, PayPal, etc) all
| have exposure or have some form of funding by crypto.
|
| > Who's going to give you anything for your bozo bucks? At this
| rate, it's not going to take long.
|
| It's already here. Scan your eye-balls for some Worldcoins
| ($WLD) to prove you are not a LLM bot.
| stusmall wrote:
| It won't be bozo bucks because like you said it has a real
| value. Having international, anonymous, instant money
| laundering machine is invaluable. It will take legislation to
| criminalize people from taking part in the money laundering
| machine to kill the value. That isn't happening in the next 3
| years.
| npteljes wrote:
| What makes you think that the participants are not in on the
| grift? People are different, some rather supports wholesome
| stuff, some don't give an f. And it's not just morals that
| differ, risk-taking is also individually different (and can
| change with age and other life situation too).
| WheatMillington wrote:
| It's incredible that American corruption can happen out in the
| open like this. And this isn't a uniquely Trump phenomena.
| Political pardons are an amazing thing, and they have been used
| by presidents for a long time now with extremely little scrutiny
| and no possibility for repercussions. The executive being able to
| overrule the judiciary is an absolutely jaw-dropping American
| institution. So much for checks and balances.
| TheBlight wrote:
| There's an argument the prosecution was political. See:
| https://x.com/balajis/status/1981423831572238856
| nativeit wrote:
| Because Trump couldn't have that!
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| The prosecution was _not_ political lol, he went out of his
| way to support money laundering on the Binance platform. The
| reason he complied with the prosecution and pled guilty
| rather than try to fight it out in court was that they were
| able to produce a ton of evidence that he deliberately
| ignored regulators and regulations designed to prevent money
| laundering in order to make money off sanctioned groups and
| criminal organizations using the exchange as a way to
| circumvent KYC /AML laws. Please don't take what Balaji says
| about companies he invested in at face value.
| TheBlight wrote:
| Balaji was the former CTO of a rival company. Wouldn't he
| be incentivized to not support CZ?
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| No. The entire crypto ecosystem requires a steady
| infusion of capital and an absence of regulations to
| prosper, since their primary use case outside of
| speculation is for handling money by people who can't get
| past normal KYC/AML checks. If those people no longer
| have anywhere to on/off ramp into the crypto ecosystem,
| most of its "legitimate" (in the sense of actually
| getting real value out of it rather than just
| speculating) use goes away.
| TheBlight wrote:
| I don't think you know what you're talking about. Surely
| everyone on the Coinbase platform is vetted seeing as
| they're a publicly traded company. Presumably the vast
| majority of Binance users are not in fact money
| launderers.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| "People who don't want KYC/AML checks" are not
| necessarily money launderers, and there are still plenty
| of people who just want to speculate. But money
| launderers are the people who need to send _vast_ amounts
| of money through the crypto ecosystem and represented a
| very significant fraction of the assets managed by
| Binance (not that this actually affects whether what they
| were doing was illegal or not, BTW). Maybe you should
| read the indictment to find out what was actually going
| on, instead of making claims based on what seems
| reasonable to you!
|
| (Frankly, the idea that being convicted for making the
| conscious decision to go out of your way to circumvent
| KYC/AML laws is somehow the result of partisan bias is
| ridiculous in itself, so none of this [or how Balaji
| claims to feel about the matter] is even really
| relevant).
| cthalupa wrote:
| No. He had the same financial incentives to not want to
| have to worry about the BSA and dealing with AML etc. as
| CZ.
|
| This is not a company vs. company sort of issue, this is
| a "I want to avoid regulations that would cost me money
| as a fundamental aspect of my industry " issue.
|
| If Coinbase thought they could legally not worry about
| all of this, do you think they would want to deal with
| it?
|
| The sheer quantity of money used in cryptocurrency for
| money laundering and activity where traditional payment
| processors will not accept payments (largely illegal,
| e.g. drugs, counterfeit goods) also means that the
| keeping the ecosystem healthy involves having ways for
| this money to flow.
| dc396 wrote:
| It must really suck and be incredibly disheartening to be
| one of the folks who pursued this to a conviction.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| The justifications for why the pardon is okay are
| ridiculously flimsy and I assumed that it was because
| they weren't really trying, but bewilderingly it does
| actually appear to have convinced some credulous people
| on Hacker News, so I suppose enough consent was
| manufactured that people think going out of your way to
| let money launderers use your platform is not a big deal?
| Maybe it's because people don't understand that typically
| the reason people launder money is _because they
| committed major crimes to get that money_ and have no way
| to actually use it without getting caught.
|
| For example if your crypto is the proceeds of ransomware,
| you're going to have a hard time cashing out without
| using something like Monero (which effectively has no
| offramps) without going through an exchange that knows
| perfectly well that you're trying to touch tainted goods.
| Exchanges like Binance that just don't bother to check
| who their customers are when they withdraw cash for such
| assets are just as critical to the ransomware plague as
| any security bug or social engineering issue. It's one of
| the reasons that pre-crypto, even though ransomware was
| technically feasible, it was never able to grow into a
| large-scale operation--no offramps. But hey maybe the
| official stance of CZ supporters is now that ransomware
| is good, actually, and if you don't like it it's because
| you have partisan bias (???)
| drak0n1c wrote:
| Those prosecutors were deeply embarrassed by missing FTX
| at the time, so they then had the SEC and IRS harass and
| threaten innocent US citizens in Japan and the US as they
| fished for charges merely because they happened to once
| work for or hung out with CZ or employees at Binance.
|
| CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in
| U.S. history to receive a prison sentence for this
| single, non-fraud-related charge of improper platform AML
| KYC implementation. The judge found no evidence that he
| knew of any illicit transactions and that it was
| reasonable for him to believe there were no illicit funds
| on the platform. Credit where it's due, they somehow
| pulled off a 4 month sentence for this unprecedented
| charge. And now it's all for naught.
| j2kun wrote:
| balajis is personally invested in propping up the ecosystem.
| TheBlight wrote:
| How does pardoning CZ "prop up the ecosystem"?
| jmull wrote:
| It sends a clear message: Pay off Trump and you can
| ignore financial rules with impunity.
| rabf wrote:
| He had already served his sentance.
| jmull wrote:
| That message is still crystal clear, is it not?
| inkysigma wrote:
| Sorry, is this person comparing the rights and immunities of
| a head of a sovereign nation to those of a CEO of a company?
| I don't think France, as a sovereign country, is completely
| bound by US law whereas binance, when it is operating in US
| jurisdiction is. I'm not totally familiar with US finance law
| but I'm pretty sure a more fair comparison would be to other
| banks where KYC requirements and anti money laundering rules
| can be strict. From what I read about the prosecution,
| Binance ignored many warning signs from their own executives
| about the possibility and the lack of controls within their
| platform to comply with the law.
| jmull wrote:
| It's not much of an argument... he wasn't being held
| responsible for the actions of a few binance users, we was
| being held responsible for his own failure to implement
| compliance processes required by law.
|
| The laws exist to restrict funding for countries under
| sanction, drug operations, terrorist organizations, etc.
|
| We can argue about whether these laws are a good idea (either
| in general or in specific details), but you need to change
| the law, not just now follow it.
|
| This is a terrible precedent... unless you're a con man, that
| is. (Balaji Srinivasan isn't stupid. I would guess he
| understands how real what he's arguing here is.)
| Mars008 wrote:
| > And this isn't a uniquely Trump phenomena
|
| Reminds of Biden pardoning his relatives without even saying
| for what. Just blanked pardon for everything. No democrat
| dropped his jaw.
| etchalon wrote:
| He was pretty explicit about the reason why.
|
| He feared Trump would force the DOJ to prosecute them.
|
| And, based on what Trump's done so far with the DOJ and his
| enemies, he was right to do so.
| tradertef wrote:
| "My president is right to pardon whoever it likes, but not
| your president.. "
|
| I think this whole pardoning thing should go away. It makes
| the presidents Kings.
| etchalon wrote:
| In no part of my post was there anything about my
| president vs. your president.
| dc396 wrote:
| If the goal of the pardon was to handle a corrupt
| Judicial branch, then a better answer would have been for
| the Executive branch to nominate someone for a pardon to
| the Legislative and require a 2/3 majority of the
| Legislative to approve.
|
| But something like that would fly in the face of the
| "Unitary Executive" insanity and would (I suspect)
| require a constitutional amendment, which is no longer
| remotely feasible.
| cauch wrote:
| That's not the point of the comment.
|
| A first comment said "without saying why". The second
| comment just says that this is blatantly not true, and
| that the rationale presented has been since confirmed as
| a very accurate prediction.
| xpe wrote:
| > Reminds of Biden pardoning his relatives without even
| saying for what. Just blanked pardon for everything. No
| democrat dropped his jaw.
|
| _Everyone_ I talked to (more than 10, including myself) that
| I knew who voted for Biden was pissed, disappointed, even
| angry at his pardoning of Hunter.
| Jweb_Guru wrote:
| That was incredibly corrupt and many Democrats in fact
| "dropped [their] jaws." And it's not the only instance of
| political corruption like this, either (Bill Clinton
| notoriously did something similar). Neither of these cases
| retroactively justify Trump pardoning anyone who sends him a
| few million dollars.
| jajuuka wrote:
| I mean the pardon was the check and balance on the judiciary.
| However it's been turned into a tool for personal gain than a
| saving grace for mistakes of the federal crimes convictions.
| Both parties have pushed for this monarchic power to be
| expanded over time. I think it has a place but much like a lot
| of the federal government it needs a complete overhaul. The
| checks and balances system works alright but when a unitary
| party controls every branch there is no one to check that
| power.
| libertine wrote:
| It's like there's a new social contract that states: it's not
| corruption if it's done in the open.
| dboreham wrote:
| The US has always been kind of scammy vs other western
| nations. In the movie when he says "have you no shame sir?",
| the answer typically is "nope".
| Hikikomori wrote:
| The American dream is basically getting rich by scamming.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The executive being able to overrule the judiciary is an
| absolutely jaw-dropping American institution.
