Acting AG Blanche Defends $400 Million Trump Jet and Binance Pardon at House Hearing
Updated
Updated · HuffPost · Jun 1
Acting AG Blanche Defends $400 Million Trump Jet and Binance Pardon at House Hearing
1 articles · Updated · HuffPost · Jun 1
House Democrats pressed acting Attorney General Todd Blanche over Qatar’s $400 million luxury jet donation and President Donald Trump’s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.
Rosa DeLauro accused Blanche of acting as Trump’s lawyer, not the nation’s, after he rejected any basis for a criminal probe and said the jet was received by the United States, not Trump.
Glenn Ivey and Joe Morelle then focused on Zhao, whose Binance paid a $4.3 billion penalty after anti-money-laundering failures; they argued his pardon looked like a quid pro quo after he promoted Trump-linked cryptocurrencies.
Blanche said the Constitution does not require Trump to explain pardons, but conceded a $1 million payment explicitly tied to a pardon could potentially violate federal bribery law.