Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot where he was apprehended. When the FBI agents stopped to have a drink at Bello Coffee I thought, huh, interesting coincidence, I just had a coffee there.
Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes was a fascinating experience, and it certainly made the article suddenly get a lot more immersive!
EDIT: to be clear, I was not present for the arrest. I was reading the magazine, some years after the arrest, but in the same place as the arrest. (I didn’t qualify the events with “I read that...” since I thought the narrative ellipsis would be obvious from context; evidently not.)
He was being arrested in the article, not IRL. When I say “Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me” I mean that I read
> He went... past the periodicals and reference desk, beyond the romance novels, and settled in at a circular table near science fiction, on the second floor... in a corner, with a view out the window and his back toward the wall.
and realized that I was in the Glen Park public library, at a circular table near science fiction on the second floor, in a corner with my back to the window, and facing directly towards where the article had just said he had sat.
I believe they are suggesting an experience of imaginatively visualising the events of the arrest linearly as they were narrated in their read-through of the article, aided by being physically present at the same location, and are referencing the article's narration partially in the present tense to similarly place us in medias res as we follow their remark.
Alternatively, they are themselves Ross Ulbricht, describing an out-of-body fever dream or post-traumatic flashback. This seems ... somewhat less likely.
Wolfgang stopped for a drink before going to the library, where he then read the Wired article about Albrecht, only to discover that 1) the place he'd just gotten his drink from was the same place the FBI agents stopped at on the day of the arrest, and 2) the table at which Albrecht was arrested was the one in front the table he was sitting at as he read the article.
I mean, it’s possible that the library had rearranged their chairs in the intervening years and that exact one was now at a different table, but it was certainly a chair in the same location.
I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved—even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped, I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein. Even if you support his original pursuit of a free and open online marketplace, I think most people would agree he took it a bridge too far in the end.
That said, I do think he absolutely deserved to be released, not because he didn't deserve to be locked up in the first place, but because he's clearly been rehabilitated and has done great work during his time in prison. All that considered, ten years seems like a not unreasonable prison sentence for what he did. I hope he'll continue to do good when he's released.
Ross Ulbricht was not sentenced for murder-for-hire charges.
Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part of his formal conviction or sentencing.
He was convicted on non-violent charges related to operating the Silk Road website, including drug distribution, computer hacking, and money laundering.
Does this change your opinion of sentencing being well-deserved?
This opinion [1] from the judge in his case indicates that the murder-for-hire evidence was admitted during his trial. The document outlines the evidence for all 6 murder for hire allegations and explains why, although not charged, the evidence is relevant to his case.
He was found during sentencing to be guilty of hiring a hit on a competitor using a preponderance of evidence (lower then presumption of innocence). While this is a lower standard than a conviction, it is still a higher standard than most apply in public discourse.
That isn't fair, the point of the trial is to test whether something is to be acted on. To act on something that wasn't directly part of the trial is a bit off. I'm sure the judge is acting in the clear legally, but if someone is going to be sentenced for attempted murder then that should be after a trial that formally accuses them of the crime.
It does not change my opinion that the sentence was well deserved in the eyes of the law. Those are all things, that independently, can lead to serious jail time. The scale of his operation was also substantial.
I don't see how that should change anyone's opinion on whether the sentence was deserved. Whether it was legally/procedurally correct, sure. Whether he didn't get the day in court he should have had, sure. But given that no-one seems to seriously dispute that he did try to pay to have the guy killed, what he deserves is a long prison sentence, and whether that's imposed by a court doing things properly, a court doing things improperly, or a vigilante kidnapper isn't really here or there on that point.
(The rule of law is important, and we may let off people who deserve harsh sentences for the sake of preserving it, but it doesn't mean they deserve those sentences any less)
The rule of law says innocent until proven guilty.
The reason they didn't go after him for murder for hire allegations isn't because they felt bad for him or that they didn't want to waste tax payer's money.
The reason they didn't go after him for 'murder for hire' was that they knew there was no merit in it.
You say the rule of law is important, but also we should impose extra-legal long sentences even if the rule of law doesn't allow us to? How do you reconcile this perspective?
> even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped
Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it. In fact, reading the chat logs makes his guilt pretty clear. Of course, because the whole operation was a scam, there's little he could have been convicted of. Yet just because the murder was never carried out doesn't mean he didn't intend to have someone assassinated. In my book, paying someone money to kill another person is definitely grounds for imprisonment.
No. I'm talking more from an ethical standpoint. I think someone who hires contract killers deserves to go to prison. I also think people shouldn't be convicted for charges that were not proven in court. As I said before, in Ross' case, the charge was dropped.
That happens all the time, when people confess to a charge ahead of time, instead of proceeding to a trial. Remember that the purpose of the trial is to find out whether they are guilty when there is a factual dispute about that question. Here, I suppose the existence of a factual dispute is itself disputed: does that need to go to a jury, or is it enough that the trial judge and the appeal court looked at the record and decided there wasn't a dispute?
Ah that's not strictly true. I believe Scotland is the only place in the world I am aware of where there is Innocent, unproven, and Guilty verdicts. I believe in reality a not guilty verdict is, we didn't have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt this person committed the crime. Finding someone not guilty is a legal term. Considering whether someone is innocent or not is more of a moral/factual term.
What has always sat odd with me regarding this, is we don't truly know the extent of the fbi's corruption in this. They stole, so it's not hard to imagine they planted evidence too.
I assume that the feds corruption is as bad as it is in every other high profile case case involving fed informants and politically charged topics. Randy Weaver, all the muslims they radicalized and then goaded into doing terrorist things post 9/11, the Michigan Fednapping. It seems like every time these people have a chance to entrap someone they do, but they do it in a "haha, jokes on you we run the system so while this probably would be entrapment if some beat cops did it the court won't find it that way" sort of way. They just can't touch anything without getting it dirty this way and the fact that that is a 30yr pattern at this point depending on how you count speaks volumes IMO. While I'm sure they can solve an interstate murder or interstate fraud or whatever just fine I just don't trust them to handle these sorts of cases.
It seems like all of these people they wind up charging probably are questionable people who wanted to do the thing and probably did some other lesser things but they probably would have given up on the big thing if there wasn't a federal agency running around doing all the "the informant says the guy is lamenting not having explosives, quick someone get him some explosives" things in the background.
Agreed. He willingly engaged with the alleged hitman (which ended up being the FBI contact). He didn't need to do anything or not have the thought to murder others cross his mind.
Allegedly. The 2 rules of his Fight Club were no underage sex stuff and no physical harm. That hitman claim was not part of his charges or sentencing. The heavy sentencing was to like "send a message" the judge said.
They weren't part of his sentencing because a different court entirely was pursuing the hit for hire attempt charge, but because another court in NY got the book thrown at him for running the site, they decided to drop it because it didn't seem necessary anymore.
In hindsight, the prosecution probably wished they didn't do that, since they are said to have had overwhelming evidence and proof, and there is even a Wired article about chat logs pertaining to DPR seeking services, but those are the breaks! If you don't do your due diligence, criminals can be let off on a technicality too!
I haven't looked into the case(s) for years, but prosecutors don't often just drop charges because other charges were found guilty. People get charged even after life sentences have been handed down.
But the feds would never attempt shading means of solving a problem that they're being heavily pressured to solve in a timely manner! Don't be a hecking conspiracy theorist.
>we don't truly know the extent of the fbi's corruption in this
the corruption what we do know about already tainted the case to the point that it should have been thrown out.
I don't care about Ulbricht, and whether he is guilty of all or some of the charges or innocent. What bothers me in this case is that the government can get away and in particular can get its way in court even with such severe criminal behavior by the government.
"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," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening."
Trump even personally called Ulbricht mother. I start to wonder whether i have been all that time in blind denial about Trump.
He organized and operated a global criminal drug ring and conspired to have people killed. The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s.
> The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s.
Asserting moral equivalence between someone who ordered dozens of innocent women and children not just killed but dismembered - solely as a lesson for others. Orders which were actually carried out multiple times and DPR who was never charged, tried or convicted of conspiring with a supposed online hitman to kill a competitor (who both were actually FBI informants - clearly making it entrapment). Yeah, that's quite a reach.
Sure, DPR was no saint but why push for the absolute maximally extreme interpretation? Even asserting he "organized and operated a global criminal drug ring" is a stretch. My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug rings used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so. There is some nuance between buying, selling and delivering drugs and being an accessory enabling people who actually handle and deliver drugs. They are both crimes but not of the same severity.
I don't think anyone in here is making the case that Ulbricht is a "good person", but comparing Escobar to Ulbricht is next-level delusional.
One of these people attempted to place hits on 3-4 individuals, the other one planted a bomb on a passenger plane that resulted in the deaths of over a hundred people.