|
| No, its not, pardon and the closely linked power of clemency
| are common powers in representative democracies, often situated
| with the chief of state or the head of government (in the US,
| and other Presidential systems, the President is both), or
| sometimes the cabinet instead of the head of government in a
| parliamentary or semi-parliamentary system (in some cases, one
| or the other is assigned by law to a subordinate bureaucracy
| rather than being HoS/cabinet discretion, as is the case with
| pardon but not clemency in Canada.) It is _generally_ more used
| in the US than other Western states, in part because the US has
| a _much_ harsher criminal justice system with much longer
| sentences and much weaker provisions for relief _other_ than
| executive pardon than other systems, but the power itself is
| common. [0]
|
| The way it is used under Trump is wildly abnormal (for the US
| or the other representative democracies), though.
|
| [0] see, e.g., https://www.seattletimes.com/nation-
| world/pardon-power-is-co... ;
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon ; etc.
| dcchambers wrote:
| The US is a banana republic now. Absolute joke of an
| administration.
| seany wrote:
| Seems like just nuking the stupid AML rules would be better.
| IshKebab wrote:
| What if some criminal blatantly says "I'll give you $1bn if you
| pardon me" and Trump does it? Is that enough for something to
| happen? Because it seems like that's the only place we can go
| from here...
| fudged71 wrote:
| The bar is much lower
| https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/27/us/politics/trump-pardon-...
| nerdponx wrote:
| The currency here is loyalty, not USD.
| covercash wrote:
| It's not enough. The only thing that might make a difference
| will get this comment removed. And we may have even passed the
| point for that to have an impact.
| CuriouslyC wrote:
| The states are going to start engaging in economic warfare
| with the federal government before too long.
| nerdponx wrote:
| That would be technically illegal rather than merely repugnant.
| It would not however be illegal if the criminal dropped a hint
| in the news that he would donate to, say, a ballroom that was
| to be named after the president.
|
| And even if it were outright illegal, the Supreme Court has now
| ruled that the president is personally immune from criminal
| prosecution as long as they claim that their illegal activity
| was carried out in the course of their presidential duties, and
| not a personal crime committed on the side. Which leaves
| congressional impeachment and conviction as the sole recourse
| against presidential misbehavior. Which becomes a problem when
| the majority in Congress doesn't care that the president is
| doing illegal things. We haven't had a constitutional crisis
| like this since the FDR administration.
| Alifatisk wrote:
| I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this
| corrupt leader? He even does this bizarre maffia like deals out
| in the open for his own interest, that's how confident he is no
| one will say anything
|
| The message is clear from his circus administration, you can do
| anything as long as you bribe them
| mbfg wrote:
| "I Could ... Shoot Somebody, And I Wouldn't Lose Any Voters" -
| Trump
| j2kun wrote:
| They wouldn't be fine with it if they understood it. Instead
| they are not paying attention and only consuming propaganda
| media (Fox News) that refuses to report on Trump negatively in
| any way.
| yanslookup wrote:
| Not sure we can blame fox news, it has like 5MM peak daily
| viewership...
|
| FB, Twitter, Tiktok on the other hand...
| mmooss wrote:
| Note that they all are, or will soon be controlled by one
| political grouping.
| coliveira wrote:
| We're long past the time when FoxNews was the main vector.
| Now the propaganda is coming from social networks and
| mainstream media that is afraid of consequences if they tell
| the truth. It's all just a big mafia system.
| froggertoaster wrote:
| Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| If you're not fine with criminals who get away with fraud,
| why vote for a well known fraudster? He's been conning people
| since the 80s
| vel0city wrote:
| Honestly, why did you vote for this then?
| greenpizza13 wrote:
| Well, you voted for it. Were you not capable of critical
| thought when you entered the voting booth?
| leptons wrote:
| You knew who he is, and you voted for him anyway. You really
| didn't see this kind of rampant corruption coming from his
| 2nd term?
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| Trump is the most openly corrupt leader in american history.
| How can you vote for him while claiming to be against
| corruption?
| naijaboiler wrote:
| Because he's giving them the one thing they really care
| about "white nationalism"
|
| They will overlook everything else he does. Everything
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Just stop with that BS. I guarantee that "white
| nationalism" was the farthest thing from the majority of
| Trump voters mind. If you come out of the gate saying all
| Trump supporters are racist most people are just going to
| roll their eyes at you at walk away. You have already
| told them you dont like them and that you will most
| likely not even entertain their reasons as acceptable.
| jakelazaroff wrote:
| What exactly did you think you were voting for then?
| Because everything he's done has been extremely
| predictable.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| A chance of making the federal government smaller and
| less overbearing. Also a path that didn't inevitably lead
| to civil war.
| cthalupa wrote:
| Serious set of questions here from someone desperately trying
| to understand people who voted for Trump and how to have
| conversations with them that can be productive. None of them
| are meant to be insulting or insinuate anything.
|
| To me, this sort of behavior just seems par for the course
| for how he has been acting since before his presidency. Did
| you follow his record in business and politics closely prior
| to voting for him? If so, what mitigating factors were there
| that let you still feel comfortable in voting for him?
|
| Is this an isolated source of issue with him? Part of a
| broader trend? In either case, is it/these a big enough deal
| for him to lose your support moving forward? For the rest of
| the political party supporting him?
|
| If there has been a shift in your ability to support him,
| what is it that broke the camel's back?
| econ wrote:
| It is remarkably simple. There are countless meals on the
| menu but people get to see only the two on the front page.
| Say, monkey brains and bull testicles. Few can really
| appreciate either. There is a little talk about the slugs
| on page 1. An abysmal small number will turn a few pages
| and look over the burgers and pizzas... but you can't
| really order a burger in a restaurant like this? Can you?
| So even they pretend they really like to eat testicles.
|
| You could have literally opened a random page and order
| whatever is on there. It is perfectly safe to order the
| burger as you will most likely be served monkey brains
| anyway.
|
| No one will rage at you for voting for Afroman. There are
| no dire consequences.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Not OP but I reluctantly voted for Trump because of the
| direction he proclaimed he wanted the country to go. I
| could not tolerate the direction the democrats were wanting
| to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil war.
|
| But I knew Trump was shady and didn't like that he partied
| with Epstein in the 90s. A country takes a long time to
| change directions. I saw a chance for a smaller less
| restricting federal government. It was a gamble I was
| willing to take to at least get the ship turning around.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > I could not tolerate the direction the democrats were
| wanting to go as it seemed an inevitable path to civil
| war.
|
| Trumps action with ICE will lead to waco situations.
| Undocumented immigrants can obtain guns in this country
| and will not continue to go quietly into the night. Seems
| to me that his actions are far more likely to lead to
| civil war
| pxc wrote:
| J/w: what direction does it seem to you that Democrats
| want? At least judging by its elected officials and
| internal leaders, it seems like a pretty directionless
| party to me.
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Flooding the nation with immigrants and given them our
| tax money. That is a 100% sure path to civil war.
| smt88 wrote:
| People are going to pile on you for not seeing this coming,
| but I really do appreciate your ability to change your mind
| and tell people about it.
|
| People need space to make a U-turn. I hope you get some grace
| because it's a lot easier to say "I told you so" than "I was
| wrong."
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| > People need space to make a U-turn
|
| The problem is we dont believe him. There has been ample
| time to make a u turn. A decade at this point. Trump has
| never shied away from his corruption. He has been upfront
| about his intentions from the beginning. I just do not
| believe that this is the straw that broke the camels back
| when so many straws have come before.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I don't see where the GP changed their mind. They may not
| be ok with this particular action while still preferring
| the current administration to any alternative.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| How wasn't his first 4 years enough time?
| lostdog wrote:
| > Hi, Trump voter here. I'm NOT fine with this.
|
| Welcome to the resistance!
|
| Just curious. Since you voted for someone who is a terrible
| President last time, what are you planning to change about
| how you make voting decisions next time? Are there particular
| people or media you plan to listen to less, and others more?
| Particular aspects you will weight higher or lower?
| vkou wrote:
| If you think this is wrong, please, I implore you to do
| something about it.
|
| Your reps (or likely preferred choice of reps, if they didn't
| win their district) are enabling this, and don't give two
| shits about anything I say.
| 0xTJ wrote:
| He was clear about how he intended to run the country in his
| last term. And in the lead-up to the election. You are
| complicit in his crimes.
| coliveira wrote:
| Americans cannot accept they have a corrupt government lead by
| a corrupt politician who is now corrupting the justice system.
| They prefer to continue propagating the myth of a "healthy
| democracy" and "open market".
| leptons wrote:
| I personally do not know any Americans that are as you
| described. 1/3 of Americans are as you describe, 1/3 are
| definitely not at all as you described, and another 1/3 is
| too apathetic to care about anything.
|
| The recent "No Kings" protests were the largest in US
| history.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_protests_and_demonstra.
| ..
| RandallBrown wrote:
| > 1/3 is too apathetic to care about anything
|
| I think at least some of that 1/3 has their own problems
| that prevent them from being able to devote energy to
| politics
| taurath wrote:
| I mean, their problems are politics, they just can't do
| anything about them
| econ wrote:
| There are many things anyone can do. You are not giving
| enough credit to the people shutting them down one by
| one. You won't hear them say they can't do anything.
| leptons wrote:
| I know of way too many people that "aren't political" or
| just don't want to think about it. That's not the same as
| "having their own problems", that's juvenile behavior.
| KaiserPro wrote:
| Worrying about politics is the luxury of chattering
| classes.
|
| Try living on or very near the poverty line, and then try
| and spend time worrying about politics. You are worrying
| about much more real (to you) problems.
|
| When shit gets bad enough to motivate people on the
| poverty line, you're in deep shite.
| antegamisou wrote:
| This has to be the most American thing I've ever read:
| the cognitive dissonance of the disconnect between income
| inequality and political systems.
| silverquiet wrote:
| I've got a (probably former at this point) buddy who
| makes less than $15K/year. He seems to have lots of time
| to listen to right wing propaganda podcasts and likes
| telling "jokes" about how minorities are problematic. He
| was never really interested in politics when we were
| growing up and I suspect never voted before 2024. Poor
| people have interests and opinions too.
| mmooss wrote:
| > that's juvenile behavior
|
| IMHO those words are based on an immature understanding
| of human beings and their limitations.
