Thanks to Donald Trump, 2025 was a good year for white-collar criminals.

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If you have a passage of regular English text that you would like rewritten, please provide it.When Islamic State needed to move and hide its money, it turned to the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, Binance, according to US prosecutors in 2023. Al-Qaida, Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and Hamas also used the platform to help fund their operations in the years leading up to the October 7th attack in Israel. Binance was not accused…Binance was not directly financing extremist groups, but prosecutors found that it knowingly allowed its exchange to be used as a conduit—enabling these organizations to move funds, avoid scrutiny, and hinder investigations.

At the center of it all was Binance’s founder and CEO, Changpeng Zhao. By 2024, the self-proclaimed “king” of crypto had fallen from grace, pleading guilty to money laundering charges and going to prison, while Binance agreed to pay a record $4.3 billion penalty for facilitating terrorist financing. The case was seen as a rare victory for regulators willing to take on the industry’s biggest players—and for victims of violence linked to those financial flows. Among them were the families of U.S. citizens killed on October 7, who are now suing Binance in a class-action lawsuit accusing the company of “pitching itself to terrorist organizations.”

But in late October, Donald Trump announced he was pardoning Zhao. White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt framed the decision as a corrective to what she called the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency,” insisting Zhao’s crimes had no “identifiable victims.”

It was a familiar argument, repackaged for a new audience: that corruption is somehow a “victimless crime.” The claim is absurd. Terrorist organizations do not exist in a vacuum. They depend on white-collar criminals who build and maintain secret financial pipelines. The victims of bombings, shootings, and mass-casualty attacks are all too often also the victims of the bankers, executives, and financiers who made that violence possible.

Zhao’s pardon sent a clear signal about who stands to gain most from a Trump presidency. As those concerned with environmental collapse, economic instability, and the spread of authoritarianism find themselves increasingly sidelined, white-collar criminals—Zhao among them, and Trump himself—are enjoying a political moment unlike any they have known before.

For this circle of fraudsters and tax evaders, the past year has been a rising wave of successes: the abandonment of what seemed like open-and-shut prosecutions, presidential pardons for even the most egregious crimes, and a steady weakening of the agencies meant to hold them accountable. Trump isn’t wrong when he complains about a surge in crime. But as journalist Jacob Silverman wrote earlier this year, “the crime wave is white collar.”

But why would the Trump administration choose to overlook consequences for criminals whose actions threaten the stability of the broader American economy?

The Pardon President

Trump’s preferred tool for aiding white-collar criminals is simple: the pardon. Where previous presidents used that power sparingly, often at the end of their terms, Trump has wielded it freely—granting clemency even when it undermines his administration’s stated goals.

Take Trump’s supposed focus on combating drug trafficking. He has been explicit about wanting to stop the flow of narcotics and fentanyl into the U.S. from South America—and has even come close to waging war on Venezuela, despite it not being a primary direct source of cocaine to the U.S. At the same time, Trump pardoned Juan Orlando Hernández, the former Honduran president.

Hernández may not seem like a typical white-collar criminal, given he was a head of state. But consider what he was accused of and who he used his legal, financial, and political power to help. In 2024, Hernández was convicted by a U.S. jury of an extraordinary list of crimes, including conspiring to import roughly 400 tons of cocaine into the United States. As the U.S. attorney general said at the time, Hernández stood “at the center of one of the largest and most violent drug-trafficking conspiracies in the world,” entangling his finances with the cartels and…Honduras became a major transit point for drugs headed to the United States, turning it into one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The conviction and 45-year sentence of its former president, Juan Orlando Hernández, represented one of the most significant blows to drug-smuggling networks in the past decade—a far more effective strike against narco-trafficking than anything Donald Trump could have achieved through conflict in Venezuela. It also highlighted how white-collar crime is far from victimless: it fuels the rise of narco-states, normalizes violence, and destabilizes entire societies.

But then, much like with other cases, it fell apart. In early December, Trump declared that Hernández had been “treated very harshly and unfairly” and would be released. Hernández had spent months lobbying Trump allies and conservative media figures, portraying himself as a pro-Trump “ally on migration and security” and a victim of political revenge by the Biden administration—a narrative he claimed was also used to target Trump. The strategy worked. And it wouldn’t be the last time.

One by one, white-collar criminals have made their way to the White House, pledging loyalty to Trump—and watching their prison sentences disappear as a result.

