The title for this bill has not yet been received. (11/12/2025 legislative day)

The former Treasury secretary corresponded routinely with Jeffrey Epstein. In one series of exchanges, he sought Mr. Epstein’s advice on how to handle a female acquaintance.

Health and Human Services directed its employees to plan to report to work on Thursday morning if legislation to fund the government passes.

What the government shutdown revealed about Trump’s America.

It was unclear when the Trump administration planned to reverse mandated cuts at major airports, though transportation officials and industry groups said it would take a week after the shutdown ended for air travel to return to normal.

A legal office in the White House, at the behest of Office of Management and Budget director and Project 2025 architect Russ Vought, has decided to redefine the word earnings in order to bankrupt the largely dormant Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

Wednesday, November 12th on the RealClearPolitics Podcast - Joined by Fred Ryan, Director of the Ronald Reagan Center on Civility and Democracy:00:00 Both Si...

Ballerini's latest gives a haunting picture of the heartbreak that comes when women trade chances at marriage and motherhood for careers.

After nearly a century of Peronist dominance, Argentinians may finally be ready for real reforms.

Andrew Kolvet, the executive producer of The Charlie Kirk Show, described a chaotic scene at Monday night's "Turning Point USA" event in Berkeley, California.

Since 1980, the National debt has risen from $908 billion to $35 trillion...a rate of nearly 3,800%.

Tucker Carlson and Nick Fuentes promote noxious ideas that imperil the American right.

It is understandable that many Democrats are furious with the senators who voted to end the government shutdown. There is a feeling that, finally, Democrats had leverage over Donald Trump as SNAP benefits were cut and Americans largely blamed Republicans, not the Democratic Party, for the resulting chaos. The overwhelming electoral victories last week across the country only seemed to strengthen the Democratic position. Why cave now? Especially when the stated goal - saving Obamacare subsidies - won't actually be achieved?

In one message, Epstein said one of his apparent victims

Democrats appear to be obviously hiding exculpatory information about Trump.

Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released emails suggesting that President Trump knew more about Jeffrey Epstein’s activities than he has acknowledged.

Representative Lauren Boebert, one of the Republicans pressing for more Epstein disclosures, was summoned for a meeting in the White House Situation Room.

Rahm Emanuel believes Americans are being presented a “binary choice” between “defund the police” and President Donald Trump’s National Guard push.

So he’s offering an alternative.

As Democrats grapple with how to cut into one of Republicans’ core issues in the midterm elections next year, the former Chicago mayor plans to lay out his own approach to public safety at an event with police leaders in Washington on Wednesday. He plans to call for pairing community policing methods with tough-on-major-crime tactics and youth interventions. He said his strategy can be a model for cities and for fellow Democrats to combat the electoral narrative that they are weak on crime.

“Democrats a) should not be scared of it and b) should be proactive about what their agenda is,” Emanuel said in an interview Monday previewing his remarks.

A political operative who’s served three presidents and across levels of government, Emanuel is attempting to position himself at the forefront of his party’s conversation on how to tackle public safety as he weighs a White House bid in 2028. He told POLITICO he doesn’t have a “hard timeline” for that decision.

Emanuel will present his strategy at the University of Chicago Crime Lab’s Policing Leadership Academy event honoring graduates on Wednesday.

His approach includes combining more training in community policing with “tough action against hardened criminals and gang members,” as well as with youth programs like the mentoring initiatives he undertook as mayor. He also wants more enforcement of gun laws and efforts to intensify them.

He distilled his public-safety pitch into a slogan that harkens back to his time leading Chicago: “More cops on the beat, and getting kids, guns and gangs off the street.”

As mayor, Emanuel grappled with a surge in homicides and shootings, with the city reporting its deadliest year in two decades in 2016. Crime rates across major categories — murders, shootings, robberies and burglaries — declined over the next two years, which the city’s police department attributed to strengthened community partnerships and technological investments. And Emanuel poured millions in expanding youth mentoring and summer job programs to keep kids off the streets, initiatives that remain a point of pride.

He was also besieged by backlash to his handling of the 2014 murder of a Black teenager by a white cop — criticism that continued as he embarked on reforming Chicago’s police department and has persisted in his political career.