He did order (and pay for) at least one murder. It just happens that both the victim and the would-be hit man were both informants so they staged the murder. Ross’ argument is that he knew it was fake, but that makes no sense in context.
It was right that they dropped the charge because it was quite obviously entrapment. But none of it reflects well on Ross Ulbricht’s character.
Because in my opinion the ethics of operating a drug ring is not as black as white as you state.
The existence of drug rings is an inevitable outcome from the war on drugs and I would argue the blame lands on the politicians who maintain the status quo that incentivises the creation of the black market for drugs.
What makes you think I support those people being locked up either? Also, afaik Ulbricht didn't sell drugs himself, he simply provided an unmoderated marketplace.
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty.
Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must present compelling evidence to the trier of fact (a judge or a jury). If the prosecution does not prove the charges true, then the person is acquitted of the charges.
It is also the case that prosecutors need to decide both the probability of conviction, the effort needed to do so and whether likely conviction on other serious charges are sufficient for the people to feel that justice has been done.
> The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty.
That should be "considered innocent by the legal system". People are still free to come to their own conclusions--and act on them--even without a jury rendering a verdict.
Rather famously, for example, OJ Simpson was acquitted by a jury of murdering his wife. But most people these days would agree with the statement that he murdered his wife.
My understanding is they never brought the charges in the first place. The supposed online hitman and the victim were both FBI informants. They never brought the charges at trial because it was clearly entrapment and no one was ever in any danger.
The prosecutors later used that evidence as support for their sentencing request after Ross was convicted of only non-violent offenses, which has a much lower standard of evidence. The allegations of murder-for-hire were never tested at trial. They may have evaporated under cross-examination by a competent defense. Our system of justice holds that Ross is innocent of those allegations unless convicted at trial.
He should be considered innocent by the courts - and he was (innocent of the murder for hire charges, I mean). In the public we aren't obligated to follow the same standards of evidence as the courts. I think he almost certainly did pay to have those people killed, and that can shape my opinion of him.
That's perfectly reasonable - but I don't think it should really have a bearing on whether he should be pardoned. That is not exactly a matter of the courts (by definition), but I think as an official public act it should be subject to the presumption of innocence as well.
According to Reuters he was found guilty of "charges including distributing drugs through the Internet and conspiring to commit computer hacking and money laundering." In addition to running an illegal market bazaar for 4 years.
- sackler family engineered opioid crisis and went unscathed
- hacking is a bogus charge applied to everything touching PCs
- money laundering is another victimless crime that very few actual money launderers gets charged with, for some reason
Case law obsessively cites other case law. So yeah, that's how it works. His trial was a farce and was meant to send a message to others to not, um, do drugs online or something.
I wonder if the decision to drop the "murder for hire" charges was originally influenced by his existing life sentence, and whether the pardon now alters that reasoning. Is it still possible for him to be prosecuted on those charges?
I think the attacks on some of these black and gray markets has increased crime in the real life. I wish the federal government would stop shutting them down and instead use them to build cases against people breaking the law.
For example, for a while most prostitution and sex work seemed to be online, on places like Craigslist right next to ads for used furniture and jobs. And it seemed to be really effective in getting prostitutes off the streets.
Now that those markets were shut down, I'm seeing here in Seattle we're having pimp shootouts on Aurora and the prostitutes are more brazen than ever. Going after Craigslist has had a negative effect on our cities and has increased crime, and I suspect going after SilkRoad has had a similar impact.
No, generally a pardon does not eliminate any civil liability or entitle you to refunds once the assets have been transferred to Treasury. He would still have to answer Yes to having been convicted of a felony and he would still not be entitled to vote in states that do not permit felons to vote.
> Where a person has paid a monetary penalty or forfeited property, the consequences of a pardon depend in part on when it was issued. If a monetary fine or contraband cash has been transferred to the Treasury, a pardon conveys no right to a refund, nor does the person pardoned have a right to reacquire property or the equivalent in cash from a legitimate purchaser of his seized assets or from an informant who was rewarded with cash taken from the pardoned person before he was pardoned.
This is obviously incorrect. Actually pardon means the charges filed has been voided, hence anything happening afterwards has had no merits and court decisions made are now rendered moot. For example, Roger Stone was charged and found guilty of multiple crimes and Trump pardoned him; he still brandish guns and was "proudly voting Trump" in 2024 in state of Florida. Getting pardon is literally like it never happened in the first place.
The pardon can restore certain rights in some cases, I'm not entirely familiar with the Stone shenanigans, but knowing the parties involved I can't assume that Stone was legally entitled to do what he did after the pardon, and maybe he was.
That said, the recovery of assets after transfer to Treasury is settled law. [1]
> More broadly, the Court ruled in several cases during this period that pardons entitled their recipients to recover property forfeited or seized on the basis of the underlying offenses, so long as vested third-party rights would not be affected and money had not already been paid into the Treasury (except as authorized by statute).
Was covered in Osborne v. United States, Knote v. United States, In re: Armstrong's Foundry, Cent. R.R. v. Bosworth and Jenkins v. Collard
Subsequent cases make it clear that the offense is not in fact "gone."
> ... the Court in Burdick stated that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."
> ... then, in Carlesi v. New York, the Court determined that a pardoned offense could still be considered “as a circumstance of aggravation” under a state habitual-offender law, reflecting that although a pardon may obviate the punishment for a federal crime, it does not erase the facts associated with the crime or preclude all collateral effects arising from those facts.
The court holds that it is not in fact as if it never happened.
No, because he was never found guilty of anything, or charged with anything. Pardons before a conviction are somewhat different than pardons after a conviction in that the state never established the facts. There's also a difference between blanket pardons and specific pardons.
As I referenced in a peer reply.
> “[A pardon] carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."
Pardons are forgiveness. They don’t roll back the clock, although the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that acceptance of a pardon is not an assumption of guilt.
That would arguably create some of the worst perverse incentives, as far as financial crimes go.
Any two-bit governor could team up with some criminal, and make enough money to be set up for life against a pardon. Even worse if it's a president, as they could likely get off scot-free.
Trump could literally scam everyone and everyone, step down, receive a pardon from the VP, and happy days.
I am not sure of the legality around his possessions but they are long gone. Even the ones stolen by FBI officers during the course of the investigation.
"Two former federal agents have been charged with wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses for stealing digital currency during their investigation of the Silk Road ..."
I'm more than happy to have the discussion with you but I have no requirement to provide all of the information that is widely available in the public domain.
Until now I oddly never questioned how any government could seize someone's bitcoin and how a government keeps the private keys of their crypto wallets secure.
a lot of known best practices were not followed in 2013.
Every advancement in crypto was done after the government made a move. And all subsequent moves netted the government less.
Now it takes more agencies to seize darknet markets, and most merchants and consumers get their money back because it was a multisignature transaction and the server stored nothing. Even domains have been seized back from the government.
The crypto space calls it "antifragility", as in the idea - and now history - that the asset class and infrastructure improves under pressure.
I’m all for the freeing him of his crimes when it comes to his crypto anarchic philosophy. But I find it hard to pardon someone for contract killing essentially. Also I’m not an apologist for the FBIs handling of this case either.
The charge was dropped, but the court did hold a hearing on it when deciding on sentencing. They heard the evidence for and against and ruled by a preponderance of the evidence that he did in fact do it.
Separate courts. He was indicted and tried for all the non-murder stuff in a New York federal court. He was indicted separately in a Maryland federal court on a murder-for-hire charge.
The New York court convicted him, and then considered the murder-for-hire allegations when determining his sentence. They found them true by a preponderance of the evidence and and that was a factor in his sentence to life without parole. He appealed, and the Second Circuit upheld the sentence.
The prosecutors in Maryland then dropped the murder-for-hire charge because there was no point. They said this would allow them to direct their resources to other other cases where justice had not yet been served.
Ironically, he was only pardoned for drug related crimes, so he could still be charged with murder related ones if they were not dropped with prejudice (i didn't look)
This is all AFAIK, they haven't released the text broadly yet, but his lawyers/etc say he was pardoned for crimes related to drugs.
Even what people call a 'full and unconditional' pardon is usually targeted at something specific, not like "a pardon for anything you may have ever done, anywhere, anytime' which people seem to think it means sometimes.
It's more of a legal term of art to describe pardons that erase convictions, restore rights, etc.
Rather than clemency which, say, commutes your sentence but leaves your conviction intact.
The judge wrote at sentencing the murder for hire 'counted' as an element of the criminal enterprise. So if he was pardoned for his crimes that includes the murder for hire per the judgement of his case.
One issue with any potential trial for murder-for-hire is that the allegation as presented in the Maryland indictment has two problematic witnesses: DEA agent Carl Force who acted as the hitman, now in prison for embezzling cryptocurrency from the Silk Road case, and Curtis Green, the would-be victim in this case, who has previously insisted that Ulbricht was innocent of plotting his murder (and was also recently imprisoned for cocaine distribution last year, although I don't think that would be too relevant). Maybe the other allegations might have more meat on the bone, but they didn't make it on to any indictment.
