“US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the underground online site Silk Road (Silk Road – ed.), who was serving a life sentence for organizing an illegal drug trade worth more than $200 million.”, — write: www.pravda.com.ua
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday announced a full and unconditional pardon for Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the underground online site Silk Road (Silk Road – ed.), who was serving a life sentence for organizing an illegal drug trade worth more than $200 million.
Source: Reuters, Trump on Truth Social
Details: Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 and convicted in 2015 of running Silk Road, an underground online marketplace where more than 100,000 users bought and sold illegal drugs, weapons and other illegal services worth millions of dollars using bitcoins for payment. Prosecutors said people died from drugs bought on the site.
Trump’s direct speech: “The scum who worked to convict him were some of the same lunatics involved in the modern weaponization of the government against me.”
Details: He added that the pardon was “full and unconditional” and said he had called Ulbricht’s mother to share the news.
Trump announced plans to pardon Ulbricht back in May 2024 during a speech at the Libertarian National Convention, which advocates drug legalization and has pushed for Ulbricht’s release, calling his case an example of government overreach.
The Trump administration is expected to change course significantly amid the tough regulation of the cryptocurrency sector that was carried out under Joe Biden.
During the trial, prosecutors alleged that Ulbricht, who goes by the alias Dread Pirate Roberts, took extreme measures to protect the site, including ordering the murders of several individuals who posed a threat. However, prosecutors conceded that there was no evidence that any murders had actually taken place.
Ulbricht admitted that he created Silk Road, but his lawyers argued that he later transferred the site to others and became a “scapegoat” for the real operators.
“I wanted to empower people to make choices in their lives, with privacy and anonymity,” Ulbricht said at his sentencing hearing in May 2015.
Prehistory:
- Donald Trump’s administration has announced the first real step toward deregulation of the cryptocurrency industry, unveiling an initiative to create a common regulatory framework for digital assets.
- Note that Trump said that on his first day in office he would impose tariffs on all goods entering the US from Canada, Mexico and China.
- In particular, he explained this by the fact that these states do not oppose the entry of drugs into the United States. Trump said he had “many conversations” with China about the flow of huge amounts of drugs, including fentanyl, but “to no avail.”