Trump pardons Ross Ulbricht, founder of Silk Road drug marketplace
Ulbricht, sentenced to life in prison in 2015, given ‘full and unconditional’ pardon by president
Trump said he had called Ulbricht’s mother to tell her he would pardon her son “in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly”.
Wildy transactional.
So... does "full and unconditional" mean he's also pardoned for the murders-for-hire? Or just for being a drug lord and America's Next Top Website Boy?
I'm actually kind of impressed he kept his word. That's unexpected
His part is signing a piece of paper with a Sharpie that one of his handlers puts in front of him. That phone call had to be horrible, Trump trying to explain to a mom he is setting her son that he knows nothing about, free because he once said he would to a large group of people he wants to grift.
Because 0% he knows the guy's name, who he was, or why he was in prison.
Edit - autocorrect =(
Yeah, it's insane that he's just openly being like, "I promise to use the powers of my office to solely benefit myself," and the Supreme Court's just like, "Get it, grrrrrl"
Although, to be fair, it did also benefit a guy who tried to murder five people.
He was never convicted on murders for hire, charges were dropped
"The scum that worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern day weaponization of government against me."
He called Ulbricht's prison sentence "ridiculous."
I clearly recall Trump being president from 2016-2020, Ulbricht was sentenced to life without parole in 2015.
If it was so ridiculous, why didn't he pardon him on his first term? What changed to make it such an immediate priority now?
Because he needed the libertarian vote this time in order to win. Its a very cheap promise that guarantees votes and doesnt alienate anyone that doesnt care. Honestly, the fact that he followed through suprises me.
"But why didnt he need the libertarian vote in 16?"
Because he never intended to win the first time. The first run was a fluke. He wanted to play victim and run the media circuit for profit.
Back then he thought Bitcoin was bad and a scam. This time someone showed him how to make money by creating a scam coin and doing a pump and dump, so now he's pro Bitcoin. So pro he'll get rid of all regulation so pump and dump scams are completely legal.
Imagine how many times he was asked:
“Why don’t you have your own “Bitcoin” coin yet, Mr. President?”
I bet Trump is still anti Bitcoin. Under the previous administration, the SEC applied the Howey Test to cryptocurrencies and would have identified Trump Coin as a security. Trump is only interested if he can be in charge of it.
Trump doesn’t need to think about re-election this time around so he has more political freedom.
Tough on drugs... For people who aren't white
Someone should really convince him to legalise all drugs to stick it to the cartels.
Wow, holy fuck, I never thought it'd happen. Even a broken clock is right twice a day I guess.
This dude is about to have a very lucrative career.
I remember this guy being a fucking idiot that paid for several fake assassinations of fake rivals. It was pretty funny.
It is funny in hindsight, knowing the assassinations were a scam. But he thought they were real, he talked in great detail about them and payed for them. This is missing from the article, I believe it was part of his indictment.
Oh yeah, he's a piece of shit for sure. I just think it's funny that he's also a moron. What kind of drug lord gets a message saying "Hey, I heard of a guy who wants to take you down, wire me a cool mil and I'll kill him for you, k?" and just... sends the money? More than once?! He definitely tried to rescue an overthrown Nigerian prince as a kid.
This was one of the biggest requests of the Libertarian Party and Trump followed through with it. Could you imagine the Democratic Party agreeing to any demand from the Green Party in an attempt to get votes?
I can imagine them agreeing to all sorts of things!
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Trump is a demon, but this was a good call. His sentence was wildly disproportionate to what he did.
even a broken clock is right twice a day…
this was probably timed to distract from the whole, nazi salute controversy.
Because of bitcoin I'm sure.
Yeah, you know the kids smart enough to have some hidden like thousands of them or something crazy and made a deal.
It's not out of the kindness of his heart.
He referred to the prosecutors as scum and said they were the ones who were persecuting him like it was some purely political shit when he is an incredibly prolific fraudsters, rapist, and traitor. He should have been arrested during the Jan 6th insurrection and never allowed free again.
His reasoning was that Ross was a libertarian and this is to honor the libertarian movement that supported him... dude! He labeled the fucking drug cartels terrorist organizations and Ross enabled so much drug trafficking it isn't funny. How the fuck do people not see through that?
Here's my convoluted conspiracy theory for how this makes sense.
Could someone explain like to an non American why the president gets to pardon people at all?
If someone committed a crime they're guilty, if there's new evidence that they're not guilty then that's what appeals are for.
In a perfect system, the pardon is meant to be a "check" on the powers of the other branches. (Legislative and judicial). Each branch is meant to both support AND check the others.