So depending on the pardon text and interpretation, he may or may not be chargeable with this statute still federally.
I agree this has zero effect on charging him at the state level, and most states do not have statute of limitations on these types of crimes (or they are very long)
Fascinating. It is news to me that a federal court can consider the evidence for crimes not proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal sentencing. Learn something new every day.
Since he was sentenced federally, he'd be under the federal sentencing guidelines, but I imagine those are pretty harsh around the money laundering and drug trafficking (since they're tuned to provide a hammer to wield against mostly narco-enterprises). I suppose the additional preponderance of evidence gave the judge justification to push the sentence to the maximum allowed in the category?
It’s extremely common in for example diversion cases and others, where the defendant has to stipulate that they are agreeable to things being presented as in charging documents and evaluated based on preponderance by a court, not by a jury and not subject to principles of reasonable doubt.
This. Evidence that isn't strong enough to criminally convict can be used for other purposes (e.g. sentencing, knowledge/intent, civil forfeiture, civil damages etc).
(see OJ Simpson paying money damages for a crime he was acquitted of)
Wonder if he can be charged with that now? Was there anything in the pardon related to this? AFAIK there is no time limit on bringing charges related to murder?
According to Wikipedia[1], he was convicted of charges related to hacking, narcotics, money laundering, and more.
But during the trial, evidence was presented that he made murder-for-hire payments, the court found that he did by a preponderance of evidence, and the court took this into account when sentencing him.
So, he wasn't convicted of it, but it is part of the reason he was sent to jail for a very long time.
Yes the FBI had root or admin access to the Silk Road system and could have very easily changed or otherwise affected logs/record IDs that the technical case rested on. Two of the FBI agents on the case were later punished for corruption on the case.
The judge factored it into the sentencing, though. He likely did actually try to hire a contract killer - twice. In both cases he sincerely believed the murders were successfully committed, and he sent a lot of money to the assassins after being sent (doctored) "proof" of their killings.
I think it's fair to say judges shouldn't factor non-charged allegations into sentencing, but I think he's at least morally culpable, here, and should at the very least be expected to now show public contrition for repeatedly trying to murder people drug kingpin-style.
I doubt he will ever admit it, but now that he's free I still would like it. I don't care about people enabling drug sales but I do care about people with a God complex who feel entitled to end the lives of those they oppose (in one case because he thought someone stole from him, and another because he thought they would dox him).
A judge and system who would give him 2 life sentences for this should not be trusted when he also factored in things which he wasn't charged and convicted of.
It is common that several outcomes are subject - with the defendants specific agreement - to be evaluated by a court on preponderance, not a jury. This was not judicial malpractice.
I am sorry but there's no way giving him more than 2 life sentences has any justification whatsoever. Even the people who actually sold drugs on his site got out in 2 years. And the person who hired someone for hitman also only got 6 years. This is exactly the type of case where pardon makes 100% sense.
What would give you a hint that attempted murder conviction would prevent his pardon? Trump pardoned over a thousand attempted murdered already this week.
So does this mean the war on drugs is finally over and we're going to stop mass incarceration for non-violent drug offenses? If so, that _would_ be good news.
Well, I think that justice has been served. The feds' prosecution of Ulbricht was the epitome of throwing the book at someone to make an example, when the government's case was pretty flawed, in my opinion. 10 years is enough time to pay the debt of running the silk road.
I am glad that Ulbricht has been pardoned and I feel like a small iota of justice has been returned to the world with this action.
I'm just shocked it was a full pardon instead of a commutation or something. I don't think the US is gaining a ton from keeping him locked up but he still did run an organization he knew was used for selling drugs and other illegal things and a full pardon for that seems weird. I feel like I mainly heard people talking about commuting his sentence
What do you mean "lightly?" He ran an illegal drug market and tried to assassinate a competitor. We gave him the punishment that society has determined one should receive for this. Revoking his punishment is "light."
Hence why, if DPR was going to get off somehow, a sentence commutation would have been better rather than an unconditional pardon. The latter implies he did absolutely nothing wrong, which hilariously runs counter to Trump's supposed tough on drugs and crime shtick he has.
The judge issued the punishment at their sole discretion. The legislature sets the laws often without any input from the constituency.
Meanwhile a sizable campaign has materialized around this case and many people do feel he has done enough time and should be free without any restrictions
The only underlying constant with Trump that I can tell is that he personally has to profit from whatever he commits to. Anything else that sounds like a selfless principle from Trump sort of just comes and goes with Trump and you never hear about it again. Presumably Ross & Friends made the appropriate promise.
He promised international canvassers that we'd have peace in Ukraine on his first day in office. Whatever he arranged with druggie libertarians is chopped liver from a policy perspective. On the international stage it's the dictionary definition of a nothingburger.
Well even if he bet on going that route he wouldn't have to be "elected", and my last line applies none the less, it didn't hurt him during an actual election.
Yes. Except, "neutralize?" I don't know why the federal government would bother with the pretense of a 22nd Amendment when they demonstrably do not care in the slightest about the 14th or most of the Bill of Rights.
Trump promised to do this at the Libertarian Party convention. This case is very important to the libertarian crowd. He is a martyr for many of their ideals. After Trump was so well received at the convention the LP, recently taken over by the right faction of the party, put forth a candidate specifically chosen to not get votes so that members would vote for Trump. Trump seems to be a man of his word.
It seems like the voters that were being referred to value restoring rights. How can something immediately achievable be balanced with "the economy", a thing so broad and deeply systemic?
It isn't clear from your original statement that those voters aren't from Pennsylvania. I interpret your statement as discounting the weight of their vote on actions they care about. There are many perspectives, and the values of those who did vote in that direction are being addressed in some way.
He promised to pardon the rioters during the election and it didn't hurt him. I think he decided it wouldn't hurt him (and Trump cares bout that first) and if he thought about the midterms ... maybe won't hurt then either.
Congress isn't directly involved in any of this anyway.
Congress is involved. They have to prove they can govern. It's hard to be the party of "law and order" if you need only to kiss the ring for your release.
This is 100% true. I am posting from an anon account (obviously), but I was heavily involved in this. I worked with members of the party to push part of their strategy - mainly the coalition with trump and an effort to get vivek and elon involved. We spoke about this in 2023. I didn't care about Ross, had my own motivations, but I wrote some of their playback with AI and it worked. I didn't know about certain things (like the losing candidate for example). I wrote strategy that seems to have made its way all the way to Trump's team.
You may not like Trump but I remember he fulfilled or attempted to fulfill a lot of his campaign promises back in 2016 as well. Biden, the career politician, talked a lot about many things before election and then forgot about them after he was elected. For example, universal health care. Obama promised to enshrine a woman's right to abortion as law, and then when he had the House and Senate after he was elected, he said "it's not a priority for me." Then we lost Roe V Wade.
That's a really low bar with that bit added. "I didn't say it would be easy" was his line about his token tariffs the first term ... then he never tried again for the rest of that term.
Trump did just about what every president does - makes promises and then does some of them, tries to some others (successful unless thwarted by Congress), and ignores others.
Obama didn't have the votes in the Senate (to overcome the filibuster, also not as many Dems congressmen supported it as you might think). Neither did Clinton (people thought it would happen then)
Biden delivered on the IRA and climate change bill.
Trump promised to "drain the swamp" and filled it instead. I can't think of any major campaign promise that he fulfilled - he didn't even build the wall (probably his main promise).
Let's go through Trump's campaign promises: Infrastructure, Border wall, increased US manufacturing, repealing ACA, "drain the swamp". He achieved zero of those.
Biden in contrast followed up on his campaign promises: Infrastructure, increased US manufacturing, expanding ACA plus lowering costs. Among others.
Whether or not he was the sole or even primary reason, he knew about it beforehand as seen by his tweet last night saying it was coming soon. Love him or hate him, it's a bit concerning that he has that level of access IMO.
The clips of him rolling his eyes and head around in boredom at the inauguration definitely looked like he was suffering from some kind of withdrawal symptoms.
What do you mean? Trump just pardoned or commuted pretty much all of the J6 crowd. One guy convicted of crimes that don't require proving violence beyond a reasonable doubt is pretty tame in comparison. He is one of thousands.
Trump know the Jan 6 rioters and supported them. Pardoning is important to justify his claim that nobody did anything wrong as that the election was "stolen by the Dems".
I can't imagine he would have known Ross Ulbricht's case.
That's why commutation is a thing. The courts have ruled this as within the pardon powers. His sentence could be changed to reflect something much more aligned with other convictions for the same crimes.
