Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) is pushing new legislation that would ban all elected officials, including the president and members of Congress, from owning or trading cryptocurrency and stocks.
Khanna unveiled the proposal during an Oct. 27 appearance on MSNBC’s Morning Joe, where he blasted what he called blatant corruption involving crypto ties to President Donald Trump.
“We should ban any elected official from having cryptocurrency and accepting foreign money,” Khanna said. “It is so illegal. It is right in our faces.”
Calls Out Trump’s Pardon of Binance Founder
Khanna’s bill follows intense public scrutiny over Trump’s Oct. 23 pardon of Changpeng Zhao (CZ), the founder of crypto exchange Binance. Zhao had been sentenced to four months in prison for failing to prevent money laundering on the platform.
According to court filings and multiple news outlets, Binance transactions were tied to terrorist groups and other criminal actors.
“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,” Khanna said.
“And then [he] petitions for a pardon from Donald Trump after basically funneling money to terrorists.”
He added, “What he does is 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.”
YouTuber Stephen Findeisen, better known as Coffeezilla, who investigated the situation in a video titled Historic Levels of Corruption, said, “It just seems so blatantly corrupt. It’s not just that you’re pardoning CZ. It’s that leading up to it, you’re having deals to make money off of that pardon.”
Ties to Trump Family Crypto Project
At the center of the controversy is World Liberty Financial (WLFI), a crypto company tied to Trump’s son.
According to The Wall Street Journal, Binance began talks with Trump allies in 2024 and later received a $2 billion investment from MGX, a UAE-backed firm.
That investment was funneled through WLFI’s new stablecoin, USD1.
The move gave WLFI an estimated $80 million annually in yield from U.S. Treasuries backing the coin.
“The only reason you would do it in USD1 is to really help out one person or one player, which is World Liberty Financial,” Coffeezilla explained.
Soon after, Zhao applied for a pardon, and in October, Trump granted it.
The White House denied any connection between the pardon and the financial ties.
Press Secretary Caroline Leavitt said the pardon was part of ending the Biden administration’s “war on cryptocurrency.”
AI Chips and Possible Quid Pro Quo
Khanna’s concerns go beyond cryptocurrency. Reports show that shortly after the $2 billion investment into Binance and WLFI, the UAE was granted access to advanced U.S. AI chips.
According to The New York Times, two weeks after a $2 billion investment into World Liberty Financial by an Emirati firm tied to Sheikh Tahnoon, the White House agreed to grant the UAE access to hundreds of thousands of advanced AI chips, many of which would go to G42, a tech firm controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon.
While officials denied any conflict of interest, the timing raised eyebrows.
The chips are critical to advancing AI worldwide, and giving access to them was seen as a major geopolitical move by the White House.
Some say the timing makes it look like a favor traded for investment.
“You literally can just look at the market cap of USD1 and see the effect this deal has had on this coin,” Coffeezilla said.
“Almost all of the success of this coin, to the extent it has been successful, was because of this deal.”
Crypto, Power, and Political Risk
The controversy comes amid growing frustration over how officials appear to use their positions for personal profit.
Lawmakers from both parties have faced backlash in recent years for stock trades that seemed suspiciously well-timed.
With public trust eroding, there’s been increasing demand for stricter rules on financial holdings.
Khanna’s new bill takes things a step further by directly targeting cryptocurrency. It would ban both trading and ownership of digital assets for anyone in elected office.
He says these kinds of conflicts of interest are too obvious to ignore and are fueling public cynicism.
The measure could face stiff resistance, especially from politicians closely tied to Wall Street or Silicon Valley. But it could also spark new bipartisan conversations around ethics and accountability.
“This is blatant corruption,” Khanna said. “We need to organize around the country.”
Past Proposals and Stalled Reform
Efforts to ban members of Congress from trading stocks have gained momentum in the past but often stalled.
In 2022, a bipartisan group introduced a bill that would have forced lawmakers and their spouses to use blind trusts. Despite public support, the bill never made it to a vote.
Khanna’s approach is more aggressive. His proposal includes cryptocurrency, an area largely untouched in prior legislation.
The bill would apply across all branches of government, including the executive, and prohibit ownership, trading, or indirect benefit from digital assets.
Public Reaction and Next Steps
Online reaction to both the bill and the recent pardon has been intense. People across the political spectrum are calling for more transparency and tighter ethics rules.
While it’s unclear if Khanna’s proposal will gain enough support to pass, it reflects growing unease over how political power and personal profit increasingly overlap in the crypto world.
So far, there’s no scheduled vote on the measure.
Still, Khanna believes the bill is essential. Public service should never become a tool for personal financial gain and officials enriching themselves while in office is exactly the kind of behavior that undermines trust.
With crypto headlines, presidential pardons, and wealthy political families dominating the conversation, there may be more momentum now than in past reform efforts.
Whether Congress will act, however, remains an open question.
IMAGE CREDIT: “President Donald J. Trump and his national security team meet in the Situation Room of the White House” by Daniel Torok, The White House. Licensed under U.S. Government Work. Image adjusted for layout.