Emanuel drew national headlines for tangling with Trump over crime and immigration during the president’s first term. He would face stiff competition in that lane if he ran for the White House in 2028 — Democratic governors like Illinois’ JB Pritzker are fighting Trump’s National Guard incursions into their major cities.

Emanuel expressed opposition to Trump’s efforts to flood blue bastions with Guard troops and federal immigration officers, part of a two-pronged crackdown the president is pushing to boost Republicans in the midterms. Trump claims it has reduced crime. Several states and cities have sued over his Guard deployments to some success, with Illinois and Chicago currently battling the Trump administration before the Supreme Court.

Asked if there was anything effective about Trump’s strategy, Emanuel pointed to a “thread of positive” — that concentrating troops in one area of a city could give local law enforcement the ability to focus elsewhere.

But he stressed he was “not endorsing” that use of the Guard. “It’s a horrible idea to parachute in 100 to 200 people for a short duration of time who have no sense of a community or no sense of what policing is,” he said. “All the money you’re spending on the National Guard could be used to train 500 [local] officers.”

As Trump works to exploit public safety concerns in the midterms, Emanuel said Democrats have to get “comfortable” talking about crime. Democrats are broadly urging their party to go on the offense on the issue, bolstered by private polling that shows a mix of attacks on Republicans and showing steps Democrats are taking to reduce crime can swing voters in their direction.

Emanuel said Democrats should stop crouching behind falling crime statistics that don’t match voters’ perceptions. “Nobody can be complacent or comforted by a statistic,” he added.

He also repeatedly derided the “defund” slogan that criminal justice reformers and progressives popularized in 2020 after the murder of George Floyd but that Democrats have since abandoned. The rallying cry for police reform quickly became an anchor for the party as the GOP successfully argued against its absolutism. Since then, Democrats have worked to distance themselves from it, with Michigan Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed scrubbing his social media of mentions of it and New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani backing away from his past embrace of it.

Republicans are nevertheless seizing on it as they work to make Mamdani their midterms foil and hammer Democrats as soft on crime. But Emanuel argued they won’t be able to make the association stick to candidates broadly after Mamdani moved away from the mantra.

Emanuel will have to contend with his own past on public safety as he contemplates a political comeback, a record that includes helping pass Clinton’s controversial 1994 crime bill and his bungled handling of Laquan McDonald’s murder in 2014.

Emanuel said he bears “responsibility” for how he handled McDonald’s case. He has forged a “very strong relationship” with McDonald’s great uncle, Chicago pastor Marvin Hunter, who supported Emanuel as ambassador to Japan during the Biden administration. The two keep in regular contact.

He also pointed to his 2021 Senate confirmation hearing, when he acknowledged he had underestimated the “distrust” of law enforcement among Black Chicagoans and failed to do enough to address it.

“The problems were deeper, farther and more ingrained than I fully appreciated. That’s on me,” Emanuel said Monday. “But I was determined to make the changes.”

In defending his Oct. 23 pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, President Donald Trump claimed that Zhao was the victim of a Biden administration “witch hunt.” The billionaire executive known as “CZ” pleaded guilty to allowing money-laundering through his cryptocurrency company. He was fined $50 million and served a four-month sentence in a low-security prison and halfway house.

Trump’s comments came during a Nov. 2 interview on CBS News’ “60 Minutes.” Trump said, “I don’t know who he is” and “I know nothing about the guy,” though Zhao’s company assisted in business dealings that benefit World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture run by Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Jr.

Former Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao arrives at federal court in Seattle, Washington, on April 30, 2024. Photo by Jason Redmond/AFP via Getty Images.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said at a Nov. 4 briefing that the president meant “he does not have a personal relationship with” Zhao. Leavitt also claimed that the judge who heard the case said the sentencing sought by the Biden administration was “egregious and went too far. And so the president is correcting that wrong.”

Prosecutors in the case had sought a three-year sentence for Zhao, while the defense asked for probation with no jail time. The judge agreed that Zhao’s action didn’t warrant a three-year term, but sentenced him to four months in prison. Trump’s pardon did not change the prison sentence, which ended in September 2024.