These discussions are very interesting. So many red flags from Trump (this pardon, ending birthright citizenship...), and people try to justify these things. America is unfortunately heading for a very dark time. Politics aside, I am rather uncomfortable with the power the president possesses. We were always mindful that there are systems of checks and balances. However, given the current court overturned a precedent (Roe), I am unsure what the future holds. This pardon makes me very uneasy.
Crypto currency proponents benefit from the existence of dark net marketplaces because they are some of the main places for the non-speculative use of crypto currencies. I think Ross and his pardon represent a sort-of metaphor in crypto-currency proponents' eyes for the government's toleration of these dark net crypto marketplaces.
If you meant Trump, it's not hidden, they released a Trump meme coin and the rug pull was after the inauguration timed with the release of the Melania meme coin, though entirely speculatively makes more sense for the investors to be foreign governments buying influence less obviously than the last Trump administration like Saudi Arabia hiring his son in law.
I doubt Trump cares about Ulbricht as much as he cares (for whatever reason) about the continued support of various American libertarians (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and various crypto elites).
While he has made many promises this is significant for being one that he has kept.
RFK Jr is definitely not a libertarian (even compared to someone mainstream like Gary Johnson or Jared Polis), he supports strong state intervention in many areas of the economy and society
Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their support. The crypto and libertarian communities are obsessed with freeing Ulbricht. It was honestly a brilliant strategy, and probably the reason he won. Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.
Unfortunately you could level the same type of name calling towards Democrats. It's now public record they colluded with all the major media outlets, coerced big tech to censor and debank opponents, imprisoned whistleblowers, violated bodily autonomy with unconstitutional mandates, weaponized the courts to conduct lawfare, and now issued an unprecedented number of pre-emptive pardons for unspecified crimes committed by Fauci, Hunter Biden, et al.
I remember when the Democrats were the anti-war party, but Biden was escalating the Ukraine war in the final days of his presidency, and celebrated Dick Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris. Crazy how things have changed so much. The left unanimously viewed Bush and Cheney as obviously psychopathic war criminals, and now almost all the Neocons have jumped over to the Democrats. The left used to be extremely skeptical of globalization as evident by the Seattle WTO Protests, mass immigration as evident by Bernie Sanders' comments on its effect on workers' wages, and Big Pharma's perverse incentives to keep people sick and regularly consuming drugs. Yet the media has utterly psyop'd the progressives... it's kinda disturbing.
Authoritarianism is also popular with the democrats right now, but I don’t see how anything I said is name calling: I used terms with a specific meaning appropriate for the context- the only reason they have a negative connotation is because of what they actually mean. Do you know of other terms with the same meaning and more neutral connotations?
It's a trite thing to say, but when it comes to Trump it fits the pattern of inside dealing ... I'm guessing he personally will profit from this somehow / someone promised a donation / money.
I am active in libertarian circles and Ulbricht was a cause celebre. The 2024 election was a game of inches, and many libertarians I know voted Trump purely on this issue. It is possible this was a key way Trump eked out a victory.
They just won something they cared about: perhaps you should be taking them even more seriously than you did.
And even if you are not a fan of a political group, you are the one being judgemental here on a factor that is very unlikely to be universal within the group.
Treating anyone according to political labels is divisive.
Biden could have taken the wind out of Trump's sails by commuting Ulbricht's sentence when he was in office. If you don't think a group's interests are worth listening to, don't be surprised when that group votes for someone who does.
Very little about the Libertarian party is libertarian. Yet another party carrying water for authoritarianism, with the difference being that the implementation is through corporations.
Libertarians are a self selecting bunch. Very few were raised into this philosophy. You can appreciate that my self identification as a libertarian is a careful, reasoned decision and not one that was flippantly made. It is the philosophy that is the most accurate and truthful to me.
Read my comment again. I self-identify as a libertarian as I see individual freedom as paramount. But I kept going with the analysis to realize that the Libertarian Party does very little to represent that ideal.
My apologies, I thought you were accusing libertarians of authoritarianism (the irony!).
I find the Mises Caucus at least useful in pushing to do more than simply be an affinity group for people pretending to play politics. I find partying with LP officials to be very hilarious, what a group of odd balls. But the party itself has no hope of electoral victory, which is why everyone should vote Republican in the current iteration of two-party politics from the libertarian lens.
My point is that even if there were an electoral victory, the Libertarian Party would not bring individual freedom. They are operating from an assertion that starting with a list of moral axioms, every implication will be morally right by construction. By itself this is terribly mistaken (see Godel), but it goes askew even sooner when a few poor axioms are allowed to remain through "pragmatism", regulatory capture, etc.
As for the current political environment, I'd say that bureaucratic authoritarianism is at least the devil we know and can be routed around by individuals, whereas autocratic authoritarianism is at best a wildcard that stands to destroy a good chunk of the laws that have actually been restraining naked power.
I don't judge anyone too hard when they're willing to bend a bit to get someone out of jail after the key has been thrown away. I didn't vote Trump but I will admit the possibility of Ross being released made me pause when I marked my ballot, even his mom's image flashed in my mind and I felt guilty for not helping.
This is wonderful. I've never argued that Ross shouldn't have served time but it's always been clear his prosecution and sentencing were excessive and unjust. The prosecutors asked for a 20 year sentence, which seemed disproportionate given the sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender and the non-violent charges he was convicted of. But the judge sentenced Ross to TWO life sentences plus 40 years. There's no doubt Ross made a series of unwise and reckless decisions but serving over ten years of hard time in a FedMax prison is more than enough given the charges and his history.
It's just unfortunate that Trump, and now, excessive pardons are politically polarized, which could cloud the fact that justice was done today. I don't credit Trump in any way for doing "the right thing" or even having a principled position regarding Ross' case. Clearly, others with influence on Trump convinced him to sign it. It doesn't matter how it happened. Biden should have already done it.
Two life sentences was a bit harsh. 11 years seems about right to me.
I suspect the idea beyond "Free Ross" in some circles was that his conviction wasn't so much about drug dealing, but rather it was more a political prosecution for popularizing real uses of cryptocurrencies.
Absolute no brainer, he should be celebrated. Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform. Of course if we had less draconian drug policy, it wouldn't be necessary but here we are.
> Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform.
The basic immorality/pointlessness of the war on drugs aside, I don't know how you can assert this: it's not like there's a chain of provenance, and there's no particular guarantee that whatever grade of pure drugs was sold on Silk Road is the same purity that ended up in peoples' bodies.
My understanding of the Silk Road case is that, at its peak, it was servicing a significant portion of the international drug market. The dimensions of that market include adulteration; Silk Road almost certainly didn't change that.
The overwhelming majority of drug sales are for personal use. That doesn't mean that large sales weren't made, or that those weren't in fact a significant portion of the site's revenue.
Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren't less safe than street drugs. Most of them were likely "fell off the truck" samples from the original manufacturers being sold by people with an in on the supply, but no otherwise-easy access to an out on the demand.
Their observation was that reputation mattered on SR a lot and a well-kept reputation was valuable at scale in a way that it isn't for being a street-corner pusher looking to stretch your buck by cutting your supply with adulterants. The smart play was to provide a high-quality product at a reasonable price (the latter being the easiest part since they were bypassing the obscene markup of official channels).
> Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren't less safe than street drugs.
Yeah, I'm not saying they're less safe. In fact, on average, I'm willing to bet that the drugs sold on Silk Road were much safer than their street equivalents.
My point was about large sales: Silk Road moved not just personal drug sales, but also industrial quantities of drugs that were almost certainly re-sold. Those latter sales are impossible to track and (by volume) almost certainly represent the majority of "doses" sold through SR. Given that, I doubt the OP's assertion that SR itself represents a particularly effective form of harm reduction.
Or as another framing: SR gave tech dorks a way to buy cheap, clean drugs. But those aren't the people who really need harm reduction techniques; the ones who do are still buying adulterated drugs, which are derived from the cheap, clean drugs on SR.
You shouldn't assume that all "street transfers" of drugs are peaceful or have a positive outcome for those involved. Harm reduction comes in many forms.
I'm pretty sure my comment says the exact opposite. I'm saying that SR was a massive operation that fueled street traffic, which in turn lacked any of the harm reduction virtues that SR is being assigned.
No no no, he is right. Its safe because if you receive a bad batch of drugs you can leave a negative review on the page of the drug cartel that has your name and address, no chance of that having any repercussions for you at all.
even if its not perfect for every situation it was a lot better then what existed.
negative reviews aren't the only review, absence of positive reviews is a signal, along with a lot of other positive reviews. later markets at least had reviews outside the markets too
if you are in the bulk and resale drug market you probably aren't getting package with your name on it to your home.
Yup. Drugs and the accompanying business disputes (there's a reason street dealers are armed or have armed people around) that would be normal in any other industry are sooo many people's (who would other wise not be violent criminals) entry point to violence. Letting parties remain at arms length yet transact successfully is such a huge step forward compared the prior status quo. Anything that gets buyers and sellers (either at the retail or distribution level) in illegal industries farther from each other is a win as far as I care.