|
| We not only have physical, financial, and temporal
| limits; even more powerfully, we have emotional limits.
| When we're scared or traumatized, we often can't act
| except to keep things immediately safe as much as they
| can; we are in survival mode. That's also how bad leaders
| get good people to do evil things - terrorize them, push
| them into survival mode, and direct their fear at the
| leader's targets.
|
| What we can do is recognize those mechanisms and
| limitations in ourselves, using empathy (a universal
| human trait), our frontal cortex, and compassion - always
| the first step to taking of our emotions and being
| effective - and recognize it in others. Calling them
| names only traumatizes them more. Empathy and compassion
| gets them to a better place where they can act. It's not
| easy - that's why the word 'courage' exists; that's why
| it's sometimes called, 'grace under pressure'.
|
| Effective leaders know this. What we're missing - what so
| many people are missing - is good, effective leaders.
| AFAICT, the leaders we'd expect to rise to this occasion
| also are traumatized - and they have an obligation to do
| better if they want to be leaders.
| lazide wrote:
| This doesn't actually work in the real world where people
| cannot be isolated from or protected from people who keep
| doing this to them.
|
| You can't 'out empathize' someone doing 24/7 manipulation
| against people.
|
| The only thing that works are real consequences against
| bad actors.
|
| And that there was no real consequences for bad actors is
| exactly why we are in the situation we are in now.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Or maybe people don't want to discuss politics with you
| because they know you'll label them juvenile, racist,
| vile POS and saying _they aren't political_ is the
| easiest way out of getting into a heated argument with
| you at the BBQ party. Most sane people know that arguing
| with you will not change anything (neither your opinion,
| nor the sad facts that we are all ruled by criminals no
| matter who we vote for).
|
| I'm following politics and I have my opinions about
| things but you can be sure I won't be discussing them
| with coworkers and friends.
| tadfisher wrote:
| This is measured via election participation, so a
| confounding factor is the recent uptick in voter
| suppression tactics; these tactics are employed most
| visibly in states with large minority populations (e.g.
| states in the Deep South).
|
| These tactics include: consolidating polling places in
| urban areas; restricting the ability to submit an
| absentee ballot or otherwise vote by mail; restricting
| early voting; voter ID laws; and "poll watchers" who
| intimidate those at polling places, sometimes illegally.
|
| Moreover, those forced to vote in-person at polling
| places are not given time off from employment to do so.
| This overwhelmingly disenfranchises the working class,
| who just so happen to overwhelmingly vote for progressive
| policies that favor the working class over the
| middle/upper classes.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| They may also have been drawn into the all-too-tempting
| position of not opposing raw corrupt authoritarianism
| because the opposition party (the Democratic Party) and
| pre-Trump America both have deep flaws that are largely
| ignored.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Exactly. Very few Americans are out there actively
| "promoting the myth" right now that aren't ideologically
| aligned with the current Republican administration. That's
| a distinct (if significant) minority.
|
| Also, while I believe _more_ Americans should be
| protesting, people in other countries (like myself, at one
| point) may have an inaccurate idea about what heavy US
| protest "ought to" look like in the media they see.
|
| We'd _love_ to be protesting at the iconic White House and
| federal Capitol building, creating horizon-to-horizon
| crowds for the rest of the world to marvel at... But for me
| (and ~40% of the population) that 's a 3500-3700 km trip.
| How often would you expect someone in Portugal to travel
| the distance to _Moscow_ for a day of protest? (Worse,
| assume no good trains.)
|
| Instead, we gather at local state locations, which will
| typically not get shown (or recognized) internationally,
| except when folded into a sentence about how "millions
| protested across the nation."
| consumer451 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Normalcy_bias explains so much
| of our world.
| mulmen wrote:
| This is obviously false based on widespread protests and
| constant criticism. If you can't find Americans who oppose
| Trump's regime it's because you don't want to.
| jpadkins wrote:
| The choice was between two corrupt options (same as its been
| for a long time). There is a lot of evidence coming out that
| the Biden administration was corrupting the justice system,
| FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the DNC and his
| family.
|
| Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the DNC
| nexus (we all know Biden wasn't running the show, and neither
| would Harris).
| piva00 wrote:
| > Honestly, the billionaire is less corrupt-able than the
| DNC nexus
|
| This is satire, right?
| antegamisou wrote:
| The grandparent comment shouldn't be wondering about
| anything now, should they....
| timeon wrote:
| > billionaire is less corrupt
|
| Why would you think that? Do you think that presents from
| foreign dictators (like plane or investment in crypto fund)
| are less corrupt?
| afavour wrote:
| > There is a lot of evidence coming out that the Biden
| administration was corrupting the justice system
|
| This kind of vague fluffy language is becoming very common.
| What evidence? Where is it coming out from?
| j-krieger wrote:
| Not a fan of the other guy but keeping a decrepit old man
| from the press because you know he can't do the job, all
| while - surprise surprise - the exact same guy who is
| older than my grandpa when he died gets diagnosed with a
| long time form of stage 4 bone cancer that can't possibly
| have gone unnoticed while he was having access to
| presidential healthcare is kind of a big deal.
| afavour wrote:
| What does that have to do with "corrupting the justice
| system, FBI, and foreign relations for the benefit of the
| DNC and his family"?
|
| If anything it would be a counter argument. Always
| strikes me as odd that Biden is somehow both a senile
| decrepit old man _and_ a criminal mastermind depending on
| which is most useful at any given moment.
| seviu wrote:
| You would be surprised...
|
| Regarding CZ and Binance and the Trumps, they have kind of a
| symbiotic relationship.
|
| After Binance and CZ pleaded guilty to money laundering in
| November 2023, for which they paid over $4 billions in fines,
| WLFI (which is a clone of AAVE belonging to the Trump family)
| launched a stablecoin called USD1. Magically on March 2025,
| $2 billion flowed into Binance through MGX, a state backed
| Abu Dhabi fund, later revealed to have been paid in USD1 (two
| months before it was unveiled and without at the time no
| effective audits), effectively propping WLFI's coin (backed,
| unbacked, nobody knows, I assume backed). CZ applied for a
| presidential pardon inmediately after in May 2025.
|
| WLFI now gets to earn about $60-80 million per year in yield
| from the USD1...
|
| ...As long as Binance doesn't redeem those $2 billion.
|
| I still don't know what MGX got out of this deal, but I am
| pretty sure they didn't walk empty handed.
| meowface wrote:
| For anyone unaware, financial fraud investigation YouTuber
| Coffeezilla just released a good video laying this all out
| a few hours ago:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
| tastyfreeze wrote:
| Even if you accept it, what are you going to do? Violence is
| not an acceptable option for most people. So, we carry on.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Most polls that I've seen show it closer to 40% than half
| lateforwork wrote:
| Yes, and that's depressing. Why are so many people not
| understanding what is going on?
|
| Reminds me of this Bill Gates quote: "We were a bit naive: we
| thought the internet, with the availability of information,
| would make us all a lot more factual. The fact that people
| would seek out--kind of a niche of misinformation--we were a
| bit naive."
| ilikecakeandpie wrote:
| It's not half. I think close to 32% were fully supportive
| (voted for him) and around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in
| practicality they basically said they were fine with whoever
| won.
|
| I don't know which is worse, that 32% were in support of the
| corrupt leader or that 68% in total are either supported him or
| didn't care enough to support anyone else
| thunky wrote:
| > around 36% sat at home or abstained, but in practicality
| they basically said they were fine with whoever won.
|
| Or, they were _not_ fine with whoever won.
|
| We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes, there's an
| agument for voting for the lesser of two evils, but it's not
| a great one.
|
| I'd like to believe at least some of those 36% would vote for
| a decent candidate/party. But once you lose faith in the
| system, and realize that it doesn't represent you, you might
| just stop participating in it.
| hirsin wrote:
| Those are the same thing in our system.
| ryandrake wrote:
| By not voting, you are clearly saying you are fine with
| whoever wins. If you were not fine with whoever wins, you
| would have voted for someone, anyone else.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Participation adds a moral dimension. It becomes a trolly
| problem -- do you throw the switch and take culpability
| for the outcome?
| groby_b wrote:
| Not participating in the trolley problem does not remove
| questions of moral responsibility. You had the choice to
| throw the lever, you said "either outcome is fine".
|
| That's your choice. "I don't participate at all" doesn't
| work unless it makes the whole trolley go poof.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| Well yes, but you're completely misunderstanding how the
| trolley problem applies to voting, esp. in the USA.
| You're pretending that "Not Voting" and "Voting" are the
| switch options, but that's simply not true.
|
| There are just two possible outcomes: Dems or Reps
| getting power. That's the switch options you have. "Not
| Voting" simply means letting the trolley take the Rep
| route and being JUST AS CULPABLE for the results as every
| single republican voter.
|
| Your fantasy of "not voting" being an actual moral option
| is like arguing "I disagree with the concept of a
| trolley, so I'm just going to turn away from the switch".
| You're morally exactly as culpable, because you made a
| choice that is morally the equivalent of "not switching
| tracks".
| thunky wrote:
| There is a subtle difference though because a vote is
| supposed to be a act of support. With the trolley problem
| there is nothing to support.
|
| Voting for party A/B is a reward that encourages party
| A/B to do more of what they're doing.
|
| So let's say only 1000 people voted because everyone else
| hated both options. That would pave a path for party C
| that would not exist if everyone held their nose and
| voted for crap.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I also sat out one election here in CZ, but that does not
| mean that I was "fine with whoever wins". It was "I
| really cannot decide which of the two guys is worse and I
| need to survive either of them."
|
| Fortunately the Czech president does not have that much
| power.
| timeon wrote:
| How about parliamentary election?
