President Donald Trump on Tuesday pardoned Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the infamous Silk Road online marketplace, who had been serving a life sentence for running the dark web platform that facilitated more than $200 million in illegal drug sales using bitcoin.
Fulfilling a campaign promise, Trump announced Ulbricht's full and unconditional pardon on social media Tuesday. Trump personally called Ulbricht's mother to deliver the news of his release.
"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 wrote on Truth Social.
Ulbricht, 40, was arrested in 2013 and convicted in 2015 on multiple charges, including drug distribution, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, and money laundering. Prosecutors argued that the Silk Road marketplace, which operated on the Tor network and accepted bitcoin payments, enabled anonymous transactions of illicit goods and services.
While the prosecution claimed Ulbricht solicited the murders of individuals who posed a threat to the platform, no evidence was found that any killings were carried out. Ulbricht's defense team maintained that he created Silk Road as a "freewheeling, free market site" but later handed control to others and became a scapegoat.
A representative of Silk Road who went by Dread Pirate Roberts—a moniker assigned to the rotating figures at the secretive site's helm—granted a rare interview to Forbes magazine in 2013, shortly before Ulbricht's arrest.
"We have an important message, and the time is ripe for the world to hear it," Roberts told Forbes. "What we're doing isn't about scoring drugs or 'sticking it to the man.' It's about standing up for our rights as human beings and refusing to submit when we've done no wrong."
"We're talking about the potential for a monumental shift in the power structure of the world," Roberts said of his anonymous trade platform's influence. "The people now can control the flow and distribution of information and the flow of money. Sector by sector the State is being cut out of the equation and power is being returned to the individual."
That messaging inspired the Libertarian Party to back Ulbricht with the same fervor of Julian Assange supporters, who see the WikiLeaks founder as another liberator of sorts, martyred for returning information and power to the people.
The Libertarian Party, which has long championed drug legalization and internet freedom, had actively lobbied for Ulbricht's release, with Trump courting the party with promises of granting the pardon during his 2024 election campaign.
Despite issuing Ulbricht's pardon, he has also promised to designate drug cartels as terrorist organizations in recent days, and previously called for all drug dealers to receive "the death penalty for their heinous acts."
Ulbricht's legacy remains controversial, with many arguing over whether he was a pioneer of online privacy or a dangerous enabler of illegal activity.
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