As well as online drug marketplaces? Or would running one without legal trouble require a campaign-contribution booster pack?
What a beautiful political anschluss between people who just want to ban contraceptives and abortifacients, and people who just want to shoot up heroin. Not sure how you square that circle[1], but it's 2025, and here we are.
It's very telling about libertarian priorities when a cryptobro running an online drug marketplace who tried to hire a hitman gets amnesty, while hundreds of thousands of people who have been convicted of drug possession[1] do not. Likewise, somehow reproductive rights are just not a libertarian issue, either. It's not a party of freedom, it's a party of freedom for wealthy men.
[1] Biden gave a blanket pardon for people convicted of marijuana posession, but that's far less important for libertarians than Ulbricht.
Good - edit - from what I recall he was some kid in a library running a website that got out of hand - he was an idealist who reminded me of Aaron. But I don’t know much more than that. Just my 2 cents.
Not going to try and sway you here but to learn more, read or listen to "American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road".
I would find this easier to celebrate if it was a commutation and not a pardon, or if it was a pardon that went hand in hand with a change in the laws he broke.
In one message, Ulbricht informed ELLINGSON that “[the murder target] is a liability and I wouldn't mind if he was executed.” In another message, Ulbricht stated: “[the murder target] is causing me problems . . . I would like to put a bounty on his head if it’s not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him?” ELLINGSON responded, “[the p]rice for clean is 300k+ USD,” and the “[p]rice for non-clean is 150-200k USD depending on how you want it done.” ELLINGSON further explained, in part, that “[t]hese prices pay for 2 professional hitters including their travel expenses and work they put in.”
Ulbricht later sent ELLINGSON $150,000 worth of Bitcoin to pay for the purported murder. ELLINGSON and Ulbricht agreed on a code to be included with a photograph to prove that the murder had been carried out. In April 2013, ELLINGSON and Ulbricht exchanged messages reflecting that ELLINGSON had sent Ulbricht photographic proof of the murder. A thumbnail of a deleted photograph purporting to depict a man lying on a floor in a pool of blood with tape over his mouth was recovered from Ulbricht’s laptop after his arrest. A piece of paper with the agreed-upon code written on it is shown in the photograph next to the head of the purportedly dead individual.
Later in April 2013, ELLINGSON and Ulbricht exchanged additional messages regarding a plot to kill four additional people in Canada. Ulbricht sent ELLINGSON an additional $500,000 worth of Bitcoin for the murders. ELLINGSON claimed to Ulbricht in online messages that the murders had in fact been committed.
Did Donald Trump call white supremacists “very fine people” re Charlottesville?
Answer that question and I suspect I know how you think you feel.
2.
This pardon is good.
3.
I don’t think people realize the true impact of the lawfare and assassination attempts on Trump and many of his supporters. Most thought we have couldn’t have a more cynical view of establishment after Russiagate, but oh how we were wrong. Read Trump’s post on this pardon. There is a personal undercurrent.
4.
Re why not first term pardon, Trump was utterly isolated in 2020 and it was not a good time to say the least. The coalition be has now formed is so beyond 2016, heck even anything in recent memory, that I think we will be seeing many more things just like this. The Golden Age of Common Sense.
When Snowden, is my question. RFK put a lot of words into "if I am in charge that'll be my first thing". Yeah, he's not the president but he's also not nobody anymore.
NGL it would be pretty funny if Snowden gets to return to the west but we hadn't actually fixed any of the stuff he brought forward in the meantime. Not sure what I would do in his shoes... I guess a pardon is pretty impossible for future presidents to get around, TBF
The courage a lot of these whistleblowers have shown is admirable. How the American public outrages, though: Facebook has targeted ads. How they don't outrage: their government is illegally tracking their own citizens' movements and communications including overseas.
Not going to say Ulbricht is a hero like some of the others, but he trail blazed like none before him! And he deserves his freedom years ago.
Or it could be different people commenting than on that original thread? And people might have changed their minds? HN is not a monolith. Humans are not static. You don't need to blame it on "politics being a mind virus".
I don't know. I personally know people that lost their minds because of an election. Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level.
Yet some of these people have rearranged their entire lives around a singular politician. Ended relationships, moved, started therapy or medication.
>Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level...
>What else would you call that?
This is one of those comments that accidentally reveals more than intended because I would call that "empathy". You are revealing that the only reason you think people should be concerned about politics is when it directly effects them. Some people actually genuinely care about other people and seeing someone elected who has promised to hurt people is a disturbing and troubling turn of events even if they themselves are likely to be safe.
So you’re saying people are making a rational estimation of the various harms caused to their fellowmen, determining that political actions in Washington are the primary component, and feeling bad about the harm?
I don’t buy it. Citing empathy is moral language to justify bad actions.
>So you’re saying people are making a rational estimation of the various harms caused to their fellowmen, determining that political actions in Washington are the primary component, and feeling bad about the harm?
Trump released an executive order yesterday that said some of my friends are no longer considered citizens of this country. Yes, sometimes it is incredibly obvious when Washington is to blame for people's suffering.
> Some people actually genuinely care about other people and seeing someone elected who has promised to hurt people is a disturbing and troubling turn of events even if they themselves are likely to be safe.
Ya but, it's all a bit silly isn't it? Realistically those people wouldn't be doing any of that unless they were addicted to media and perhaps by consequence emotionally volatile. If I chose not to be chronically keeping up with stuff on a moment to moment basis that only has vague intangible impacts on my life or those around me, specifically online, does that make me less empathetic or less tolerant of having all my time, energy, and attention stolen from me? That's not always the case, but it often is, and if it's actually relevant, you're opting into poor mental health despite having zero control over anything even if you care, so you might as well not be so tuned in; which part is the good part again?
It's a bit fatalistic perhaps, but I feel like the greatest trick social media (and Trump) ever pulled was convincing us we'd be pariahs if we opted out. If not for chronically keeping up with nearly literally every word the new batch of chronies has to say, they might not be saying it.
>If I chose not to be chronically keeping up with stuff on a moment to moment basis that only has vague intangible impacts on my life or those around me, specifically online, does that make me less empathetic or less tolerant of having all my time, energy, and attention stolen from me?
Some people view empathy as an active ability to "put yourself in someone else's shoes". Other people view it as a passive feeling along the lines of "it hurts to see other people hurt". If you can just stop being empathic by not thinking about it, you are in the first group. Some of us are in the second group and can't just decide to ignore it.
I think you should manage your health and safety first and those closest to you.
You're not helping by inflicting harm on yourself and those around you. If you want to canvas for the other side, donate, volunteer, great. But these people are obsessed and inflict a lot of damage on themselves for no good purpose.
Most people empathize to those that are infected with a virus. It's often out of their control. You can only offer them help and suggest they touch grass once in a while. But you shouldn't feed into their self delusions that self harm and obsession with things out of their control is healthy and a good way to live their life
The empathy you are showing in this comment would feel a lot more genuine if you didn't reveal with your prior comment how little empathy plays into your overall worldview. I'm personally fine, you don't have to waste your time telling me how to live a better life. I was just trying to explain to you what you were seemingly misunderstanding about your fellow humans.
It’s religious conflict. Nobody cares really about differences in tax rates. But differences in foundational beliefs about the world and humanity will do that.
Talk like this is never apolitical. No political change can occur without discussion first and therefore preemptively dismissing political discussion is inherently an endorsement of the current power structures.
There is no way to actually discuss this specific story without discussing politics. A president pardoning someone is an inherently political act and that is only emphasized when it was done on his first day in office and with a statement that includes lines like "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." That is all part of the story of what happened here and it involves politics whether you like it or not.
People generally do not come up with absurd beliefs all on their own, those do spread like a virus and as a consequence of all that social contagion, they do not seem all that absurd anymore to the person who contracts them.
Yes let's use word that need massive essays to explain what one person believes they mean... Like "woke". And not just stick to words we know the meaning of. That surely aid the discussion. /s
Exactly. If anything, the one thing that’s guaranteed in these types of threads is that someone will make this same tired argument of “aha, but HN back then said differently” as if it’s some kind of gotcha. I used to always look, and not only was it never the same people but the threads are largely more balanced than the original poster let on. It’s like the contrarian dynamic, which dang has to explain over and over and over and over and over again.
Any time a criminal is caught, people want them to do hard time, but people believe we're too hard on crime if you don't use examples. People think the government should spend less, but are far less likely too agree to any specific cut. People thought Musk was a genius until they realised he is also a jerk.
And while it's sometimes different people, it's suspiciously reliably consistent in what you see said and upvoted.
Based on the sheer number of posts that have misrepresented the charges or misunderstood why he was actually in prison, it appears to partially be a lack of knowledge on the case, likely due to time hazing some of the memories. Of course someone will change their mind, and some may have their view influenced by who happens to support him.