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| There's a double standard that I see a lot here, where
| people want to vote for a party, denigrate those who
| chose not to participate as being morally culpable for
| the results of the election, but won't take moral
| culpability for what their team does when they're in
| power.
|
| If you vote for team A and they win and then do something
| bad (inevitable), shouldn't you be morally responsible
| for that? After all, you seem fine claiming non-
| participants have moral culpability for whatever the
| winning team does.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| Yes, you are, to the extent that "the other option" would
| have been better.
|
| This seems incredibly obvious. If my options are "don't
| bomb children" and "bomb children", there's an obvious
| choice and obvious culpability. If my options are "bomb
| children" and "bomb way the fuck more children" the
| choice is also obvious.
|
| You do not get to pretend a moral dilemna doesn't exist
| just because you're not a fan of the available choices.
| You are still culpable.
| ratelimitsteve wrote:
| if you're on a train to pittburgh, it stops in poughkepsie
| and you don't get off, you decided to go to pittsburgh by
| doing nothing. your reasons may be your own, but your ass
| is in pittsburgh.
| MiiMe19 wrote:
| If you are on a train going off a cliff and you can turn
| the train around to go off a different cliff, but decide
| it isn't worth the effort just to go off a different
| cliff, you still end up going off a cliff. Nice.
| timeon wrote:
| Honest question: Why do you think they are the same?
| MiiMe19 wrote:
| Friends and I have been threatened with violence multiple
| times by prominent members of one party and the other
| party does the same thing to other people. I would love
| to go into detail but I don't want to get doxxed because
| it is pretty specific. :(
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _you still end up going off a cliff. Nice._
|
| This false equivalence is exactly what counts for being
| "fine with this corrupt leader."
| MiiMe19 wrote:
| I refuse to vote for a party that was complicit with the
| threats against me and my friends. The other party is
| pretty ass too, despite being closer to what I want
| politically.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _refuse to vote for a party that was complicit with the
| threats against me and my friends. The other party is
| pretty ass too, despite being closer to what I want
| politically_
|
| Sure. There are a lot of other people like you. Political
| operatives work hard to find folks like you, because
| groups who won't vote are groups you can transfer
| resources from. (Same, oddly enough, for folks who will
| vote for you regardless of what you do. You can take
| advantage of that loyalty to buy votes on the margin.)
|
| It's dumb. And it directly undermines the causes you and
| others like and around you support, because again, your
| devoted non-participation creates political capital on
| the other side of any issue you _would_ have voted on.
| But it's common and a real part of any electoral--
| possibly political--system, and no elected who wins and
| keeps office can afford to ignore the free resources
| predictable non-voters offer up.
| MiiMe19 wrote:
| I don't really care if it hurts the causes I want, I am
| not voting for the people who send my friends death
| threats. Either way, neither party really supports what I
| want so voting for one would hurt the causes I want
| anyway.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _I am not voting for the people who send my friends
| death threats_
|
| Uh, then don't. I guarantee you have more people and
| issues on your ballots than the person who allegedly sent
| your friends death threats.
|
| > _neither party really supports what I want so voting
| for one would hurt the causes I want anyway_
|
| If neither party has _any_ position you give any shits
| about, yes, I sort of agree you shouldn 't be voting...
| (And I guess I'll concede you aren't voting against your
| interests and causes if you have no interests or causes.)
| MiiMe19 wrote:
| If I don't vote for the people who are a part of the
| party who sent my friends threats and didn't vote for the
| people who actively hurt the policy I want, I would
| either be voting for esoteric third party candidates
| (might as well not vote to save effort), or I would be
| out of people to vote for.
| mostlysimilar wrote:
| > We've got two abismal parties to choose from. Yes,
| there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two evils,
| but it's not a great one.
|
| No, we have one destructive/harmful party (R) and one
| status quo party (D). They are not the same level of bad
| and that's immediately obvious from this last year.
| GolfPopper wrote:
| The problem with that is the status quo _wasn 't that
| good_.
|
| To compare the two parties with a house on fire,
| absolutely the sadistic pyromaniac arsonist burning down
| the neighborhood one house at a time is a bad guy and
| needs to be stopped. But when person trying to rally
| everyone to go after him is the abusive slumlord, it
| doesn't always resonate as effectively as it might.
|
| A healthy society wouldn't tolerate either one. I wonder
| if the Democrats seeming inability to stop right-wing
| abuses has been partially motivated by the knowledge that
| successfully stomping out that sort of corruption would
| curtail their own abuses, too.
| thunky wrote:
| > I wonder if the Democrats seeming inability to stop
| right-wing abuses has been partially motivated by the
| knowledge that successfully stomping out that sort of
| corruption would curtail their own abuses, too.
|
| Absolutely. And we know this because when they were last
| in power they did nothing to counter corruption or limit
| executive power. Instead they were partaking in it.
|
| Trump is exploiting a system his predecessors created.
| tshaddox wrote:
| > Yes, there's an agument for voting for the lesser of two
| evils, but it's not a great one.
|
| This is only a remotely viable claim if you think the two
| evils have extremely similar amounts of evil.
| LinXitoW wrote:
| Here in Germany, we have like 20 different parties on the
| ballot, with maybe 6 of those having a reasonable chance to
| actually get any seats. Not a SINGLE ONE perfectly
| represents me and my issues.
|
| I still voted, because my personal laziness or moral
| superiority does not trump the very real world effects of
| the "bad ones" winning. Lazy people like you with post hoc
| rationalizations exist here too, and they're just as bad
| and wrong.
| Workaccount2 wrote:
| He pardoned the guy from Nikola, Trevor Milton, that staged a
| product demo to trick investors.
|
| Why? Milton hired Pam Bondi's (the US attorney general's)
| brother to represent him.
| jimmydoe wrote:
| King has to show his power by doing bad things constantly. If
| he only does good, he's just a people pleaser.
| gchamonlive wrote:
| > I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this
| corrupt leader
|
| It's because you are still thinking of the USA as a democracy.
| Musk helped buy the election for Trump. It's an open oligarchy
| since companies were allowed an opinion as if they were
| citizens.
|
| https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/citi...
| Havoc wrote:
| >I cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this
| corrupt leader?
|
| Don't think fox news is going to report that he enriched the
| prez...
| madmountaingoat wrote:
| I think most actually know and don't think it's all that much
| different from what other have done for decades. I'm not
| saying they are correct to think it, just that they do think
| it. They think it's refreshing that the corruption is in the
| open. It's a societal boy-cried-wolf numbness. People are
| tired of the of finger pointing and screaming about every
| thing and now don't listen when the real stuff goes down.
| mightyham wrote:
| Is the irony not lost you that Joe Biden pardoned his own son
| for crimes he was absolutely guilty of. I don't see how that is
| any less corrupt. This isn't whatboutism either because I'm not
| trying to say that what Trump is doing is okay, I'm pointing
| out that this behavior is not particular to Trump and his
| supporters. The large majority of Americans are fine with
| corruption as long as it's their team.
| darkarmani wrote:
| One can not be happy with that and understand that Trump
| would have found ways to lock up his son for 20 years. No one
| thinks this dude was going to be punished for political
| reasons.
| cthalupa wrote:
| Biden pardoning his son was widely condemned by Democrats.
|
| This is despite the fact that Hunter was gone after on a
| charge that is basically never enforced alongside a media and
| political campaign ramping up all sorts of lies and half-
| truths and trying to draw connections to things he was never
| on trial for, much less convicted of, with an incoming
| president that had spoken extensively about his desire to
| weaponize the government to enact revenge on his political
| rivals, which we have seen him do extensively already.
|
| I don't like that Biden pardoned his son, but I also think
| the idea that it is at all comparable to the pardons Trump
| has issued that are blatantly corrupt is absurd. Meanwhile,
| Jan6 pardonees have a whole Wikipedia section detailing all
| of the crimes they have gone on to commit since being
| pardoned.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pardon_of_January_6_United_Sta.
| ..
| j-krieger wrote:
| No. You are making it seem like Biden pardoned his family
| for petty crimes. He pardoned them _in advance_ for any
| crime they have committed that is yet unknown. That's an
| unprecedented move and you claiming the other side will
| ,,come after your family" basically confirms that the legal
| system is corrupt _and_ that there is reasonable ground to
| do so.
| swader999 wrote:
| Biden didn't pardon, the auto pen did.
| j-krieger wrote:
| Biden obviously wasn't in the mental state to do anything
| himself in the last year of his presidency.
| HDThoreaun wrote:
| 1. There is no evidence that Joe partook in hunter's scheme.
| No evidence of misuse of office or government resources. It
| was more conspiracy to engage in corruption than actual
| corruption.
|
| 2. Hunter's pardon was still wrong and widely condemned by
| dems.
|
| Biden misused the office to pardon his son but he was not
| corrupt.
| afavour wrote:
| You talk as if corruption is a binary: corrupt or not
| corrupt.
|
| I'm not supportive of Biden pardoning his son. But it's
| inarguable that the Trump administration is orders of
| magnitude _more_ corrupt than Biden's was. To say "they're
| both corrupt" is to flatten everything out to
| meaninglessness.
| hypeatei wrote:
| Hunter Biden and the Biden family were investigated _for
| years_ in various political witch hunts and Hunter was
| charged with filling out a gun form incorrectly in the end.
| Trump made it clear he was going on a revenge tour with the
| DOJ in his second term so I don 't blame Joe for the pardons.
| adastra22 wrote:
| Only had of Americans vote, only half of them voted for Trump,
| and his approval rating is down significantly since
| inauguration.
|
| It is not accurate to say that half of Americans are ok with
| this. It's just our system doesn't allow for doing anything
| about it except wait.
| vkou wrote:
| Arguing over whether half or a third are okay with this is
| splitting hairs anytime that isn't an election (where these
| margins matter).
|
| That even a third is okay with this is a clear enough signal.
| He represents their values.
| krior wrote:
| > It's just our system doesn't allow for doing anything about
| it except wait.
|
| "Healthy democracy"
| mulmen wrote:
| Half of America isn't fine with Trump. Only 22.3% of Americans
| voted for him and his approval rating has gone down
| significantly since then.
| groby_b wrote:
| Another 36% could've voted against him and chose not to. Even
| accounting for some amount literally unable to reach the poll
| booth, yeah, half of America.
| rhetocj23 wrote:
| Its difficult to digest lol. Im from Europe but damn I feel the
| Americans - its legit embarrassing to watch.
| meowface wrote:
| Everything about him since 2015 has been absolutely egregious.
| Anyone who hadn't realized it by 2016 will never change their
| tune. Even if he declares martial law for no good reason
| they're all still going to justify it somehow. Anyone who's
| hung on this long will be along for the ride forever.