Experts have concerns about Trump’s pardon of Zhao and the appearance of a conflict of interest on the president’s part.

Here, we’ll look at the basis of the Zhao case, Trump’s claims about the Biden administration’s prosecution of Zhao and concerns about Trump’s pardon.

Guilty Pleas from Binance and Its CEO

During Trump’s “60 Minutes” interview, CBS News correspondent Norah O’Donnell asked why he pardoned Zhao.

Trump said, “Okay, are you ready? I don’t know who he is. I know he got a four-month sentence or something like that. And I heard it was a Biden witch hunt.” 

“But this man was treated really badly by the Biden administration,” Trump said. “And he was given a jail term. He’s highly respected. He’s a very successful guy. They sent him to jail and they really set him up. That’s my opinion. I was told about it. … I have no idea who he is. I was told that he was a victim, just like I was and just like many other people, of a vicious, horrible group of people in the Biden administration.”

Whether Zhao was “treated really badly,” as Trump claimed, is a matter of opinion. We’ll provide the facts surrounding his case and sentencing.

The government’s case against Zhao was widely covered in 2023, and the Department of Justice began investigating Binance’s activities in 2018, during Trump’s first term as president.

After the yearslong investigation and a settlement with the government, the Department of Justice announced in a press release on Nov. 21, 2023, that Binance Holdings Limited, “the entity that operates the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange,” pleaded guilty to “violations related to the Bank Secrecy Act (BSA), failure to register as a money transmitting business, and the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA).”

The company agreed to pay more than $4.3 billion in penalties as a result of the investigation, “one of the largest corporate penalties in U.S. history,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said.

Zhao, a Canadian national born in China, pleaded guilty to failing to maintain an effective anti-money laundering program, in violation of the Bank Security Act, and was forced to resign as CEO of Binance.

In a Nov. 21, 2023, post on X, Zhao wrote: “Today, I stepped down as CEO of Binance. Admittedly, it was not easy to let go emotionally. But I know it is the right thing to do. I made mistakes, and I must take responsibility.”

“Because Changpeng Zhao knowingly operated a financial platform without basic anti-money laundering safeguards, the company caused illegal transactions between U.S. users and users in sanctioned jurisdictions such as Iran, Cuba, Syria, and Russian-occupied regions of Ukraine – transactions for which Binance profited with significant fees,” said Tessa Gorman, acting U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Washington. 

“Binance turned a blind eye to its legal obligations in the pursuit of profit. Its willful failures allowed money to flow to terrorists, cybercriminals, and child abusers through its platform,” Secretary of the Treasury Janet Yellen said.

The press release also said Binance’s employees recognized that the company “did not have protocols to flag or report transactions for money laundering risks, which employees recognized would attract criminals to the exchange.” A company employee wrote, “we need a banner ‘is washing drug money too hard these days — come to binance we got cake for you.’”

“Zhao told employees it was ‘better to ask for forgiveness than permission,’ and prioritized Binance’s growth over compliance with U.S. law,” the DOJ release also said.

Zhao’s Sentence and Treatment

Following Zhao’s guilty plea, he was allowed to travel throughout the U.S. and temporarily return to his family and home in Dubai.

In a court filing at Zhao’s sentencing five months after his plea, federal prosecutors wrote that he deserved a prison sentence of three years for violating U.S. laws “on an unprecedented scale.” Zhao and his company “put U.S. customers, the U.S. financial system, and U.S. national security at risk,” the prosecutors wrote.

Federal guidelines for Zhao’s crime called for a sentence of 12 to 18 months. Zhao’s lawyers sought probation and no jail time.

Judge Richard A. Jones, who heard the case in U.S. District Court in Seattle, told Zhao, “Your conduct does not warrant a 36-month sentence,” the New York Times reported. Jones sentenced Zhao to four months in prison and ordered him to pay a personal fine of $50 million. Zhao had an estimated personal worth of $33 billion to $43 billion at the time.

Zhao served his sentence in 2024 in a low-security prison in California and a halfway house in Long Beach “where, according to a prison official, he would have been able to make supervised excursions and even go to movies,” Fortune reported.

Though Zhao’s settlement with the Justice Department included his resignation from Binance, Trump’s pardon will likely allow him to return to the company, analysts said.