"Politics" is a dismissive word for crypto's evolution over the last decade. North Korea ransoming our hospitals, industrial scale gambling and scam enablement, wealthy kingpins buying self-serving policy. Crypto grew up. So did our opinions.
That doesn't change what Ross Ulbricht did, but we can now see him as continuous with a great evil that we couldn't see at the time. With more information, our opinions changed, and they were right to change.
Wow. I thought you were being glib, but the average comment length is noticeably higher in the linked discussion. While length isn’t necessarily a valid proxy for meaningful conversation, this was definitely an eye-opening contrast to the current thread.
Well, that thread is almost a decade old. HN a decade ago was a very different vibe than today.
You are insinuating one thing, but perhaps it is also possible reason is that the same people with those old views of the crimes have grown and their views changed. I know mine certainly have gone that way. I’d have to imagine other users have grown with me.
Nah social media is just about engagement. People who are happy with the article don’t bother to comment. Those who are outraged comment. It’s just two different groups of people commenting
At the time of sentencing, did we already know that the murder for hire plots were created by corrupt Secret Service and DEA agents on trial next door? and all of that was withheld from the defense and the jury?
because that's where the story really jumps the shark. I'm all for some accountability - such as the 12 years in prison already - but that particular case should have been dropped for several reasons, I've seen cases dropped for way less.
I’m confused as Trump said he wanted to be tough on crime and drugs and “kill drug dealers”, but he just pardoned one of the worlds largest drug dealers.
He was never a drug dealer, he provided a platform that was used to sell drugs. The pardon was a surprise, however his sentence was unfairly strict and he was clearly made an example out of that hasn't happened to any other platform provider.
Just as an example, there have been investigations in to the use of Snapchat as a method for drug dealers and gangs of drug dealers to access kids to sell them drugs However there has been absolutely zero discussion in the public domain even about shutting it down or requiring new laws to stop this, let alone considering charging the owners.
There is a huge difference between a communication platform that some users abuse for illegal purposes, and a platform whose primary purpose is a marketplace for illegal goods.
Actually the marketplace was just a marketplace, it then was primarily used for illegal goods. It hasn't really ever been proven that it was setup as a marketplace for illegal goods.
I suppose it could be made consistent if we posit the existence of another hidden rule. For example, the skin-color or political-connectedness of the accused.
I think you need much more than "feels" to make claims like that, especially as they are directly contrary to HN guidelines, but also because making baseless claims, especially about other commenters, is a meaningless, inflammatory response.
So far you don't know what you are talking about and are making things up. If you do know what you're talking about and aren't making it up, please share your evidence and reasoning.
The two life sentences and 35 years extra that were given to Ross were most certainly abnormal and used to make an example of. I have yet to see this comparison made although if anyone could provide valid reasons in the difference I would be open to listening.
Secondly, the sheer number of posts on this site stating didn't he hire a hitman. No, and there was no conviction of that.
I distinctly remember listening to recordings of him hiring a hitman. It's been a long time and my memory is certainly prone to error, but that sort of thing does stick with you. I especially remember the irony because he also preached about non-violence at some point, obviously until someone's continued existence became inconvenient for him.
I don't agree with that and I don't understand why those charges were not taken to court (I don't believe it was purely because he already had 2 life sentences as when the appeals were going to the supreme court and there was a risk of him winning, it surely made sense to secure him if you had the evidence to proceed with another case). Whether that was true or not though, someone can only be sentenced and punished on what one was convicted of. Anything else is not based in justice or law.
I don't really believe that the US is a country ruled by law any more, but in some idealized land of the law you are probably correct. But you won't convince me that OJ Simpson walking on a double homicide he clearly committed is justice. For Ulbricht, it actually feels like things more or less balanced out, but he did try to have someone killed, and I don't think that's a nice thing to do.
Did the judge conclude, as part of sentencing, that hiring a hit (or two?) was likely?
What reasoning did the judge give for the sentencing? They might involve similar websites but the crimes can be much different. Two people can run the same drug cartel at different times, but that doesn't mean their crimes are the same.
The new google thinking model was actually really helpful in doing sentiment analysis on this!
Sentiment analysis of the Hacker News comments on Ross Ulbricht's life sentence reveals a complex and diverse range of opinions, but with a predominantly negative sentiment towards the severity of the punishment. Here's a breakdown:
Predominantly Negative Sentiment (towards the sentence):
Disproportionate Punishment: Many commenters feel the life sentence is excessively harsh for the crimes Ulbricht was convicted of, arguing that it's disproportionate to non-violent offenses, especially when compared to sentences for violent crimes like murder or for financial crimes.
"Running a Website" Argument: There's a recurring sentiment that Ulbricht is being punished for "simply running a website," minimizing the scale and impact of Silk Road while emphasizing the non-violent nature of the core charges (drug trafficking, conspiracy, etc.).
Critique of the War on Drugs: A significant portion of the comments express strong opposition to the War on Drugs, viewing Ulbricht's case as another example of its failures and injustices. They advocate for drug legalization, decriminalization, and treatment-focused approaches.
"Making an Example" Criticism: Many believe the life sentence is intended to be a deterrent, a "show trial" to discourage others from creating similar online black markets, which they see as unjust and unequal application of justice.
"Political Prisoner" Label: Some commenters go as far as labeling Ulbricht a "political prisoner," suggesting his sentence is politically motivated due to the government's fear of uncontrolled online activities and cryptocurrencies.
Concerns about Justice System Hypocrisy: There's anger and cynicism about the perceived hypocrisy of the US justice system, contrasting Ulbricht's life sentence with the lack of accountability for powerful figures in government and finance who have caused widespread harm (e.g., financial crisis, war crimes).
Empathy and Sadness: Many commenters express sadness and empathy for Ulbricht, feeling his life has been tragically ruined by the sentence.
Neutral and Informative Comments:
Fact-Checking and Clarification: A large number of comments focus on clarifying the facts of the case, particularly regarding the charges, the murder-for-hire allegations, and the legal procedures. They provide links to court documents, news articles, and legal resources to ensure accuracy.
Legal and Technical Discussions: Many comments delve into legal technicalities, such as sentencing guidelines, the definition of conspiracy, entrapment, and the admissibility of evidence.
Objective Analysis of Evidence: Some commenters try to objectively analyze the evidence, particularly regarding the murder-for-hire allegations, trying to assess the likelihood of Ulbricht's involvement based on the available information.
Comparisons to Other Cases: There are comparisons to sentences in other drug trafficking cases, financial fraud cases, and even murder cases to contextualize Ulbricht's sentence.
Questions and Seeking Information: Many comments are questions seeking clarification on specific aspects of the case, legal arguments, or the broader implications of the sentencing.
Mixed/Nuanced Sentiment:
"Harm Reduction" Argument: Some commenters explore the argument that Silk Road, despite its illegality, might have offered harm reduction benefits compared to traditional street drug markets (safer drugs, reduced violence). However, this argument is often countered by the prosecution's perspective and the evidence of Ulbricht's violent tendencies.
Acknowledging Ulbricht's Mistakes: While critical of the sentence, some commenters acknowledge Ulbricht's operational security failures and the inherent risks of running an illegal enterprise.
Moral Ambiguity: Some comments grapple with the ethical dilemmas of Ulbricht's actions, especially regarding the murder-for-hire allegations, questioning whether violence could be justified in certain extreme situations (e.g., protecting users from blackmail).
Positive Sentiment (towards the sentence):
Justification Based on Murder-for-Hire: A smaller group supports the life sentence, primarily based on the allegations that Ulbricht attempted to hire hitmen. They view this as evidence of a dangerous mindset and a justification for severe punishment.
"Kingpin" Argument: Some see Ulbricht as a "drug kingpin" running a massive criminal enterprise, believing the life sentence is appropriate for someone operating at that scale.
"Social Fabric" Argument: A few commenters agree with the judge's statement that Silk Road was "terribly destructive to our social fabric," viewing the sentence as necessary to protect society from such online criminal platforms.
Overall, the sentiment leans heavily towards considering the life sentence as unjust and excessive. While some acknowledge the severity of the crimes and the murder-for-hire allegations, the dominant feeling is one of dismay at the harshness of the punishment and a critique of the broader context of the War on Drugs and the US justice system. The comments reflect a strong libertarian undercurrent within the Hacker News community, questioning the legitimacy of drug prohibition and advocating for more lenient and rehabilitative approaches.
I think this comment would have got less downvotes if you could have made it somewhat shorter. Walls of text like this just scream Unabomber manifesto to me :)
It was pretty out of left field and seemingly uncharacteristic for the him to do this. It's fair to ask why. I think Trump is terrible in every way, think the pardon is fine, but can't help but wonder why and other questions about it
"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. 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!"