| holmesworcester wrote:
| I know HN viscerally hates crypto, and yes Trump is
| embarrassingly corrupt, but the charges against CZ were a
| greater wrong than whatever quid pro quo happened in the
| pardon.
|
| This is the most embarrassing part of all of it. The US is ping
| ponging between two very different ways of misusing state
| power.
|
| CZ was charged with violating a highly technical US securities
| law that is _not_ common to most countries despite not being a
| US citizen or ever setting foot in the US. His crime was
| letting his employees (also non-US and under no affirmative
| obligation to learn the laws of every country in the world just
| because they run a website) tell crypto whales they could use
| VPNs to get the non-US, non-nerfed version of Binance.
|
| The public's interest in protecting crypto whales from Binance
| is extremely tenuous. Unsophisticated users would hit the
| geofence. These were whales using Binance because they wanted
| to, not because they were tricked.
|
| The US's right to enforce arcane securities law outside its own
| borders is also very tenuous. If every country pulls this level
| of aggressive enforcement of atypical law on every website
| (even geofenced ones!) we will have total chaos. Should China,
| Russia, or India be able to hunt you down for violating some
| arcane law? No? Then why should the US?
|
| This is also happening in the context of an active public
| debate over the application of this law within the US, one
| cryptocurrency supporters won fairly definitively in the last
| election.
|
| Whatever discretion the law provides US enforcers, they should
| have recognized that it was wrong to use that discretion and
| left CZ alone once Binance made reasonable gestures at
| compliance.
|
| Instead, once their political coalition signaled that they
| should put symbolic heads on platters, they went about scoring
| career points. This is the kind of misbehavior that drove Aaron
| Swartz (a friend of mine) to suicide. We should be clear that
| it's wrong.
|
| And here we are. A choice between venal corruption and cruel
| punching down at immigrants on one side, and a blind, symbolic
| use of power for power and ideology's sake on the other.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _cannot comprehend how half of Americans are fine with this
| corrupt leader?_
|
| They've normalized corruption irrespective of magnitude. That's
| partly a problem of the little corruption existing in the first
| place. But it's also a problem of education and tribal populism
| being given this much power.
| charles_f wrote:
| It is disconcerting. Having discussed openly with people who
| were supportive of similar politicians, their logic is often in
| the line of "all of them are corrupt, but at least his politics
| are different". Now when you point that certainly corruption
| exists, but this is another level, they're getting into non-
| logical territory. People perceive times as grim and will take
| whomever offers something else than the status-quo baseline
| politician I guess. Even if they grift throughout and
| everyone's worse off in the end.
|
| On a baser level, if you go on twitter, there's a whole slew of
| delusional people who either don't believe this because of
| "fake news", another portion that's in the same
| "Clinton/Obama/Biden were even worse", and the rest just
| doesn't even care so long as "the libs are owned".
| SmirkingRevenge wrote:
| The thing is, most won't hear about this at all. It's always
| amazing to talk to a Trump voter and realize they don't
| actually hear about most of this stuff
|
| And if it does break through the right info bubbles, right-wing
| media pundits and influencers will be on-the-ready to quickly
| rationalize or what-about it away and coax their audiences back
| to their "happy" places, where they can nurse their favorite
| grievances about the left, the media, the trans people, etc
| godelski wrote:
| Because it isn't about actions, it is about sides. Tribalism.
|
| It is the loss of complexity. Many cannot understand that by
| choosing the lesser of two evils does not mean you support
| evil. It means your choices are limited. We have turned the
| political issues into good and evil, rather than disagreements
| in how to achieve our mostly shared goals. We can no longer see
| the other side as friends and family, creating a self-
| fulfilling prophecy.
|
| Anyone countering this can just proclaim "both sides" and in
| some sense they will be right, they have evidence and people do
| abuse that framework. But at the same time that destroys the
| bridge between us. The abuse of calling both sides evil along
| with the accusation that all use cases are instances of abuse.
| It binarizes the environment, creating a simple world where
| there are only two choices. Which is easy to do when everything
| is so complex, as we're so tired and don't want to think.
|
| It's also why this administration's strategy is so effective:
| overload the opposition. After all, Brandolini's Law states:
| "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of
| magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it." They've
| weaponized it. It's an effective strategy, and hard to defend
| against. I'm sure someone will offer a solution, "it's so
| simple, you just..." and we perpetuate the game.
| russellbeattie wrote:
| It's easy to explain: _They have no idea what 's happening._
|
| Most people can't keep up with the firehose of news and don't
| really want to. This particular bit of unethical behavior is
| just one more bit of inconsequential news which will have
| completely disappeared from the headlines by tomorrow. It
| basically never happened to 95% of the country, regardless of
| political leaning.
|
| Secondly, conservatives live in their own highly filtered and
| mutated information bubble. Good news is amplified, bad news is
| either downplayed, justified (pure fiction is acceptable) or
| simply ignored. So even if they do hear about this, it won't be
| a big deal.
|
| In short, most people won't care, and conservative media will
| actively work to overlook or more often, rationalize this sort
| of unethical behavior to the point where it somehow is totally
| fine. (Simply read this thread to watch it happen in real
| time.)
| cols wrote:
| Watching the Great Brainwash happen in real time has given me
| (I hope) a lot of insight into how anti-fascist Germans must
| have felt before WWII. It's a hell of a thing to watch half the
| people you know fall victim to the deluge of simplistic, feral
| propaganda that's been pouring out of our media sources for
| quite some time now. YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and
| other socials being the primary driving force. All platforms
| that are incentivized to spread rage and misinformation, and
| yet we can't seem to quit them as a culture. We rationalized
| their existence and non-regulation because BUSINESS and FREE
| MARKET. It's a real sad time for America. We should have known
| better. It's all of our faults, collectively. For not being big
| enough to shun the pressure and money. For not doing what was
| right all along. Now, we'll reap the whirlwind.
| pwlm wrote:
| I want to understand what you said.
|
| You assumed the leader is corrupt, possibly assumed the leader
| has bad intentions, and that the world can't possibly be more
| complex than these assumptions. Assumed the leader made this
| choice instead of a team behind him.
|
| Then presented a generality. Possibly assumed he doesn't know
| more than you and "everyone who won't say anything".
|
| Called an entire administration a circus. Another generality.
|
| Suggested bribery without evidence.
|
| How does one respond constructively to a comment like this?
| seydor wrote:
| I don't get the hate.
|
| He served 4 months for a laundering case , and has built the most
| successful exchange. There are bankers and vcs doing far worse
| things. He deserved the pardon , and no, he doesn't control
| bitcoin
| LightBug1 wrote:
| Well, considering the incredible service Zhao has brought to the
| American people, this is totally understandable.
|
| /$
| drak0n1c wrote:
| He was convicted for allowing US citizens to sign up and place
| trades that could theoretically be matched by people from
| sanctioned countries. Technically an incredibly bad service for
| American people who must be protected from such liberties.
| carnufex wrote:
| I mean is it any different than Joe Biden given blanket pardons
| hundreds of people for crimes that they may have committed over a
| 10 year span?
| bobro wrote:
| Is it? What do you think?
| carnufex wrote:
| I dont agree with the pardoning just making a point that
| presidents have done this for a long time of pardoning
| controversial people. Democrats and republicans are both
| corrupt so it isnt suprising.
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| Yes
| lostdog wrote:
| Yes
| odo1242 wrote:
| Yes
| BaconPackets wrote:
| This is such a weird redirect. Biden seems to have pardoned a
| large amount of low level marijuana offenders.
|
| So yes, there is a difference between what Trump is doing and
| what Biden is doing.
| carnufex wrote:
| You missed what I stated, pardoning someone for a specific
| crime vs what biden(if he was actually doing it) pardoned his
| son for all crimes he may have done over a 10 year span. Oh
| wait, that was actually one of the only pardons he actually
| signed.
|
| edit:
|
| He actually pardoned 5 family members for all non-violent
| offenses from jan 2014 to jan 2025, does 1 billionaire = 5
| biden family members?
| kbd wrote:
| The pardon power has been so abused these past few
| administrations that it's clear there should be constitutional
| changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or
| strip it altogether.
| dboreham wrote:
| Agree. It seems to have (never had?) any positive benefit.
| guywithahat wrote:
| I mean there are lots of people arrested on effectively
| political charges, and it's good to be able to reflect on it
| years later and get them out of jail. I'm not convinced
| Changpeng Zhao's charges would have ever been brought against
| him if the Biden admin didn't go so hard against crypto, I'm
| happy to see him pardoned. Hopefully next Trump can get
| whistle blowers like John Kiriachou
| strangattractor wrote:
| Doesn't necessarily have to be left up to the whims of one
| person though.
| stevage wrote:
| Trump essentially defines all convictions that he doesn't
| agree with as political charges though.
| cogman10 wrote:
| IDK, I think Carter's pardon of draft dodgers was a pretty
| good use of the pardon power.
|
| The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and
| punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that
| case. For example, I (hope to) see a future where people
| jailed for MJ related crimes get a mass pardon.
| ahtihn wrote:
| > The problem seems to be that we have unjust laws and
| punishments. We should have some way to apply mercy in that
| case.
|
| The solution is to fix that and make it retroactive. Remove
| the unjust law and release anyone who was convicted for
| violating it.
|
| A pardon is just a bad, unfair bandaid fix.
| soraminazuki wrote:
| Chelsea Manning. Prosecuting her and other whistleblowers
| instead of the officials they blew the whistle on was a
| mockery of justice. Though that wasn't the stated reason for
| the commutation, it was long overdue.
