The Wall Street Journal says the world’s largest cryptocurrency platform failed to present the newspaper acted with precise malice when it printed three articles about Binance’s termination of inner compliance investigations.
MANHATTAN (CN) — The Wall Street Journal requested a federal judge Wednesday afternoon to dismiss a defamation suit over information stories that Binance coated up an inner probe that discovered cash transferred on the platform flowed to sanctioned entities linked to Iranian-backed terror teams.
The Wall Street Journal, a Dow Jones firm, argues Binance’s March 2026 defamation complaint needs to be dismissed for failure to plead the newspaper acted with precise malice when it printed three articles detailing Binance’s supposed obstruction of efforts to stop unlawful transactions, retaliation towards compliance personnel, dismantling of inner investigations, weakening of cooperation with legislation enforcement, and knowingly allowing sanctioned Iranian entities to transact on its platform.
“The crux of Binance’s grievance on this motion is straightforward: the Journal knew its reporting was false as a result of Binance despatched the Journal self-serving denials prior to the article’s publication and once more after the article was printed,” the Wall Street Journal wrote in its motion to dismiss Binance’s defamation suit. “The grievance repeats this mantra again and again. However naked repetition doesn’t rework these insufficient allegations right into a defamation declare.”
Throughout oral arguments Wednesday afternoon, Wall Street Journal lawyer Katherine Bolger from Davis Wright Tremaine argued Binance didn’t deny the central claims of the three newspaper articles.
“This defamation motion springs not from false information, however from Binance’s unhappiness with the way in which the Journal reported truthful information. Binance’s unhappiness with the Journal’s editorial judgments doesn’t represent a defamation declare, and the declare needs to be dismissed.”
Binance argues in its opposition memo that it plausibly confirmed defamation-by-implication in reference to the Journal’s assertions that Binance fired the related investigators as a result of they have been investigating Iranian transfers.
Binance lawyer Christopher Norman Lavigne with the agency Withers Bergman argued Binance’s inner compliance probe was not really dismantled as reported, and the Journal nonetheless printed a sensational headline —“Binance Fired Workers Who Flagged $1 Billion Transferring to Sanctioned Iran Entities”— that painted a false image of legislation enforcement obstruction and poor compliance at Binance.
“Right here you will have an article that begins with a conclusion, ends with the conclusion, and peppered all all through are the conclusion,” Lavigne stated.
Binance claims the articles made statements and implications which might be false, defamatory, and reckless.
U.S. District Judge Paul Engelmayer famous the amended grievance lists 22 distinct, “allegedly actionable statements” throughout the three Wall Street Journal articles.
The Barack Obama appointee pressed Binance’s lawyer to clarify how particular person statements have been factually inaccurate or how they have been defamatory.
Particularly, Engelmayer grilled Binance why the Wall Street Journal was sued when each The New York Instances and Fortune journal additionally printed articles on the subject of Binance firing prime investigators who claimed to have uncovered proof of Iranian sanctions violations.
Lavigne responded that Wall Street Journal articles went deeper than the opposite two outlet’s tales, and later claimed the Wall Street Journal was tainted by bias in the direction of Binance.
The Journal says the very existence of these New York Instances and Fortune articles negates a discovering of precise malice.
“Given this prior reporting from respected information retailers, the Journal would don’t have any cause to imagine that its personal article on this topic was false,” the newspaper wrote in a courtroom submitting.
Engelmayer didn’t rule on the movement to dismiss from the bench, taking the matter underneath submission.
Binance founder and former CEO Changpeng “CZ” Zhao pleaded guilty in 2023 to failing to stop cash laundering at Binance, and was sentenced to 4 months in jail. He has since been pardoned by President Donald Trump.
On the time Zhao’s pardon, White Home press secretary Karoline Leavitt claimed in an announcement the Biden administration had prosecuted Zhao out of a “want to punish the cryptocurrency business.”
Zhao has vital ties to Trump’s cryptocurrency platform World Liberty Monetary, which was co-founded together with his sons and introduced weeks earlier than the 2024 election.
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