There was Charles Scott, a Virginia businessman sentenced earlier this year for manipulating stock prices and defrauding investors at a lighting company, whom Trump later freed. Reality TV stars Julie and Todd Chrisley were caught evading taxes and sentenced to three years in prison—until Trump pardoned them. David Gentile, a former private equity head, was convicted last year for conspiring to defraud investors of around $1.6 billion alongside his partner, receiving a seven-year sentence. But just days into his prison term, Trump commuted his sentence, allowing him to walk free.

That decision was particularly shocking. Gentile and his colleague had defrauded a staggering 10,000 victims—parents and grandparents with little to their name, some of whom lost their entire life savings. “I’m totally disgusted, because it wasn’t only myself,” one victim said after Trump’s move. “It was my elderly mother in her nineties and my sister as well… We all got defrauded.”

Trump’s pardons weren’t limited to financial crimes. In the political arena, he used them to undermine the already fragile notion of public accountability, turning American politics into a carnival of bribery and fraud.

He pardoned Alexander Sittenfeld, a former Cincinnati city council member convicted on bribery and extortion charges; John Rowland, a former Connecticut governor implicated in multiple corruption cases; and Jeremy Hutchinson, a former Arkansas state legislator from a prominent political family. In 2023, Hutchinson pleaded guilty to accepting over $150,000 in bribes and was sentenced to four years in prison—a sentence Trump wiped away earlier this year.

Just this month, Trump announced the pardon of Henry Cuellar, a Texas representative and the first member of Congress in U.S. history formally accused of acting as a foreign agent. Cuellar allegedly oversaw multiple bribery schemes from Mexico to Azerbaijan, serving as a mole for an Azeri regime known for its kleptocratic brutality—jailing dissidents, journalists, and opposition figures. He allegedly acted as an agent while the regime was engaged in ethnic cleansing against Armenians, acts described by Freedom House as “war crimes and crimes against humanity.”

None of that mattered. Cuellar was pardoned anyway, allowed to remain in Congress, and turned into a potential political ally. The message to lawmakers was clear: loyalty to Trump now offers protection from consequences. The message to foreignThe message to corporate leaders and foreign strongmen was clear: the United States is once again open for business.

‘Gutting enforcement against corporate lawbreakers’

Pardons are just one tool Trump has used to help white-collar criminals avoid justice. They typically apply only to those already convicted. It’s much easier to simply drop investigations into potential wrongdoing before any convictions occur.

Public Citizen, a nonprofit consumer rights group, has tracked enforcement actions—prosecutions or investigations—against corporations that have been paused or abandoned due to Trump’s decisions. Out of 480 corporations previously targeted, the Trump administration has derailed about one-third of these cases. As Public Citizen put it, “President Trump talks tough on crime, but his administration is gutting enforcement against corporate lawbreakers.”

The examples are widespread. After years of fatal crashes linked to systemic negligence at Boeing, the Department of Justice launched a felony case, charging the company with conspiracy to defraud the United States and connecting its actions to hundreds of deaths. Boeing initially agreed to plead guilty and pay nearly $700 million in fines. But after donating about $1 million to Trump’s inauguration fund, the deal fell apart. The prosecution was dropped. Lawyers for victims’ families called the decision “unprecedented” and “obviously wrong for the deadliest corporate crime in US history.” A judge noted last month that the agreement “fails to secure the necessary accountability to ensure the safety of the flying public.”

Cases involving unregistered brokers trading unregulated securities, pharmaceutical price-fixing conspiracies, and corporations operating factories that posed an “imminent and substantial endangerment to public health” have all vanished—often following political donations or business deals that benefited Trump, his family, or his allies.

No sector illustrates this pattern better than cryptocurrency. Major players like Crypto.com and Coinbase saw investigations quietly shelved. Binance and its founder, Changpeng Zhao, were at the center of this corrupt cycle.

Months before Trump pardoned Zhao, Binance had begun helping Trump’s personal crypto firm, World Liberty Financial, develop its own stablecoin. A separate firm controlled by the United Arab Emirates later used that coin to fund a $2 billion investment back into Binance. (The UAE also gained access to high-end American chips, despite widespread national security concerns.)

This generated tens of millions of dollars for the Trumps and ultimately led to Zhao walking free. It was a sordid web of crypto payoffs, presidential profiteering, and overturned white-collar convictions, compounded by growing national security worries. Unsurprisingly, these crypto organizations, and the industry as a whole, have become some of Trump’s biggest corporate supporters. There are now escalating fears that this unregulated industry could be at the center of America’s next economic collapse.