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Obama commuted the sentences of 1,715 individuals and issued
| 212 pardons for non-violent fedral drug convictions.
| adgjlsfhk1 wrote:
| By "these past few administrations" do you just mean "Trump"
| and "Trump the previous time"?
| returningfory2 wrote:
| Nope, Biden pardoning his son was also widely condemned
| across the political spectrum as an abuse of the pardon
| power.
| taurath wrote:
| Truly don't understand the equivalence here.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Really? What ever positive opinions I had left of Biden
| went out the window with that decision.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| It would be weird if he didn't? He pardoned his entire
| family, as Trump made it clear he was aiming to harass
| Biden's entire family for revenge. And the way he's been
| acting this presidency has only confirmed that's not
| beneath him.
|
| The decision is a lot more respectable than "this guy
| gave me a bribe." They are worlds apart. And some may be
| theoretically willing to roll the dice on that for their
| family, but it reads naive.
| pavlov wrote:
| Doesn't it affect your opinion in any way that Trump's
| DOJ has been used exactly like his harshest critics last
| year said it would?
| dylan604 wrote:
| It's not binary. I can not respect both decisions. Just
| because I don't respect Trump does not mean I must
| respect Biden's decision or vice versa. Current POTUS is
| absolutely vile. The previous guy was put in a position
| and a decision was made that I did not agree with, but
| over all, no he wasn't using the federal money to
| directly line his pocket as compensation for being
| investigated for things he actually did.
| mmooss wrote:
| I think the point is, Biden said he pardoned his son to
| prevent political persecution of him by Trump. Biden's
| fears have been borne out - the Trump administrationg is
| persecuting Trump's enemies. Does that change your
| opinion of Biden's pardon?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Where's the preemptive pardons for Comey, James, Schiff?
| So no, it's not much of a move of the needle since it was
| only family members.
| ModernMech wrote:
| So if you were the outgoing president, and the incoming
| president said out loud in front of the nation he was
| going to abuse his power to jail your family members out
| of spite, you would just let that happen on principle?
| dylan604 wrote:
| Again, the threats were not levied just at family
| members, but only family members received the pardon. So
| let's not get all sanctimonious on this issue. If he was
| doing this as anything other than self preservation of
| his family we could talk, but actions speak louder than
| words and he chose family over principles.
| actionfromafar wrote:
| Pardoning Hunter was also because he was technically
| guilty. They'd rather believe had something to pin on
| him.
|
| If he'd pardoned a whole team of people he'd also signal
| to the world that he believe they are guilty too.
| uh_uh wrote:
| I will help: people don't like it when the presidential
| pardon is used for self-serving shit.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| Equivalence may be a strong word, but pardoning your kids
| is classical Borgia shit straight out of the worst times
| of Italian Renaissance, and most people would condemn it
| if it was done by leader of some Central American
| Ruritania.
|
| Of course, once it is done by a president representing
| the party you (generic you) feel affiliated with, the
| double standards inevitably kick in.
| Capricorn2481 wrote:
| > Of course, once it is done by a president representing
| the party you (generic you) feel affiliated with, the
| double standards inevitably kick in.
|
| Less that, more we're all aware of what Trump campaigned
| on and what he promised to do to Biden's entire family.
| And we're disheartened that there's cultists (not you)
| trying to convince us that we should let our families
| suffer if dear leader demands it.
|
| I don't know these people, I don't have a strong feeling
| if any of them go to jail for something they did, because
| I'm not in a personality cult. But I care a lot more if
| people are going to jail just because a more corrupt
| person got the keys to everything. Turns out, those fears
| were valid, and I'm increasingly alarmed that there's
| still so much vitriol towards Biden pardoning a _checks
| notes_ gun charge, than there is for the blatantly
| corrupt shit we see every day.
| CobrastanJorji wrote:
| Just as a judge should not be ruling on a case where the
| defendant is throwing suitcases full of money at him, a
| judge should also not be ruling on a case where the
| defendant is his own son. Both are inappropriate uses of
| a power intended for the application of mercy and the
| correction of faults in the justice system. Both are the
| sorts of things that should lead to recusal.
|
| Biden's use is far more forgivable, as it's a given that
| his son was being prosecuted politically to punish Biden
| (though certainly he was guilty) and would likely have
| been prosecuted more under Trump, like Comey is being
| prosecuted today. And certainly "saving your children" is
| a far more forgivable sin than naked bribery, but being
| better than Trump is a low bar, but it's still not okay
| to excuse criminals from punishment because they have an
| important family member.
| WinstonSmith84 wrote:
| no equivalence indeed, it's way worse. Biden's son has
| never contributed to anything, CZ has and had a net
| positive impact on the Blockchain industry.
|
| And I say this as someone who despise Trump. A broken
| clock can be right twice a day.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| You mean a net positive for other crypto scammers by
| showing how easy it is?
| jayd16 wrote:
| If you just argue both sides are the same, you get to
| excuse yourself from self reflection.
| pavlov wrote:
| Looking at how this administration is now using the DoJ to
| hunt even people like Comey and Bolton whose crime was
| being a non-Trump-aligned Republican...
|
| It's probably good that Biden took away this particular
| show trial option from them.
| tdb7893 wrote:
| I was against the Biden pardons at the time but in
| hindsight with the current administration pushing poorly
| done prosecutions for political purposes I have changed my
| mind on them. Trump will say his pardons are similar but
| looking at the facts I don't find them comparable (I'm
| still livid that he pardoned Blagojevich, who was literally
| caught on tape talking about selling a US Senate seat).
| bananalychee wrote:
| He didn't just pardon his family members and issue
| questionable preemptive pardons, he also issued the most
| pardons of any president ever, and not by a small margin,
| but by a factor of 20 compared to Trump up to now, in a
| single term, including pardons for violent criminals and
| yes, white-collar fraudsters as well. They didn't get much
| publicity because most of them were committed at the tail
| end of his term while the media were focused on the
| election and on the transition of power, because of double
| standards, and because the actors were low-profile. It
| really shouldn't be controversial to point out that the
| abuse of presidential power didn't start nor end with
| Trump. He most certainly wouldn't have gotten re-elected if
| that were the case.
| ganksalot wrote:
| it doesn't matter how you count it, what you are saying
| is bullshit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_people
| _pardoned_or_gra...
|
| the substance of the pardons matters a great deal, as
| well.
| bananalychee wrote:
| Maybe my source was outdated, at least it should be
| accurate when comparing first terms. Quite the editorial
| spin on this Wikipedia article, it proves my point about
| double standards. I'd share some articles listing some
| murderers and embezzlers pardoned by Biden, but I don't
| like linking to politically biased sources regardless of
| their substance since it usually ends up with people
| nitpicking about the source. It's very easy to find
| evidence that these weren't 4,000 pardons for innocent
| marijuana users on Google anyway.
| ianburrell wrote:
| Carter pardoned 200,000 draft dodgers. Biden pardoned 256
| people, the rest were mass commutations.
| adrr wrote:
| Because he was prosecuted for doing drugs and owning a gun?
| There's literal video of Joe Rogan smoking pot and he talks
| about his concealed weapons permit. It would be a slam dump
| case, some how i don't think he's getting prosecuted
| because its selective law open to abuse. Seems perfectly
| good use of pardon.
| Alupis wrote:
| The Hunter Biden issue was not about smoking marijuana...
| that would have been the _very least_ of his multitude of
| legal problems. Biden 's own DoJ was prosecuting the
| cases - which is important context to consider here.
| adrr wrote:
| > Since 2018, Weiss had been investigating Hunter Biden
| as U.S. attorney. In 2023, Republicans asked Garland to
| appoint a special counsel, some specifically demanding
| Weiss, a Republican appointed to his role by President
| Donald Trump. Garland ultimately appointed Weiss, giving
| him additional authority. However, congressional
| Republicans then expressed criticism, some stating Weiss
| was untrustworthy.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_C._Weiss
|
| 6 years of investigation and all they could find was that
| Hunter did drugs and owned a gun. I am sure if we drug
| tested congress, we could prosecute a bunch of
| congressmen for the same crime. Maybe thats why supreme
| court is looking at the constitutionality of the law and
| its all been ruled unconstitutional in one of the courts
| districts but hey lets prosecute Hunter Biden for it.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| At the time that did reek of corruption and misuse of
| power, but given current state of things, it was the right
| move.
| munk-a wrote:
| It protected one individual - there have been a rash of
| politically motivated moves by the justice department
| that have targeted plenty of others. I can understand the
| pardon but the fact that so many other people were left
| out to dry just reinforces our multi-tiered justice
| system.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| Yeah, that's a very fair point. The persecution of Fauci
| and anyone associated with bringing the charges against
| Trump would've also been very predictable targets for
| pardons.
| analog31 wrote:
| I was of two minds about that pardon. On the one hand it
| seemed like an abuse of pardon power. On the other hand, it
| was also reasonable at the time to expect abuse of
| presidential power to prosecute political enemies. So on
| balance I was OK with it. I think the compromise I'd like
| to see is to curtail both powers.
| McP wrote:
| Biden pardoned several family members
| bena wrote:
| Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current
| administration abusing the Justice Department to go after
| them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
|
| And from what we've seen, he was right to do so. Although,
| they've been angling to declare his pardons void so they
| can go after whoever they wish.
| gottorf wrote:
| What you're saying is when our side prosecutes crime,
| it's a neutral application of justice, and when their
| side does it, it's politicized abuse of the justice
| system.
| collingreen wrote:
| That's nothing like what's being said, I'm really
| surprised you read it that way.
| AgentME wrote:
| By considering the facts of the matter, sure it's as you
| said. But if you ignore every detail then it does look
| like everyone is exactly as bad as each other and it's
| impossible to say anything is good or bad.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| You have the causality mixed up. It's not bad because
| they're doing it. They're doing it and it's bad.
| array_key_first wrote:
| Well yes some people commit crimes and others don't. It's
| not a double standard, it's the same standard.
| jsbg wrote:
| > Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current
| administration abusing the Justice Department to go after
| them. Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others.
|
| Are pre-emptive pardons a common thing for American
| presidents to do?
| ModernMech wrote:
| Only when the incoming administration labelled your
| family a "crime family" and lead stadiums to chants of
| "lock them up".
| jyounker wrote:
| No. Absolutely not. I can't think of anyone using a pre-
| emptive pardon until Trump's first Presidency.
|
| Sadly I think Biden's choice was completely rational
| given how Trump is weaponizing the US justice system.
| kapone wrote:
| > Yeah, because he was guarding them against the current
| administration abusing the Justice Department to go after
| them
|
| Ha ha. They (democrats overall) need to look inwards for
| that.
|
| > Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others. Fauci screwed
| up our country so bad, it aint even funny. The fact that
| he needed a PRE-EMPTIVE (i.e. he wasn't even accused of
| anything at the time) pardon says it all. And the fact
| that Biden gave it to him, says everything there is to
| say about Biden.
