President Donald Trump, fulfilling a promise made at the Libertarian Party’s National Convention in May, pardoned Ross Ulbricht today. Ulbricht had been serving a life sentence for his role in founding and operating the dark web marketplace Silk Road.
As Trump put it in a Truth Social post: “in honor of [his mother Lyn Ulbricht], 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.” He said “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.”
As I reported on his sentencing in May 2015 (he has been in prison since his October 2013 arrest):
Ross Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison with no parole…by Judge Katherine Forrest in U.S. District Court for the southern district of New York. Ulbricht was convicted back in February on seven charges, all related to the operation of the darkwebsite called Silk Road, which used Tor-enabled anonymity and the cryptocurrency bitcoin to allow people to buy and sell often illegal items in safety and security, with the site providing an escrow service between buyer and seller to ensure both were satisfied.
Ulbricht was a clever entrepreneur, enthralled by libertarian ideas derived from the likes of Murray Rothbard and Samuel Konkin about the richness and justice of truly free markets not hobbled by government threats.
The charges were: “narcotics trafficking; distribution of narcotics by means of the Internet; narcotics trafficking conspiracy; continuing criminal enterprise; conspiracy to aid and abet computer hacking; conspiracy to traffic in fraudulent identity documents; and money laundering conspiracy.”
None of the charges were related to either personally selling an illegal substance to anyone—Ulbricht merely ran a website that facilitated it—and none were related to causing direct harm to anyone’s life or property.
Given the amazing water-muddying the prosecution achieved by talking about, but never trying Ulbricht for or proving in court beyond a reasonable doubt, allegedly planned, but never executed, murders for hire, one wonders whether the judge allowed any thoughts of those rumors, even subconsciously, to shape her sentencing decision.
Silk Road’s innovative mail order using bitcoin, combined with user reviews of sellers, imposed some real market discipline on dealers, kept buyers from the occasional dangers of physically obtaining drugs, and allowed people not violating others’ lives and property to buy and sell drugs with less (but not zero) legal risk.
Hellbound and Down 