Letting the world’s criminals know: the US is open for business

On one level, Trump’s dismissive approach to financial crime is simple: it pays. But his broad support for white-collar criminals seems to go beyond just profit. Why would his administration want to help people who risk destabilizing the entire American economy?

Part of it is grievance. Trump has long seen himself as a victim of the Biden administration’s focus on financial crime and what he calls the “weaponization” of the justice system.The justice system is also a tool for consolidating power—suppressing democratic movements in countries like Honduras, or securing support from those who owe their freedom to Trump. If Trump, for instance, tries to stay in office beyond constitutional limits, he won’t act alone. He will be backed by the people he pardoned, the corporations he protected, and the regimes he reassured—all of whom share an interest in keeping him in power. After all, a future administration could send them back to prison.

Some of this is ideological, part of a broader Republican effort to dismantle the so-called “administrative state.” Any pretense of independence at the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has effectively vanished. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is stripped of authority and funding, with the Trump administration openly challenging its legality. The Environmental Protection Agency’s name is now almost a contradiction, as the administration rolls back pollution limits and eliminates restrictions on substances like formaldehyde. And the Department of Justice has become Trump’s personal instrument, used to target his enemies and help his allies.

These are just the most visible changes. The Foreign Corrupt Practices Act—which once stopped U.S. companies from bribing foreign officials and propping up dictators—is being gutted. The new shell company registry, which would have ended the U.S. role as the world’s leading haven for dirty money, is now effectively dead. Autocrats, oligarchs, drug traffickers, arms dealers—anyone relying on criminal profits to fund harmful activities—now see the U.S. as a safe haven for their wealth and a force to make the world safe for dictatorship again.

All this not only makes the poisoning and degradation of America’s landscapes more likely, but also increases the risk of corporate failures and even economic collapse. If rolling back regulations, halting investigations, and letting corporate fraud run wild led to ecological disasters and the Great Recession in recent decades, there’s every reason to believe it will happen again.

Authoritarian systems don’t appear out of nowhere. They are funded, enabled, and sustained by exactly these kinds of quid-pro-quo deals. The end result isn’t just corruption, but entrenchment: a political order where crime is rewarded, enforcement is optional, and loyalty is the currency.

This system doesn’t just reward crime—it encourages it. How foolish would a corporate leader have to be to keep following rules that are no longer enforced?

It’s a race to the bottom for corporate crime, and one way or another, it will blow up in our faces—through ecological catastrophe, another Great Recession, or a terrorist attack on American soil. Whatever form it takes, it will shatter the myth that this kind of corruption or white-collar crime is “victimless,” because by then, all of us will be victims.

Spot illustrations by Igor Bastidas.

Frequently Asked Questions
Of course Here is a list of FAQs about the topic Thanks to Donald Trump 2025 was a good year for whitecollar criminals framed in a natural conversational tone

Beginner Definition Questions

1 What does whitecollar criminal mean
A whitecollar criminal is someone who commits a financially motivated nonviolent crime typically through deception while working in a professional or business setting Examples include fraud insider trading embezzlement and tax evasion

2 What is this referring to Is there a specific law or event
This statement is a critical commentary not a reference to a single law It generally refers to policies and appointments during the Trump administration that critics argue reduced enforcement weakened regulations and shifted priorities at agencies that police corporate and financial crime with effects that could extend into 2025

3 Which government agencies are responsible for catching whitecollar criminals
Key agencies include the Securities and Exchange Commission the Department of Justice and the Internal Revenue Service Their focus is on protecting investors ensuring fair markets and prosecuting financial fraud

Policy Mechanism Questions

4 How could a past president affect enforcement years later
Presidents have a lasting impact through 1 Judicial Appointments Appointing federal judges and Supreme Court justices who may interpret laws more favorably to defendants 2 Regulatory Rollbacks Implementing rules that are difficult to quickly reverse 3 Agency Culture Shifting enforcement priorities and morale within agencies can have longterm effects

5 What specific changes made it easier for whitecollar criminals
Critics point to several trends
Reduced Enforcement Actions Agencies like the SEC brought fewer cases and levied lower penalties in some areas
Policy Shifts The DOJ issued memos making it harder to prosecute corporate executives often favoring settlements with companies over individual charges
Budget Cuts Staffing Proposed or enacted cuts to enforcement agency budgets
Deregulation Rolling back rules in finance and environmental sectors that acted as deterrents

6 Did this mean no whitecollar criminals were prosecuted
No prosecutions still occurred The argument is that the overall environment became more favorable for defendantsthrough lighter sentences fewer cases being

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