Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned the creator of Silk Road, a dark-web marketplace where people sold heroin, cocaine, LSD, and other illicit drugs by using cryptocurrency to keep the transactions anonymous and avoid being caught by law enforcement.
Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison for creating the website, in which he made millions of dollars profiting off of illegal drug sales as well as the sale of illegal services, such as computer hacking and forged documents, like passports and Social Security cards.
“Make no mistake, Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people’s addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people,” Preet Bharara, the now-former United States attorney for the Southern District of New York whose office prosecuted Ulbricht in 2015, said in a statement at the time.
But Trump has now pardoned Ulbricht and set him free, marking the second time in as many days that Trump let criminals back onto the street. On Tuesday, he pardoned roughly 1,500 Jan. 6, 2021, insurrectionists, many of whom violently assaulted law enforcement officers.
Pardoning a major drug trafficker is bizarre for Trump, who has vowed to give the death penalty to drug dealers.
“We’re going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts,” Trump said in November 2022. “Because it’s the only way.”
However, last May at the Libertarian National Convention, Trump pledged to pardon Ulbricht in exchange for Libertarians’ vote. Libertarians have fought for Ulbricht’s release since they support wide-ranging drug legalization and viewed Ulbricht’s life sentence as government overreach.
“If you vote for me, on Day 1, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht,” Trump said at the convention as the crowd chanted Ulbricht’s name. “He’s already served 11 years. We’re going to get him home.”
Memecoins were tackled by cartoonist Jen Sorensen way back in 2018.
In the Truth Social post announcing Ulbricht’s pardon, Trump wrote that his pardon is making good on his pledge to Libertarian voters.
“I just called the mother of Ross William Ulbricht to let her know that in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly, it was my pleasure to have just signed a full and unconditional pardon of her son, Ross,” Trump wrote. “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 was given two life sentences, plus 40 years. Ridiculous!”
What’s more, Ulbricht is supported by crypto bros, who have been arguing for Ulbricht’s release for years.
Bitcoin Magazine hailed Ulbricht’s pardon, which called it a “monumental victory for Bitcoiners.”
Trump is also now a cryptocurrency fan, following the launch of his memecoin. Here’s how it was described by Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell:
For those unfamiliar, this kind of crypto token or “memecoin” is released and traded on public markets, sort of like a stock. Unlike stocks, however, memecoins have no cash flow, no fundamental value. There’s no claim to a business’s future profits, nor even the pretense of a business model. There’s no clear use case; no one is pretending $TRUMP will be used in real-world transactions to pay for groceries or a haircut, or to send remittances.
Rather, people buy memecoins such as $TRUMP solely because they think someone else might be willing to pay more for them someday. It’s basically a whizbang-sounding Ponzi scheme.
Now that crypto has apparently made him even richer, Trump fancies himself one of the crypto bros and did them a solid by releasing Ulbricht.
So much for law and order.
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