After leaving prison, Zhao set out to obtain a presidential pardon so that the owner of Binance could once again be the CEO of Binance. To achieve this, Zhao hired a friend of Don Jr. named Ches McDowell, and also Teresa Goody Guillénwho also represents Zach Witkoff, chief executive of World Liberty Financial and son of chief Middle East trader Steve Witkoff.
During this time, Zhao and Binance have made themselves useful to World Liberty Financial in several ways. More importantly, this $2 billion payment from the UAE to Trump (specifically to World Liberty Financial, in which the Trump family then had a majority stake) was used to purchase a stable coin, 1 USD, which in turn was invested in Binance.
Binance also provided World Liberty Financial with a trading platform, PancakeSwap, which launched in August. The Wall Street Journal history called “The Recipe Behind the Trump Family’s Crypto Wealth.” PancakeSwap does not disclose its ownership, the Newspaper said, but former Binance employees told the Newspaper that Binance employees created PancakeSwap internally and that it remained under the supervision of Binance. World Liberty Financial used PancakeSwap to increase usage by 1 USD. According to Bloomberg, Binance has done more than that; he “wrote the basic code to power USD1”.
