The Wall Street Journal reported this week how a network of lobbyists has exerted pressure on people close to the president, in exchange for millions, to obtain presidential pardons for convicted businessmen and politicians. Since returning to the White House in January, Donald Trump has granted almost 1,600 pardons to individuals and companies, including Chinese businessman Changpeng Zhao and former Honduran president Juan Orlando Hernández, who had been convicted of conspiring to traffic 400 tons of cocaine into the US
October 2025, Donald Trump Jr, the eldest son of the current president of the United States, approaches his father flanked by Ches McDowell, a well-known lobbyist from Washington DC. At one point, Trump Jr. pulls McDowell to greet the president, and takes them both to a corner. According to people familiar with what happened, the matter is urgent: one of McDowell’s clients was seeking a presidential pardon.
The episode was reported this week, in a piece that promises to generate controversy about how a network of lobbyists is using their power of influence to, in exchange for millions of dollars, secure pardons for clients from President Trump.
Ches McDowell’s client was Changpeng Zhao, the founder of Binance, the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange. That October afternoon, say the sources interviewed on condition of anonymity by the newspaper, the president agrees to sign the pardon of Zhao, “one of the beneficiaries of a new informal route for presidential pardons that has become a feature of Trump’s second term, allowing some pardon seekers with a lot of financial resources or lobbyists with political connections to bypass the traditional pardon process”.
Heard by the Wall Street Journal, the lobbyist representing Zhao says that Trump Jr. did not help him seek the pardon and that he was no longer in the room with father and son when Zhao was mentioned, especially because, says McDowell, he left with Trump Jr. that same afternoon for a hunting trip in Utah. Contacted by the newspaper, a spokesperson for Trump Jr. declined to comment on the matter.
A week later, generating great uproar in Washington. Invoking how Binance boosted the cryptocurrency company that Trump Jr. co-founded with his father and brothers, World Liberty Financial, Democrats sharply criticized the presidential pardon for the Chinese businessman, speaking of “blatant corruption.” The criticism was not limited to the opposition barricade, with several Republicans – including North Carolina senator Thom Tillis, and Trump campaign donor Joe Lonsdale – saying they were alarmed by the pardon – “a terrible idea”, in the words of Laura Loomer, another supporter of the current administration.
Binance pleaded guilty in 2023 to violating US anti-money laundering laws and paid a $4.3 billion fine; its founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao, was then sentenced to a four-month prison sentence in April 2024. AP photo
Exert influence
For Binance, according to the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s pardon completed an almost year-long process to secure a pardon for its founder – in total, the crypto company paid around $800,000 to lobbyists to achieve it, along with changes in US policies, according to federal records. Binance also offered up to $5 million to lobbyists other than Ches McDowell to help with the process, people familiar with the strategy and approaches say.
This is the company that, in 2023, declared itself, having paid a fine of 4.3 billion dollars, with Zhao serving a four-month prison sentence for a related charge, in April 2024. The pardon had one objective: to facilitate the company’s return to the American market.
“The pardon granted to Zhao was one of those granted in recent months that surprised even some of the president’s closest advisors,” says the Wall Street Journal.
Among the most surprising clemencies is the pardon for the former president of Honduras, Juan Orlando Hernández, who was convicted of conspiring with drug cartels to send 400 tons of cocaine to the USA – coming from a president who had already launched it in the Caribbean, killing 108 people, under the argument that he was fighting drug trafficking into North American territory.
Hernández’s pardon was decided so quickly that White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and other senior officials were not notified in advance – and even Roger Stone, a longtime Trump ally who had been lobbying for it, told people close to him that he was surprised by the speed. (Stone guarantees that he did not receive money to ensure that the pardon was signed by the president.)
Later this month, Trump also pardoned Texan Henry Cuellar, accused of receiving almost $600,000 in foreign bribes, and sports businessman Tim Leiweke, who had been indicted by Trump’s own Justice Department.
Trump says his children were involved in the clemency he granted to Zhao; “I’m happy that they’re involved, because it’s probably a great sector, cryptocurrencies”, said the president in an interview with the program 60 Minutos. photo Alex Brandon/AP
How much does a pardon cost
In the first year of his first term, Trump granted a single pardon and commuted a prison sentence — and waited until his last day in office to issue some 140 additional pardons. Without even completing a year of this second term, on the contrary, he has already pardoned more than 1,500 people, on his first day in office, and since then he has granted clemency to another 87 people and companies.
“The new approach — driven in part by Trump’s own experience as a criminal defendant, say people close to him — has spawned a pardon-seeking industry, where lobbyists say his negotiating fee has a base value of $1 million,” reports the Wall Street Journal. “The pardon seekers offered some lobbyists close to the president fees of up to $6 million if they could close the deal, according to people familiar with the offers.”
In the first quarter of the year, a lobbying firm run by former Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller and former Trump Organization executive George Sorial received $1 million to win a pardon for a real estate agent convicted of bribing former senator Robert Menendez with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash and gold bars. But that forgiveness never came. Contacted by the newspaper, Schiller and Sorial’s company refused to comment on the matter.
The lawyer for rapper Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, who was sentenced to more than four years in prison in October on prostitution-related charges, also reportedly tried to contact lobbyists and people close to Trump to obtain a pardon that has not yet come.
In Zhao’s case, Binance paid McDowell $450,000 in the third quarter, a period in which he was registered as a lobbyist for just 10 days; According to him, there was no right to payment of any success fee.
“What makes the services of well-connected lobbyists and lawyers more expensive is the perception that they can only seek a few pardons each, given the political capital they need to invest to accelerate a case” with the president, the newspaper says. “Trump himself was surprised by the backlash over his pardon of Binance’s Zhao in October, which he did not expect to be so controversial, administration officials said.”
In an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” the same month, Trump was asked about the Zhao pardon and what, at first glance, appeared to be an exchange of favors – an allegation he neither rejected nor accepted. “I don’t know anything about it because I’m very busy,” the president replied. “I can only say this: my kids are involved in this. I’m glad they are, because it’s probably a great industry, cryptocurrencies.” On the World Liberty website, Binance is referenced as being approximately 40% owned by a Trump family entity.