|
| > And from what we've seen, he was right to do so. Not
| even close.
|
| > Although, they've been angling to declare his pardons
| void so they can go after whoever they wish. They should.
|
| - Look at what Biden did to the southern border. And look
| at it now. - Look at almost any "democrat" run major
| city. Any. Then look at the crime rates and cost of
| living. - And the recent farce that was this "No Kings"
| crap...
|
| Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws,
| both in character and execution. However, name any major
| policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for
| the "country". As a whole.
| travisjungroth wrote:
| > However, name any major policy initiative that he's
| undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
|
| This is a ridiculous standard. Each of his policies
| (individually) only hurting _some_ Americans is not a
| flex.
| kapone wrote:
| Everything, always hurts "someone". There is no universal
| good.
|
| The totality is what matters, not you, not me.
| Hikikomori wrote:
| >Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws,
| both in character and execution. However, name any major
| policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for
| the "country". As a whole.
|
| They're usually not that bad for his billionaire grifter
| buddies, I'll give you that.
| kapone wrote:
| Again, name ONE, that is bad for the COUNTRY. You can't,
| can you?
| Zigurd wrote:
| Easy: what passes for diplomacy has been so awful that
| nobody wants to buy weapons from us anymore, nor do they
| value our treaty commitments. Oh the irony of proposing
| to meet in Budapest.
| kapone wrote:
| Buy weapons from us?? That's your barometer?
|
| And they are not "our" treaty commitments. Treaties by
| definition involve more than one party.
|
| But out of curiosity, what commitments are talking here?
| Talking in abstracts is meaningless.
| scheme271 wrote:
| Along with various other people to try to protect them from
| malicious political prosecution. Much like how Comey,
| Bolton, and a variety of current and former government
| officials are now being prosecuted on questionable charges.
| jsbg wrote:
| https://www.axios.com/2025/09/06/biden-pardon-autopen-
| concer...
| thinkharderdev wrote:
| Trump is definitely the most egregious by a very wide margin,
| but the pardon power has been abused by every President in my
| lifetime. It's a truly insane feature of our constitution
| that needs to be changed.
| kbd wrote:
| It doesn't _really_ matter who is more egregious, but IMO a
| country 's leader pardoning _his own family members_ is
| about as banana republic as it gets.
| vkou wrote:
| It absolutely is, and it's complete ass covering from an
| administration that utterly failed in its primary duty -
| putting Trump in prison.
|
| Nice to see the people who fucked it up isolated from the
| consequences of his second term. (/s)
| malcolmgreaves wrote:
| Because he knew that Trump was a criminal who'd illegally
| go after his own family purely out of spite.
| mothballed wrote:
| The prosecution of Hunter for being a user of controlled
| substances while in possession or acquiring a weapon was
| pretty clear cut IMO and been used against many more than
| Hunter as an easy way to put away drug users for a long
| time. He likely was pardoned in part because Hunter had
| the resources to actually get that law overturned,
| signaled intent to do so, and the establishment can't
| compromise their precious drug laws being found
| unconstitutional.
| ModernMech wrote:
| > IMO a country's leader pardoning his own family members
| is about as banana republic as it gets.
|
| That is until you see what's currently happening, the
| President personally directing the DOJ to arrest his
| political enemies, of which Biden and his family are
| considered to be primary antagonists (remember they
| labelled them the "Biden crime family" and chanted "lock
| them up"). _That_ is the most banana republic as it gets,
| so how is preemptively defending against that behavior
| out of bounds?
| abbycurtis33 wrote:
| I'm concerned about the diversity of your media consumption
| if you're unaware that Biden's handlers used auto pen to sign
| a huge number of inappropriate pardons.
| mcmcmc wrote:
| > I'm concerned about the diversity of your media
| consumption
|
| ... says the conspiracy theorist spouting Breitbart
| nonsense
| whattheheckheck wrote:
| Do you have a complete list because thats literally what
| trump is doing. In no way shape or form is any past
| president comparable to the depravity and recklessness of
| trump its not even close. If you say its close you are so
| misinformed or ignorant or willfully evil. Seriously crypto
| scams, open bribery from kushner and the saudis, the Qatar
| jet, the gold card visas for the cartel family... the list
| of insane actions goes on and on and its so depressing to
| see anyone fall for it or not be seething in rage because
| this country will not make it if this family and the people
| driving project 2025 are not brought to justice
| oceansky wrote:
| But both sides!
| jsbg wrote:
| > Do you have a complete list because thats literally
| what trump is doing.
|
| https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/07/biden-
| gra...
| abbycurtis33 wrote:
| You're really lost in the sauce, there, my friend. He won
| the popular vote, and we're all getting exactly what we
| voted for.
| munk-a wrote:
| Trump is miles ahead of other administrations in abusing it
| but as far back as my political awareness reaches (the
| Clinton admin) there have been clear awful examples like Marc
| Rich[1]. I certainly have a political lean but there are some
| really indefensible pardons on each side.
|
| 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_Rich
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| Did you miss all the Biden pardons, including unprecedented
| pardons for crimes they _may_ commit?
| munk-a wrote:
| No, I'm well aware of and disapprove of a number of them
| - this is still worse.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Which congress do you want doing that review? The past several
| congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of
| constitutional reviewing in my opinion.
| collingreen wrote:
| If we can't figure out how to get a Congress that most people
| believe in then I worry that is the beginning of the end for
| this government.
|
| Hopefully we get to try from scratch a third time if that
| happens but I worry that collapse will be too tempting for
| Russia or China to not step in.
|
| Maybe we can be lucky and get conquered by Canada first in
| that case? What a weird thing to think...
| stonogo wrote:
| Approval ratings for Congress, barring a post-9/11 spike,
| have been under 30% for most of my life. By this standard
| I'd say we're in the middle of the end.
| JauntTrooper wrote:
| Gerrymandering is at the heart of the rot.
| nullocator wrote:
| The Senate is not subject to garrymandering and if we
| fixed the issues with the House (literally via any
| mechanism) the Senate would immediately go back to being
| the vehicle used to prevent the will of the people (see
| the Senate under Mitch McConnell any time the House was
| under Democrat control)
|
| Until the Dem party fixes their brand and wins back some
| of the Senate seats they used to control in the 90s and
| early 2000s there will be no positive progress.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > If we can't figure out how to get a Congress that most
| people believe in then I worry that is the beginning of the
| end for this government.
|
| We know, from comparative study of existing representative
| democracies, how to do that better (have an electoral
| system for the legislative branch that provides results
| that are substnantially more proportional than under the
| current system); what we don't have is a practical way to
| get from where we are to where we need to be given the
| construction of the electoral systems in the states and
| nationally and the politicians and interests that has
| entrenched and the Constitutional amendment process.
| dylan604 wrote:
| From fiction, we have Clancy's sudden loss of the majority
| of federal elected officials which allowed for a fresh
| start. However, that's subject to having governors
| submitting senators while having elections for congress.
| Starting from a clean slate would be the only fix. As it is
| now, it's who is willing to kowtow to the biggest backers
| to get them over the line and stay in office. On top of the
| gerrymandering that all but ensures the party in control
| stays in control, I see no change to the status quo in my
| life time without an uprising.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _Which congress do you want doing that review? The past
| several congresses have been unqualified to do any sort of
| constitutional reviewing in my opinion_
|
| States can reject dumb amendments. Congress proposes
| amendments, the states ratify them [1].
|
| [1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-5/
| eqvinox wrote:
| The U.S. is running an outdated installation of democracy.
| The French approach of just rebooting and reinstalling the
| entire thing seems like a good idea at this point. Except the
| populace is already badly split into warring camps.
| mig39 wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whataboutism
|
| Sounds reasonable. This is ok for Trump to do because of Hunter
| Biden.
| Conscat wrote:
| The Hunter Biden pardon was necessary because it was clear
| that despite his admission of guilt, he was not going to
| receive a fair punishment. The Republican party leadership
| was very open in expressing their intentions for him, and had
| _already_ circumvented the judicial system to give him cruel
| and unusual punishment.
| collingreen wrote:
| Would be nice if Trump only pardoned people who the incoming
| administration explicitly said they would target, after years
| of constant harassment and misinformation.
|
| I think I would support those pardons even though I think
| Trump and his family and his cronies are acting the way
| really bad people act.
|
| Taking the above scenario as license to sell pardons for
| person gain is such a stretch it looks like bad faith to me.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All it
| does is show that the President overrides the department of
| justice. How anyone ever thought this should be a thing, I have
| no idea.
| munk-a wrote:
| I think a congressional pardon power to allow national
| leniency on previously accepted sentences that are now viewed
| as unjust might be worth holding onto. It being such a casual
| presidential power has made it ripe for corruption for a long
| time but I would weigh that with civil rights era pardons for
| sham trials - I think we do still need a national sanity
| check relief valve for local injustices.
|
| And the dysfunction of congress probably works in our favor
| here since pardons should be exceptional - not routine. A
| routine pardon is just a demonstration of the justice
| department failing at a systemic level.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > The power to pardon needs to be removed all together. All
| it does is show that the President overrides the department
| of justice.
|
| The Department of Justice is subordinate to the President as
| part of the executive branch with or without the pardon
| power; if you want something other than "the President
| overrides the Department of Justice" as a matter of
| Constitutional law rather than an intermittently-observed
| convention of restraint (which Trump absolutely has not
| observed _outside_ of the pardon power), you need a
| fundamental reformation of the Constitutional structure of
| government, far beyond the elimination of the pardon power.
| IAmGraydon wrote:
| While it's true that the Department of Justice sits within
| the executive branch, the assertion that it is simply
| "subordinate" to the President - functioning as his
| personal legal arm - is an oversimplification that misses
| both the design and evolution of constitutional governance.
| The President does not have unlimited authority over the
| DOJ. The DOJ's powers are exercised pursuant to laws
| enacted by Congress, and its officials - especially the
| Attorney General and U.S. Attorneys - swear oaths to uphold
| the Constitution, not to serve as personal agents of the
| President's will.