Obviously we are watching it all unwind. Certain things were a "gentleman's agreement" in that a president normally wouldn't over do it and just pardon tons of people. We are finding out lots of things were just assumed to be ok, but are easily abused by bad actors
My best understanding is that it was a historic right of kings, governors, etc. The idea was to show mercy to those who may have been convicted wrongly, or to people convicted of laws that have been overturned.
Trump is abusing it in ways never done before to payback political supporters.
TBF Biden abused it as well in pardoning his son.
Just FYI this is not just an American thing. In Italy for example the President of the republic can cancel or amend sentences too, and it does happen relatively often, although not in the same partisan way as in the US (but that's also because the president in Italy is a neutral and representative position).
Some example from few years ago when the president graced 33 people (each with a specific articulated motivation) https://www.ilpost.it/2021/12/10/mattarella-grazia-sette-persone-sebastian-oberleteir-heinrich/ (in Italian, but you can translate if you wish).
Don't know or care about this guy but all drugs should be legal.
Then you should probably care about him. He gave people around the world access to medicine that was illegal
Silk Road wasn’t the first darknet market ya know. I helped launch the first couple that were .onion prior to Ross, but the movement has been about since the 90s at least and would’ve happened without any of us. We were working on a decentralised version that would've been unstoppable but people moved on and got other priorities when SR took all the media attention and spotlight. I'm guessing it'll emerge out crypto soon now the tech has caught up with the theory.
Didn't Donald the Jester say something about fighting crime before the election? And then he drops thousands of hard criminals back on the street?
Anyone else remember the panic when you logged in and saw the notice that the site was seized by the feds?
I mean, certainly not something I experienced but I’m sure if I had it would’ve been terrifying to think the feds could find your info
All sellers had pgp keys published, everyone just used these and feds could not see shit.
Not like the later honeypots where the market published fake pgp keys on sellers' profiles and MITMed the communications.
Probably made a deal and wants all his Bitcoin. Smart kid, you know it's hidden somewhere. Thank God he's out there double life without parole. It's inhumane.
Not to mention that undercover basically set him up to look bad.
If he didn't wanna look bad he shouldn't have sent a person he believed to be a hitman $300,000 to murder someone.
How was he set up to look bad?
I didn't even notice that this happened:
Today, President Biden granted Leonard Peltier executive clemency and commuted the remainder of his sentence.
commuted the remainder of his sentence.
Commuted it to home fucking arrest, not even full clemancy.
Oh... He's not even the real Dread Pirate Roberts!
OMG Trump did a positive thing 🤯, maybe by mistake
If you read the article Trump called his mother to tell her personally so not really an accident
Freeing a drug lord is a good thing?
He was white with a white name. If it was Carlos Fernandez he would had his life sentence upgraded to death and had his executed ASAP.
Wow that brings me joy. Silkroad is where I bought my first drugs
Drug cartels are cheering.
Amazing
Imagine having millions of dollars worth of bitcoin in 2013 and then being imprisoned until 2024.
I hope he made a good backup of at least a few thousand coins.
His coins were all seized by the government. Or what was left of them. You see, Ross was not a very smart person, and what he didn’t give to fake hitmen to knock off people he didn’t like, got pillaged by hackers because he wasn’t a programmer and the Silk Road was held together with spit and a whole lot of optimism. He got caught because he posted his personal email in a public forum while advertising the Silk Road, and his email address contained his real name.
He’s an absolute idiot, and half the people in this thread could have run the site better than him.
Yay drugs!
This is a win for drug cartels
Of course he would, that's who Mike Lindell wants to get his dope from!
Based?
Why though?
I mean, who is looking at this and calling it an injustice?
Side note: does he get his bitcoin wallet back?
He got more time than actual gang bangers without committing any violent crime. His sentence was way longer than it should have been.
It was an injustice. He deserved time in prison for hiring fake hitmen in an attempt to get back at people, but he sure as hell didn’t deserve life in prison for it. And nobody should be in jail for selling drugs.
Ross is an idiot, but his punishment was the government making an example of him, and was way out of proportion to his crimes. The definition of injustice.
The US already auctioned off his coins. But its possible that maybe he had some more on a backup somewhere
Side note: does he get his bitcoin wallet back?
Dude was deep into Bitcoin back when it was less than a dollar. If he diversified and stashed just a fraction of his holdings, he might now be one of the richest people on the planet.
Who says crime doesn't pay? :/
Prison = forced hodling
To buy votes