The Trump Family and Binance

The Trump family’s business interests have veered in recent years from real estate to the cryptocurrency industry, with Trump’s sons pursuing various crypto ventures under the company name World Liberty Financial, including business tied to Binance, which was founded by Zhao in 2017.

Bloomberg reported in July that Binance assisted in creating the initial code that enabled the issuance of USD1, a stablecoin offered for investment by World Liberty Financial. (A stablecoin is a type of digital currency pegged to a traditional currency, such as a U.S. dollar.) That enabled USD1 to be used by MGX, a United Arab Emirates firm, for a $2 billion investment in Binance in May. The investment could channel millions annually from interest-bearing assets to the Trump family, according to Bloomberg.

Days after Trump pardoned Zhao in October, Binance began promoting sales of USD1 on its U.S. site, making the digital coin more accessible to U.S. investors and more likely to increase in value, USA Today reported.

The Trump administration has said the president has no conflicts of interest in these dealings. Leavitt said in a statement: “Neither the president nor his family have ever engaged, or will ever engage, in conflicts of interest.”

During the “60 Minutes” interview, Trump said, “My sons are involved in crypto much more than I — me. I — I know very little about it, other than one thing. It’s a huge industry.”

Trump’s Pardon of Zhao

In the “60 Minutes” interview, O’Donnell asked Trump if he was “concerned about the appearance of corruption” in pardoning Zhao.

Trump replied: “I can’t say, because — I can’t say — I’m not concerned. I don’t — I’d rather not have you ask the question. But I let you ask it.”

Some business and legal experts have expressed concerns.

Eswar Prasad, an economics professor at Cornell University and a crypto skeptic, told the New York Times, “There is little justification for this pardon and highlights how far this administration will go to promote the cryptocurrency industry.”

“It is not unusual for businesspeople to be among those who occasionally receive presidential grants of clemency,” Dan Kobil, a professor with expertise in executive clemency at Capital University Law School, told us in an email. “For example, President Biden at the end of his term commuted the sentence of convicted Illinois fraudster Eric Bloom who stole more than $665 million from investors. He was included among 1,500 commutations of non-violent federal prisoners who had been placed on home release during the COVID-19 epidemic. Biden’s commutation did not erase Bloom’s conviction or remove its collateral consequences, but it did reduce Bloom’s sentence by several years.”

“Still, there are several unusual aspects to Trump’s pardon of Zhao,” Kobil said. “First, it was a pardon, the most sweeping form of clemency which entirely erases the consequences of the conviction, almost as if the crime never occurred. Another unusual aspect of the pardon was its timing: the pardon was issued very shortly after Zhao had completed his prison sentence, and before he had established a significant record of ongoing lawful behavior.”

“The pardon also was unusual,” Kobil said, because it was issued after the Wall Street Journal reported that the Trump family’s crypto venture was aided by “a partnership with an under-the-radar trading platform” called PancakeSwap that is administered by Binance. The ties between Binance and the Trump family make the pardon “look like a reward,” Kobil said. 

A group of seven senators wrote to Attorney General Pam Bondi seeking information about Trump’s pardon of Zhao. “The pardon — which signals to cryptocurrency executives and other white-collar criminals that they can commit crimes with impunity, so long as they enrich President Trump enough — seems likely to encourage, rather than discourage, criminal activity,” they wrote.

A group of 28 Democratic House members also sent a letter to Bondi opposing Trump’s pardon of Zhao and highlighting concerns about “potential conflicts of interest.”

Addressing questions about Zhao’s pardon at the Nov. 4 White House briefing, Leavitt said, “There’s a whole team of qualified lawyers who look at every single pardon request that, ultimately, make their way up to the president of the United States. He’s the ultimate final decision-maker. And he was very clear when he came into office that he was most interested in looking at pardoning individuals who were abused, and used by the Biden Department of Justice, and were over-prosecuted by a weaponized DOJ.”

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The post Addressing Trump’s Claims About the Pardon of Binance Founder appeared first on FactCheck.org.

They are as divided as the party. Some wanted to continue to fight. Others were worried about jobs or people depending on SNAP food relief.