[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 96 (Monday, June 8, 2026)]
[House]
[Page H3916]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




            SELF-ENRICHMENT REWARDED, OVERSIGHT BLINDFOLDED

  (Mr. Ivey of Maryland was recognized to address the House for 5 
minutes.)
  Mr. IVEY. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to address a deeply troubling 
pattern of behavior that strikes at the very heart of the American 
justice system. It is a pattern where self-enrichment is rewarded, 
oversight is blindfolded, and rule of law is bent to serve the 
powerful.
  I sit on the Appropriations Committee, and we had a chance last week 
to hear the testimony of the Acting Attorney General, Mr. Blanche. I 
asked him about what I thought was a blatant pay-for-pardon scheme, and 
this involves the Binance Corporation.
  Let me walk through some of the facts of what happened there, as I 
did there with the Attorney General.
  In late 2023, Binance agreed to pay a penalty of $4.36 billion. A 
U.S. judge approved the guilty plea and settlement for the anti-money 
laundering and sanctions in February 2024. In other words, the chairman 
of Binance and the company itself pled guilty to crimes that involved 
money laundering. This involved money laundering that was helping 
groups like ISIS and al-Qaida, enemies of the United States, and the 
Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
  In December 2024, Mr. Zhao and Mr. Witkoff met in Abu Dhabi at the 
Bitcoin MENA 2024 Conference. Mr. Witkoff is the special envoy for the 
Trump administration who negotiates agreements with respect to the 
Middle East and does this on behalf of the Trump administration. They 
discussed the violations of anti-money laundering laws while Mr. Zhao 
was serving at Binance.
  In October 2025, Mr. Trump granted a full pardon to Mr. Zhao. That 
meant that they did not have to pay back the money that was part of the 
fine, and it wiped away the conviction and the related elements of 
that.
  According to The Wall Street Journal, part of what happened between 
the pardon and the meeting was that there was a payment that was made. 
That was money that was paid, according to The Wall Street Journal, 
from Binance, which took steps that catapulted the Trump family 
venture's new stablecoin product. The Trump family venture was WLF, and 
it dealt with cryptocurrency. Members of Trump's family, two of his 
sons, and Mr. Witkoff all had vested interests in that company.
  While they put the money into the WLF transaction, that enhanced the 
credibility and pushed up the market value of the WLF company from $127 
million to over $2.1 billion.
  I asked Mr. Blanche, given that he had this meeting, then the money, 
and then the pardon, did he think it would be important to appoint a 
special prosecutor to review the transaction just to make sure that 
there was no misconduct that took place, whether it was on behalf of 
the President or any of the other factors or players who were involved, 
and he said no.
  A special prosecutor would be someone who the Attorney General could 
appoint in order to have a full and independent investigation done, but 
he refused to do that.
  It is important to put this into context, too. Just in the first 3 
months of this year, Mr. Trump has engaged in 3,700 stock transactions 
personally, and his net worth has grown from $2.3 billion to $6.5 
billion since 2024. That is a $4.2 billion increase in his personal 
wealth since he returned to the White House.
  There are other issues that we should raise. In fact, the sentences 
to my right were taken from a New York Times article that chronicles 
many of these types of issues. Nvidia stock is another one where there 
was a potential benefit of $5 million to WLF and the Trump family.
  I am not saying that there was or was not misconduct by Mr. Trump. We 
don't know that yet, but it is important to make sure that somebody who 
is independent, objective, and knowledgeable would conduct that kind of 
investigation.
  So far, the Trump administration has refused to do that, so I am 
going to be introducing legislation that I think will help to 
facilitate that. If you have a President who doesn't want to have his 
Attorney General conduct any investigations into what his 
administration is doing, we should have other avenues to move that 
forward. We have in the past, like the Independent Counsel Act. We also 
could beef up the inspector general law which was put in place after 
Watergate took place and was put in place specifically because of the 
Nixon administration misconduct and the failure to have anybody in the 
Nixon administration investigate that.

                              {time}  1230

  You might recall that John Mitchell was the Attorney General. He 
ended up going to jail because he participated in that misconduct. We 
need to make sure we don't find ourselves in this situation again where 
we have got the fox guarding the henhouse.
  We will offer this legislation soon, but I think it is critical to 
make sure we understand a couple of things in the wake of this. We need 
to keep an eye on the Trump administration, and we need to remember, 
too, that after the testimony he gave, he was promoted to Attorney 
General by the President.

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