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Donald Trump Pardons Convicted Ross Ulbricht Life in prison 2015 for masterminding an online marketplace for illegal drugs and hacking services.
“The dirt that worked to convict him [Ulbricht] Some of the same lunatics who were involved in the modern weaponization of the government against me,” Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social late Tuesday.
the time UlbrichtAt trial, US prosecutors said he created the anonymous marketplace known as Silk Road to exploit the anonymity of the dark web and the digital currency bitcoin.
At the time, the case drew attention from bitcoin evangelists and libertarian groups who claimed the government was trying to make web hosting a criminal activity.
In announcing the pardon, Trump said it was “in honor of the liberation movement that supported me so strongly”.
Trump promised to pardon Ulbricht, who was arrested in 2013 in San Francisco, last May at the Libertarian Party’s national convention.
“This is a seismic shift, a crack in the suffocating wall of state oppression,” the Libertarian Party said after the apology.
The move comes after the crypto industry donated millions of dollars to Trump’s election campaign, where he promised to make America the “Bitcoin superpower of the world.”
Silk Road operated on the Tor network and only accepted bitcoin as payment, which US prosecutors said helped keep users and their locations anonymous.
Prosecutors said the site allowed criminals to sell large quantities of drugs, computer hacking services and forged documents, among other illegal goods and services.
The US government seized 173,991 bitcoins from Ulbricht’s laptop when he was arrested.