> “All my Republican donations were dark,” [SBF] said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”
> Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million.
I thought it was a ridiculously long sentence compared to what other people have received. 10 years was right. That's enough time. I know that he was accused of hiring a hitman, but he was never convicted of that. It should have never been used in his sentencing. I think the government tried to make an example out of Ross Ulbrich, and it was a miscarriage of justice.
This is a rare Trump win. There are many things to criticize him for, but this pardon isn't one of them. I don't think anyone, after researching this case, would be okay with the life sentence handed down to Ross.
Most people in real life don’t even know who this guy is. This is a guy that online people know. I will agree it’s a win, he was unfairly sentenced. I just wish I would have been able to buy from SR. I did get to browse it before it was seized.
A "darknet" site where you can trade illegal shit is right up the alley of Trump and his cronies, so of course he would pardon this guy. Next step is to give him a job.
I guess this is why he was upset about Mexico sending drug dealers and murderers - he didn't want competition for our homegrown drug dealers and murderers.
Disclosure - I immensely dislike Trump and think Ross Ublricht deserved to be convicted.
That said - There is no evidence that anyone was ever killed, there is pretty thin evidence that he actually ever intended to hire any hitmen (though he may have defrauded people who thought they were hiring hitmen), and a life sentence for non-violent drug trafficking seems draconian. I certainly don't think this should have been one of Trump's priorities (I'm guessing it came through Vance, Musk, or someone else in the crypto community), but I don't have a big problem with it.
I don't see how this benefits the American economy, jobs, or national security. I do see that for a cohort of people in the Libertarian community this was held to be a central Tenet: Ulbricht was their "hostage" just as the Proud Boys thought their leader was.
But, I can't see how this becomes net beneficial in Congress, or in the wider economy. At best it's providing lower friction movement of goods and services. They tend not to go to Federal Tax collecting exchanges, so I cannot for the life of me see how this helps the exchequer, but maybe thats the point?
Do you think it's possible the 11 years he spent in prison could have had any rehabilitation effect? Or should we jail anyone who ever commits a crime to a life sentence?
Whether Ulbricht is a changed man is somewhat immaterial to the signaling to other young would-be drug kingpins that the President thinks you shouldn't be punished so harshly for setting up online black markets.
B) I don’t see this sort of leniency being offered to other drug dealers, in fact, the Trump administration wants to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.
C) a day 1 pardon communicates that it’s a top priority of the administration that drug dealers and cop killers (Jan 6) get freed.
D) he was convicted by a jury of his peers who know full well what a judge would sentence him to. Now Trump comes out to overrule that.
The time to change sentencing would have been pre-trial. We tried doing that, but that was a massive loser electorally.
E) it wasn't merely commutation, it was a pardon. A pardon means that President is declaring the defendant not guilty. A commutation merely reduces the sentence.
I am happy to see that Trump is a man of his word. I voted for him just because of this campaign promise. I would have voted for almost anyone who promised this.
I am very sympathetic to the idea of voting just for Ross. It is unclear to me which candidate would be better, since neither of them are close to my political beliefs at all. It is a deadlock and I seem completely unrepresented. The consequences of voting based on any big issues I care about seems completely unpredictable; politics is a game of lies, smoke and mirrors. So I would perhaps rather vote for the candidate that would definitely save one person's life that is important to me.
What were your number 2 and 3 issues, out of curiosity?
Were there any accompanying policies that you would say, "despite promising to free Ross Ulbricht, I don't think accompanying Policy X would be worth it?"
Yes. The Paris Agreement is a bunch of virtue signaling WEF nonsense. The biggest polluter is not reducing CO2 emissions, and the United States is reducing them, both in absolute terms and per capita, at a great cost to its industrial capacity: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=CHN~USA
The latest string of pardons are blatant political power moves. He pardoned _all_ of the January 6 insurrectionists. Many of these people have been filmed attacking police and literally raiding the nations capitol to overturn 2020 election. Violent folks being released back into the public is not good.
Now he’s just getting favors with crypto bros and “libertarians”. Man is building his personal army filled with angry racists, poor men that can be easily manipulated.
Sends a clear message - do this illegal thing for me, I’ll sign away any consequences.
Since no one is posting it, here's Trump Truth Social post on the matter:
"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. 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!"
I knew people who were wringing it out of medicated patches and sniffing it out of Afrin bottles during high school in the 90s. I also knew someone who ODd and died from tainted/fake pills they bought from one of The Silk Road's (immediate) successors.
Some number of people also OD on "traditional" street drugs every day. So, this is really not a sound argument.
Where's the paper bag that holds the liquor?
Just in case I feel the need to puke
If we'd known what it'd take to get here
Would we have chosen to?
So you wanna build an altar on a summer night
You wanna smoke the gel off a fentanyl patch
Aintcha heard the news? Adam and Eve were Jews
And I always loved you to the max
I see those people in my personal life, too. Ironically, they're also the ones who regularly drive drunk and do a little cocaine now and again because _it doesn't really count_.
I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they're sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!
Is it due to HN policy? I guess they're subjective and ideological, and prone to starting arguments rather than debates.
Maybe "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." or "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."?
I'm honestly just curious as a conscientious internet citizen lol
> I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they're sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!
[dead] is different than [flagged][dead]. [dead]-only (no [flagged]) means they're auto-dead, they aren't killed by someone reviewing the comments (moderator or users flagging). One of the two commenters was shadow banned years ago but still gets vouched for occasionally (including by me at times). The other one was shadow banned (looked through their history) 11 days ago, with a comment from dang at the time stating as much. They also get vouched for on occasion, based on their comment history.
> Maybe "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." or "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."?
dang does usually respond to people with something like that first, then for people who get repeatedly flagged or repeatedly engage in certain kinds of behavior, he bans them.
Just to add one point, flagged comments are mostly flagged by users (as opposed to mods). We can only guess why users flag things, but from looking at a sample in the current thread it's probably because they're mostly flamewar-style comments and/or political-battle style comments (or both). Those aren't good for HN because what we want here is curious, thoughtful conversation.
Nothing wrong with HN in particular. Every polarising discussion on a platform with moderation or up/down voting system ends up this way. This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politics
Removing moderation or voting systems (simple chronological comment sorting) creates another set of issues so this problem can't be solved without entirely changing discussion formats
> This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politics
No, it's not. Because the same magnification effect causes the causal, simple and correct sounding to float to the top and the nuanced "<signs deeply> so I dealt with this for 20yr and here's the deal" takes that nobody wants to hear because they're not simple and easy wind up at the bottom but above the flagrantly wrong crap and the trolls.
There's a reason that nothing with real stakes adopts this format and technical discussions that matter still mostly happen in some sort of threaded format that doesn't allow voting or any sort of drive-by low effort interaction to effect much.
Format like this is good for driving interaction, which is why public facing websites use it for their comment sections.
Interesting -- what other system could you possibly have, other than votes...? I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. I guess traditional forum threads (sometimes with votes, a-la GitHub) are nice, but ultimately that's just trading "correct sounding" for "early commenter".
Otherwise, the only thing that comes to mind is StackOverflow functionality where OP can mark a single answer as "accepted" and push it to the top instantly (which obv. wouldn't translate well to general discussions).
But MLK also talks about moral obligation and not other forms of obligation.
He was not trying to create a free for all where everyone gets to decide which laws are okay or not, because he (and jefferson) were not complete morons.
Touche, however there is plenty of evidence of people throughout history making this assertion, including MLK.
He was trying to create a more just, egalitarian society. I don't understand how you can consider acting in accordance with leading research on successful drug policy "moronic"?
> Considering that his rhetoric was very much based on Christianity, it's clear what standard of "unjust" he was applying.
Considering the diversity of standards of justice within the history of Christianity (which, in just the US, includes—relevant to this topic—MLK, sure, but also the Southern Baptist Convention, founded explicitly in support of slavery), I don't know that having rhetoric grounded in Christian theology tells much of substance about the standard of justice one is appealing to.
Is it unjust to prohibit the sale of illegal drugs, weapons, etc.? Society has good reasons for regulating certain goods. I regularly see people in my community who are enslaved by fentanyl and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The society I live in decided to make selling it illegal. What is unjust about that?
As I recall weapons weren't permitted on the platform.
The society didn't decide, the ruling class decided to use drug policy to attack their own citizens.
History shows that prohibition is an abject failure. The fent epidemic is symptomatic of this failed policy.
If they actually cared about the epidemic, addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin whilst also having ready access to treatment.
But then we'd have empty prisons and the police would be free to solve real crimes so we can't have that.
> addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin
We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist. We had readily available, doctor-prescribed, high quality narcotics available to anyone who wanted them and the result was an epic disaster that cost thousands of lives.
Is Trump pushing for broad drug decriminalisation? I feel like that would be necessary for this pardon to make sense on the basis of current drug laws being unjust.