|
| The Supreme Court has repeatedly affirmed that while the
| President may remove executive officers, he cannot lawfully
| direct them to commit acts that are unconstitutional,
| obstruct justice, or violate statutory mandates. The
| constitutional structure also relies on normative
| independence - a separation within the executive branch
| that maintains rule of law. This is not a "convention of
| restraint" but an operational necessity derived from the
| Take Care Clause ("he shall take Care that the Laws be
| faithfully executed"). That clause doesn't mean "whatever
| the President says is law"; it means the President must
| ensure that the law itself is enforced faithfully, even
| when doing so constrains his own interests.
|
| Finally, while the pardon power is broad, it's not the
| linchpin of executive authority over the DOJ. Removing or
| limiting that power wouldn't change the fact that the DOJ's
| prosecutorial discretion must still be exercised consistent
| with law, ethics, and constitutional constraints - not
| simply the President's personal preferences. Our system is
| not designed for a monarch with "absolute control" over
| prosecutions. It's designed for a chief executive bound by
| law and accountable through oversight, impeachment, and
| ultimately, the electorate.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _pardon power has been so abused these past few
| administrations that it 's clear there should be constitutional
| changes in the pardon power, either congressional review, or
| strip it altogether_
|
| Strip it. I also started on the line of Congressional review
| (or pardons only activating on the consent of the Senate). But
| I concluded the entire power is out of place.
|
| If the courts overreach, address it through legislation.
| Congress can annul sentences through law, no special pardon
| power needed. If a law is unfair or being applied unfairly,
| moreover, it should be fixed comprehensively.
|
| There isn't a place for one-man pardons in a republic. Even the
| imperium-obsessed Romans didn't give their dictators, much less
| consuls, automatic pardon power. Caesar had to get special
| legislation to overrule the law.
|
| Biden abused pardon power. So has Trump. Both parties have good
| reason for passing an amendment through the Congress. This is
| probably in my top 3 Constitutional amendment we need in our
| time. (Multi-member Congressional seats, popular election of
| the President and changing "the executive Power shall be vested
| in a President" to "the President shall execute the laws of the
| United States.")
| lapcat wrote:
| > The pardon power has been so abused these past few
| administrations
|
| Past few?
|
| How about Ford pardoning Nixon? Or George H.W. Bush pardoning a
| bunch of Iran-Contra conspirators, thus covering his own ass?
| actionfromafar wrote:
| The way this is going, the President won't need using any
| pardon powers, because the judges will all ask the President
| what the judgement should be in advance.
|
| And the prosecutors will ask who to prosecute.
|
| Finally only fair justice!
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| A part of me despises this orange guy,
|
| another part is thankful that he is there as a proof that you can
| get to a high status and high relevance role in society and still
| mantain your humanity, your inner child alive, not being robotic
| and just have a blast doing whatever the f you want.
|
| There is no point getting to the top if you then lose all your
| humanity and playfulness.
|
| Like if the condition to become President were to become a robot
| like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden, thanks no, I pass....Trump on
| the other hand is the best of both worlds.
| doener wrote:
| I see child, I don't see humanity.
| JumpinJack_Cash wrote:
| They are synonymous really.
| deathanatos wrote:
| > _and still mantain your humanity_
|
| I am getting Poe's Law'd ... right?
|
| He's sending people to concentration camps & bombing boats in
| the Caribbean and Pacific. He's deported American children.
| Treatment of asylum seekers, treatment of immigrant's children,
| wanton discrimination against minority groups...
|
| Humanity? _Playfulness?_
| cestith wrote:
| I'm not sure he's maintained his humanity by maintaining his
| playfulness with the very lives of people being his playthings.
| bena wrote:
| I don't say this lightly and I understand that it's neither a
| thorough nor an explicit question, however, I mean this in all
| seriousness:
|
| What the fuck?
| moogly wrote:
| That is a strange way to spell "malignant narcissism".
| martythemaniak wrote:
| COLLINS: Today you pardoned the founded of Binance. Can you
| explain why you did that?
|
| TRUMP: Which one was that?
|
| COLLINS: The founder of Binance
|
| TRUMP: I believe we're talking about the same person, because I
| do pardon a lot of people. I don't know. He was recommended by a
| lot of people.
|
| https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3m3v6mnpkb52i
| fxwin wrote:
| actual puppet
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Fuck. Guys. Psst. You have another demented leader.
| flipfluck wrote:
| Are we great again?
| wnevets wrote:
| This Administration loves criminals.
| rts_cts wrote:
| I'm not sure it will be a problem for Changpeng Zhao but let's
| say I was convicted of a felony in the US, served time in prison
| and then was pardoned by the president. What would my employment
| prospects be in comparison to someone who didn't receive a
| pardon?
| tokioyoyo wrote:
| "You must have very good connections and network, definitely a
| good hire for the future."
| Calavar wrote:
| Likely bad because the conviction will still show up in
| background checks. (A pardon doesn't entail expungement.) As
| you said, this won't be an issue for CZ because he's not going
| to be looking for the kinds of positions where HR screens the
| resumes
| hshdhdhehd wrote:
| Poor drug dealers: Extrajudicial murder in international waters.
|
| Rich drug dealers: Freedom.
|
| Be a rich drug dealer.
| captainkrtek wrote:
| More generically:
|
| Poor criminal: jail/death penalty/etc.
|
| Rich criminal: freedom
| miohtama wrote:
| For the accurate context:
|
| CZ was pardoned for a single charge of failure to have an
| effective compliance program. No fraud, no victims, no criminal
| history. No money laundering.
|
| CZ is the first and only known first-time offender in U.S.
| history to receive a prison sentence for this single, non-fraud-
| related charge. The judge found no evidence that he knew of any
| illicit transactions and that it was reasonable for him to
| believe there were no illicit funds on the platform.
|
| Trump is a very twisted person, and this makes the US look bad,
| but the underlying crime was "compliance."
| guywithahat wrote:
| Yeah Changpeng Zhao seemed more like a victim of the Biden
| admin crackdown on crypto then anything else. I'm happy to see
| he was pardoned
| ganksalot wrote:
| then you know nothing at all about the case:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
| rabf wrote:
| His prosecution was politically motivated to begin with.
| ganksalot wrote:
| ? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMEJTORMVN4
| raincole wrote:
| I hope HN has a way to vouch a comment before it's flagged,
| because I know this one would be (for being correct.)
| jmspring wrote:
| Of course he did. Republicans can't complain about Clinton's
| pardon of Marc Rich any more.
| robinhoode wrote:
| Of course they can. Republicans (well MAGA in particular) don't
| are about hypocracy. They make exceptions for Trump on
| everything.
| jmull wrote:
| I mean, that was one pardon 25 years ago and widely criticized
| across the political spectrum.
|
| It's hard to count how many purely political and money-based
| pardons Trump has done this term, and there is essentially no
| pushback on his side.
| nextworddev wrote:
| seems like not enough anger in this thread is directed at CZ
| netfortius wrote:
| Unpopular opinion: America needs/ed this. They nerve truly
| believed that a Ceausescu, Hitler, Stalin, Mao were possible in
| the US. Maybe one or two generations will suffer, but this is a
| required lesson, for the future maturity of the nation, long
| term. Assuming they come out in one piece at the other end, of
| course.
| pedroma wrote:
| You believe the US on the path to killing tens of millions of
| its own citizens for the sake of some ideology like Mao,
| Stalin, and Hitler because a non-violent white collar criminal
| was given a shortened sentence? Interesting.
| LunaSea wrote:
| You can kill someone without weapons.
|
| And just like the Great Leap Forward, America is well on its
| way to letting many thousands die from lack of healthcare.
| timeon wrote:
| This is not rhetorical question: did accelerationism ever
| worked?
| aspenmayer wrote:
| If only we could ask Baudrillard.
|
| Accelerationism is to a simulacrum as the thing being
| accelerated (society) is to the simulation thereof (our idea
| of society).
|
| Accererationism is what accelerationism does. It disrupts the
| status quo, for good/bad/otherwise, and largely independently
| of our personal stance on the goodness, badness, and/or
| desirability of said disruption.
|
| The current volatility in the market is one aspect of
| accelerationism, and it seems to be working, in that the
| markets are still open for trading; many are making out like
| bandits. Perhaps that volatility as a market opportunity is
| the point.
|
| Whether or not banditry is occurring is left as an exercise
| to the reader.
| 1970-01-01 wrote:
| Good news: This shows they absolutely need any and all money they
| can get.
|
| Bad news: They are getting the kickback money.
| pwlm wrote:
| Words and sentences can easily be misconstrued in threads like
| these.
|
| I truly want to know of a better way to have discussions on a
| topic of this importance.
| chris_wot wrote:
| Don't let Trump pardon anyone? People are outraged because it
| is outrageous.
| jayd16 wrote:
| Or better yet, prosecute corruption.
| fogzen wrote:
| Better headline: Convicted criminal Trump pardons convicted
| criminal Binance founder
| LunaSea wrote:
| Crime is legal
| hmate9 wrote:
| I'm sure it's pure coincidence that the Trump family made
| millions from Binance, CZ, and donations from Trevor Milton and
| Paul Walczak right before those pardons.
| locallost wrote:
| At least the FBI director broke the big news in crime fighting
| today, how a couple black basketball players were arrested for
| sports betting.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Pardon count per president: President
| Count -------------------------------- Joe Biden
| ~8,064 | Donald Trump ~237 |
| Barack Obama ~1,927 | George W. Bush
| ~200 | Bill Clinton ~459 | George
| H.W. Bush ~77 |
| qingcharles wrote:
| Even if the numbers were correct, the numbers are absolutely no
| use without context, except perhaps to allow partisan mud-
| slinging on Twitter.
|
| Biden pardoned thousands of non-violent low-level marijuana
| convictions, which is why the numbers look like that. Trump
| pardoned a large number of violent protesters.
| BaconPackets wrote:
| This is meaningless without context.
| W0lfEagle wrote:
| Seems not right
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Just wait until the blanket pardon comes out for all of his
| staff.
| insane_dreamer wrote:
| The USA is officially a banana republic.
| deadbabe wrote:
| The only way to get around the pardon power being abused is to
| punish crimes by death, quickly and on the spot.
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