Elizabeth Warren Fires Back At CZ Defamation Threat

Senator Elizabeth Warren has fired back against Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, aka CZ, after he threatened to sue her for defamation, with her lawyer calling his claim “without merit” and defending her comments about his Trump pardon as accurate.

Zhao’s lawyer had accused Warren of falsely claiming he pleaded guilty to money laundering. But Warren’s counsel said in a letter that Zhao admitted under oath to violating the Bank Secrecy Act by failing to implement anti–money laundering controls at Binance.

Warren’s lawyer said her comments were based on “publicly available and widely reported facts.”

The letter also cited reports that Binance had lobbied Trump for almost a year to secure Zhao’s pardon and then listed tokens tied to his World Liberty Financial project.

Even without Warren’s legal protections as a senator, her counsel added, Zhao would still have to prove she acted with “actual malice,” making his defamation claim “without merit.”

Senator Warren Says CZ Pleaded Guilty To A Money Laundering Charge

The letter from Senator Warren’s lawyer was in response to an X post she made on Oct. 23, the same day that Trump pardoned Zhao, who had pleaded guilty in November 2023 to violating the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) by failing to implement Anti-Money laundering (AML) controls at Binance. 

In response to Trump’s pardon, Warren said that Zhao “pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge and was sentenced to prison.” 

CZ pleaded guilty to a criminal money laundering charge and was sentenced to prison.

But then he financed President Trump’s stablecoin and lobbied for a pardon.

Today, he got it.

If Congress does not stop this kind of corruption, it owns it. pic.twitter.com/NsWeaJcVeK

— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) October 23, 2025

“But then he financed President Trump’s stablecoin and lobbied for a pardon,” she said, urging Congress to “stop this kind of corruption.”

Zhao replied to Warren’s post directly, and said that there were no money laundering charges. He also dismissed Warren’s post as another example of a lawmaker trying to weaponize the Department of Justice against crypto. 

Last week, Zhao’s lawyer threatened to sue Warren for allegedly making “defamatory statements that impugn his reputation,” adding that her client will pursue legal action unless Warren retract her post on X and a Senate resolution seeking to denounce Trump’s pardon of the Binance founder. 

Binance.US Says Listing Trump Tokens Was A ‘Business Decision’ 

Warren’s lawyer said Zhao “admitted, under oath, that he willfully aided and abetted and caused Binance to fail to develop, implement, and maintain an effective AML program, and that this constituted the identified crime.”

As a result, ”Binance processed transactions involving proceedings of illegal activity and caused transactions between U.S. persons and persons in jurisdictions subject to comprehensive U.S. sanctions,” the letter added. 

The letter also noted that Binance has been “a key supporter” of Trump’s World Liberty Financial project, which has “driven a huge leap in the president’s personal wealth.”

Following the pardon, Binance.US had announced that it had added trading for WLFI and USD1, which both belong to World Liberty Financial.

But Binance.US subsequently said that the move to list the tokens was purely a “business decision” and “nothing more.”

The exchange also noted that more than twenty other major platforms have listed the tokens.

Top markets for WLFI (Source: CoinMarketCap)

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