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Regarded, by whom? Not by financial experts such as Matt Levine. It looks like the prosecution followed the books and the law and the long-held SEC position. If you’re honestly interested, Levines newsletters at the time carry a lot of detail, the given reasoning beyond politics, and historical comparison to non-crypto decisions.

It’s too easy of a spin to later declare events as all political; one should be careful to make that claim unless accompanied with good arguments.

Regarding plea deal/guilt: there is sufficient material publicly available to come to the conclusion that yes Binance willingly and knowingly invested effort into circumventing the law and SECs policies. Regardless of whether that law was set up for “political purposes“ or not, it was not some honest mistake or differences of interpretation. Don’t fall into the trap of rewriting history.