Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao has pushed back against U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren’s recent claim that he pleaded guilty to money-laundering charges — calling the accusation false and misleading.

In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Friday, Zhao accused the senator of misrepresenting his legal case.

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“She can’t get her facts right,” he wrote. “There were no money-laundering charges.”

Zhao, who was pardoned this week by President Donald Trump, clarified that he had pleaded guilty to a single count of violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act (BSA) — specifically for failing to maintain an effective anti–money laundering (AML) compliance program at Binance. The plea, entered in November 2023, led to a four-month prison sentence handed down in April 2024.

“Failing to maintain proper compliance is not the same as laundering money,” Zhao emphasized in a follow-up response to an X user accusing him of “playing semantics.” “I accepted responsibility for compliance failures. I never laundered money.”

Binance confirmed to Cointelegraph that the presidential pardon had been formally signed and executed on Wednesday, allowing Zhao to regain full freedom and resume his business activities under U.S. law.

Warren Accuses Trump of ‘Corruption’ Over CZ Pardon

In her post, Senator Warren claimed that Zhao had “financed President Donald Trump’s stablecoin” and had lobbied for a pardon in exchange for political and financial favors.

“Trump pardoned a crypto billionaire who pleaded guilty to a criminal money-laundering charge after financing his stablecoin and lobbying for clemency,” Warren wrote. “If Congress doesn’t stop this kind of corruption, it owns it.”

The senator’s comments referred to USD1, a Trump-backed stablecoin project launched earlier this year. The project reportedly leveraged some of Binance’s earlier open-source code, leading to allegations of improper coordination — a claim Zhao has vehemently denied.

In July, Zhao publicly threatened to sue Bloomberg for publishing what he called a “false and defamatory” report linking him to the USD1 stablecoin initiative. “Binance did not write or deploy the USD1 codebase,” Zhao wrote at the time.

Other Lawmakers Join the Criticism

Warren’s criticism echoed comments from Representative Maxine Waters, the top Democrat on the House Financial Services Committee, who blasted Trump’s decision as “a massive favor to crypto criminals.”

“Trump’s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao — who pleaded guilty to enabling money laundering and facilitating suspicious transactions with child abusers, drug dealers, and terrorists — is an appalling but unsurprising reflection of his presidency,” Waters said in a statement Friday.

The criticism follows a series of reports highlighting a surge in Trump’s personal and family wealth during his second term. The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this year that the Trump family’s crypto-linked ventures and partnerships have generated over $4.5 billion since the 2024 election, with Eric Trump admitting the actual figure is “probably more.”