U.S. Representative Ro Khanna (D-CA-17) will be proposing a new legislation aimed at banning elected officials from profiting off cryptocurrency, a direct response to President Donald Trump's pardon of Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng "CZ" Zhao earlier this month.
"Trump pardoned a convicted foreign billionaire who supported the Trump family's cryptocurrency," Khanna said in a press release on Oct. 27.
"This is blatant corruption. The Ban Crypto Corruption legislation simply stops elected officials from profiting from crypto and eliminates conflicts of interest. No one should go into public service to make a profit."
Related: Trump claims Biden 'switched totally' to support crypto after losing voter support
The 'Ban Crypto Corruption' Act
According to Khanna, the Ban Crypto Corruption bill would prohibit top U.S. officials and their families including the president, vice president, members of Congress, and high-ranking federal employees, from trading, issuing, sponsoring, or endorsing digital assets.
The proposed legislation would:
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Prohibit the issuance, sponsoring or endorsing of digital assets (including cryptocurrency, meme coins, stablecoins, tokens, NFTs, digital trading cards, and decentralized finance platforms) by the President, Vice President, Members of Congress, candidates for public office, elected public officials, high-ranking executive branch employees and special government employees, and the immediate family members of each of these.
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Require politicians and their immediate family members to place any digital assets they hold in a qualified blind trust inaccessible during their candidacy, public service, and 2 years after an individual's service.
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Prohibit foreign investment in any digital assets issued, promoted, or controlled by politicians and their immediate family.
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Mandate the full and timely disclosure of all cryptocurrency transactions by politicians and their immediate family.
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Establish civil and criminal penalties for violations.
Khanna represents California's 17th Congressional District, which covers much of Silicon Valley — including Cupertino, Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and parts of San Jose, home to major tech companies like Apple, Intel, and Nvidia.
Notably, World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a blockchain venture backed by former U.S. President Donald Trump and his sons, has become one of the important crypto projects in the 2025 crypto cycle. The family reportedly holds roughly 22.5 billion WLFI tokens, valued at an estimated $5 billion, according to Reuters and Wired . The project also issued a U.S. dollar–pegged stablecoin, USD1.
The CZ pardon controversy
Trump's pardon of Changpeng Zhao has drawn bipartisan criticism over potential conflicts of interest between the administration and the crypto industry.
Zhao, the billionaire founder of Binance, the world's largest cryptocurrency exchange, pleaded guilty in November 2023 to violating the U.S. Bank Secrecy Act, admitting that Binance failed to maintain an effective anti-money-laundering program.
The exchange was fined more than $4.3 billion, and Zhao was sentenced to four months in prison in April 2024. He was released in September 2024.
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In a surprise move, Trump issued a full pardon on Oct. 23, 2025, calling Zhao "an innovator who made mistakes but deserves a second chance."
The highlight on Nov. 2 was when Trump declared not knowing Zhao, even after issuing a full pardon.
Khanna accused Trump of using his presidential power for personal financial gain:
"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. He was convicted," Khanna said on MSNBC.
"And then he petitions for a pardon from Donald Trump after basically funneling money to terrorists," he continued. "And what he does, he says, I'm going to support World Liberty, which is the president's son's cryptocurrency firm, which they're making millions of dollars on while Donald Trump is president."
Khanna added that the pardon "fits into a broader pattern" of Trump easing regulatory pressure on the crypto industry:
"It is so illegal, it is right in our faces, and we should ban any elected official from having cryptocurrency and accepting foreign money."
The California Democrat has positioned his legislation as a bipartisan ethics measure rather than an anti-crypto bill.
If introduced as planned in November, the Ban Crypto Corruption legislation would mark the first U.S. bill explicitly designed to separate cryptocurrency ownership from public office — potentially setting the stage for a political showdown as the 2026 midterms approach.
Related: Cardano founder calls Trump a 'political martyr'
This story was originally reported by TheStreet on Nov 3, 2025, where it first appeared in the Policy section. Add TheStreet as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
