In brief
- The California lawmaker announced plans to ban elected officials from owning or creating cryptocurrencies, calling it a response to corruption concerns.
- Khanna linked the proposal to President Trump’s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao, which he described as “blatant corruption.”
- He previously authored the 2023 Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act, aimed at preventing lawmakers from trading individual equities.
Representative Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) announced Monday he is introducing legislation to ban elected officials from owning or creating cryptocurrencies.
Speaking in an interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, republished on the legislator’s official YouTube channel on Monday evening, Khanna remarked on President Donald Trump’s pardon of Binance founder Changpeng Zhao.
“This is blatant corruption. You don’t need to know a lot about cryptocurrency to understand what went on here. You’ve got a foreign billionaire who was basically engaged in money laundering, having money go to Hamas, having money go to Iran, having money go to child abusers,” Rep. Khanna said.
Khanna, however, incorrectly stated that Zhao “served four years in prison” when the former Binance executive was only sentenced to four months.
Khanna also incorrectly stated that Zhao “was convicted.” Instead, Zhao pleaded guilty to money laundering violations as part of a $4.3 billion settlement deal with the U.S. Department of Justice.
The California lawmaker alleged that President Trump granted a pardon to Binance founder Changpeng Zhao while Zhao was “basically financing Donald Trump’s cryptocurrency stablecoin.”
Khanna claimed Zhao pledged to support World Liberty Finance, which he described as the “president’s son’s cryptocurrency firm”, and that they were “making millions of dollars on” while Trump is president.
“It is so illegal. It is right in our faces,” Khanna said, arguing that elected officials should be banned “from having cryptocurrency and accepting foreign money.”
The remarks repeat some points raised in an earlier discussion on MSNBC’s The Briefing on Friday, shortly after news of the pardon came out. Khanna urged bipartisan action to investigate what he described as financial entanglements between the Trump family and Zhao.
“I think that people think this is a tech issue. This is not a tech issue. This is a corruption issue. This is money that’s going into someone at the White House and the White House having official acts like pardons in exchange,” Khanna said Friday.
Try, try again
Khanna’s efforts to legislate against crypto trading and ownership among elected officials follow his earlier introduction of the Ban Congressional Stock Trading Act in 2023, a bipartisan ethics bill aimed at preventing members of Congress and their families from trading individual stocks while in office.
The measure would require lawmakers and senior officials to divest from individual holdings or place their assets in qualified blind trusts, limiting investments to diversified funds or U.S. Treasury securities.
At the time, Khanna framed the proposal as a step toward restoring public trust by ensuring lawmakers cannot personally profit from policy decisions or privileged information, principles he now says should extend to cryptocurrency ownership as well.
While Khanna’s 2023 Act stalled in committee and was never enacted, it did help shape ongoing bipartisan efforts to restrict lawmakers from trading stocks or crypto while in office.
Khanna’s press office did not immediately return Decrypt’s request for a copy of drafts he’s looking to file. Khanna also did not respond to Decrypt’s direct request for comment on X. Decrypt also asked for confirmation about his trading activities.
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