Not exactly, fentanyl epidemic was specifically started by one family seek profit and ousted doctors to over prescribe it while claiming it was mildly addictive.
The war on drugs have caused immeasurable harm due to failure to understand most people use drugs either as escapism or as a tendency.
There are healthier middle grounds we could explore where e.g. advertisements are banned and individuals could register themselves as being banned from participating in certain addictive vices because they don't consistently have the willpower to quit or don't want to tempt fate trying it (and make it a crime to sell to an individual who has voluntarily banned themselves), but it's hard to argue that The War on Drugs has been in any way just.
I expect in such a society, certain groups (e.g. Mormons) would normalize banning yourself from vices the day you turn 18.
What is just is decided both by an individual and the society they exist in. "It is one's moral obligation to fight injustice" is a pretty common tenent to hold. Injustice can be city laws encouraging anti-homeless spikes. Injustice can also be genocide in a remote country. Those injustices get fought in very different ways. One can be handled by individual vigilanteeism and peacefully petitioning local governance. The other might require global war.
In my personal belief, everyone[0] has the right and moral obligation to fight the injustice they care about at the level they can manage. If that's handing out water at the protest or inventing penicillin, do what you personally can do to improve the world.
[0]the average layperson, obvious exceptions for power/money apply
Sure, but the facts matter. Making millions of dollars by operating a marketplace for illegal drugs is not even close to the same ballpark as protesting a draconian anti-homeless law, let alone resisting genocide!
The only reasonable argument for drug legalization, in my opinion, is the libertarian one - the idea that you should be free to take the drugs you want to take. I am sympathetic to this argument. I am someone who is able to make wise decisions about the drugs I take. But I also recognize that millions of my fellow citizens are not. The harm to society from drug addiction and overdoses outweighs the benefit to me getting high whenever I want.
I mean strictly speaking the people voted for Trump, so collectively they're all okay with this.
Of course Trump's platform was enormously based on law & order and combatting the drug trade, which he seems to think should still be actually illegal and is not ending the war on drugs so, I don't know - make of that what you will.
Maybe Thoreau? That's more authentic and gets at similar themes. On more than one level considering his circumstances and run-ins with law enforcement.
”Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."
But there were also abolitionists at the time, even amongst that class. Jefferson not being among them does, actually, diminish his standing and his views on justice. This quote, for example, does not acknowledge that there are also laws which are unjust to obey; such as the owning of human beings in chattel slavery.
Jefferson did, certainly. He was instrumental in starting a war from what I understand.
Ross though? The government alleged it but never bothered to prove it. Furthermore the government agents involved were laughably corrupt, so anything they alleged needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt. For all anybody here know, they fabricated the entire assassination story to distract the public from their plot to loot Ross's money (which unlike the assassination stuff, has been proven in court.)
Given there are at least thousands if not millions of people who "provide online forums," and pretty much this single one is in prison, I have to wonder if there's something unique about this case?
I don't know anything about this guy. Is there really nothing unique about his case?
Yes, it was the biggest drug market on the dark web at that time, and the 50,676 bitcoins seized by the feds from then is today worth 5,3 billion dollars to give you an idea.
Also there was a long side story with disappeared bitcoins, presumably stolen by federal investigators.
Silk Road was, at its height, uniquely successful and making an absolute mockery of the United States government's capacity to regulate drug trafficking. In addition, he fashioned himself an anti-establishment persona, going by the handle "Dread Pirate Roberts" online.
He was unique in his magnitude of success. Governments can successfully magnify their enforcement ability by making an example of outliers.
This was a pandering to get Libertarians' votes. It has nothing to do with the crime itself. I wouldn't commit any crimes and expect to get away with them unless I anticipated becoming the pawn in someone's scheme to get elected.
The seven offenses in question: distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering
A judge bypassed the jury and prosecutor and sentenced him as if he hired hit men and admitted doing so. The sentence upgrade was based on a preponderance of evidence, whereas they would have had to proven beyond a reasonable doubt had he been charged.
Framing this as judicial activism is false. Many sentencing arrangements include - with the agreement of the defendant (since it is their rights in this case) - to have other related activities factored in exactly this manner.
It happens all the time in pleas and diversion agreements, so don’t frame it as a reckless lone judge going off the reservation.
do you know that is actually the case ? i've been trying to find the text of the pardon and haven't been able to yet. can only find Trump's description of it as "full and unconditional"
This conversation is presently flagged. Why? When Ross was sentenced HN had a discussion about it with more than 600 comments. His conviction has been discussed numerous additional times in other threads throughout the years. His pardon is plainly on-topic for HN, and this discussion is a necessary followup to those previous discussions.
Of course it's on topic. Why did users flag it? Probably some combination of not liking the event itself and fatigue with political stories. But that's just a guess.
In any case, we turned the flags off when we saw it.
A possible line of reasoning is that drugs should be legal, but the property and violent crimes committed around them shouldn't be, in the same way that adults are legally permitted to drink alcohol, but they're not legally permitted to drive drunk. The "ruining cities" is about the crimes, not the drugs themselves.
That's the logically consistent line of thought, yes. Which is one I don't particularly disagree with, because of the harm the war on drugs has caused.
But the inconsistency comes from people advocating for a black market drug site and bending towards the far right. The same people who in the same breath also further criminalize drugs, reduce access to things that help addicts while arguing that drug dealers should be deported and our streets swept.
The logical inconsistency is that 'their' drug dealers are conducted by people of virtue therefore they did nothing to break the law. And not being willing to deal with the actual fallout of said illegal drug empire.
Most libertarians considered the Silk Road a place to buy psychedelics like LSD or mushrooms or experimental synthetic drugs (not that these don’t come with numerous risks). Not a bulk heroin warehouse. So the perception is different from that of a wholesale fentanyl clearing house.
Just because the far right complains about 'drugged out zombies' ruining cities thanks to drug smugglers from Mexico, doesn't mean libertarians think that. Libertarians have been opposed to the "war on drugs" for decades.
Pretty sure she is currently in jail.. if not, she's finished doing the time she was sentenced.
Her husband took the fall, whatever the facts actually are, and got a longer sentence.
SBF - well the scale, number of laws violated, duration, number of victims, profile of victims, complete lack of contrition, etc would be why he got a much longer sentence.
I really wonder who benefits from this. Trump only does things that are good for him, or those close to him. I realize he's been making connections to the crypto world, and has his own meme coins. Does pardoning Ross somehow make crypto more valuable?
It’s also just good politics. There are a vocal group of voters that are in favor of this, so it gets those people on his side. And no reason not to (politically), as most people just don’t care about this topic, or if they do and disagree with the decision, this isn’t going to be the action that moves the needle for them on how they feel about Trump or the Republican Party.
A video from Reason magazine a few days ago[0] mentioned a deal between the Libertarian Party leadership and Trump in which they selectively didn't run their candidate in several states in order to help Trump. If this is true, Trump could have reneged, but evidently decided whatever political blowback for pardoning Ulbricht (which is probably small potatoes at this rate) wasn't worth the credibility cost.
He has admitted his wrong doings and made efforts to change whilst in prison. I doubt he will go straight back to a life even remotely close to before. He was doing good in prison for other inmates and I imagine he will continue doing the same now he has this second chance.
What the future holds for someone who was pardoned is likely decided based on very different rationalization compared to how one acts while serving a lifetime prison sentence.
Whilst I understand your point of view that the change in circumstances can change how someone decides to act, I don't believe there is much history to show someone who gained a surprising second chance outside of prison has gone back to their previous life.
Until you can prove to me that all courts, judges, attorneys, and juries are above reproach and no innocent people are imprisoned there absolutely should be a method for someone to pardon. Sometimes a pardon will be issued for people you disagree with, but that’s part of it. Just like somebody will say something that pisses you off, but that’s the cost of free speech
The sympathy for this guy from so many of you makes me sad.
The messages show he wanted and thought he was getting people murdered. But that's perfectly OK because it was actually the evil FBI he was talking to!
Tangentially related: I had the disconcerting experience of reading a Wired article about his arrest[1] while unknowingly sitting about six feet from the spot where he was apprehended. When the FBI agents stopped to have a drink at Bello Coffee I thought, huh, interesting coincidence, I just had a coffee there.
Then Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me, and suddenly as I was reading I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in, where the plainclothes police had positioned themselves, how they had arranged a distraction.
Having this tableau unexpectedly unfold right in front of my eyes was a fascinating experience, and it certainly made the article suddenly get a lot more immersive!
[1] https://www.wired.com/2015/05/silk-road-2/
EDIT: to be clear, I was not present for the arrest. I was reading the magazine, some years after the arrest, but in the same place as the arrest. (I didn’t qualify the events with “I read that...” since I thought the narrative ellipsis would be obvious from context; evidently not.)
Sorry, it went over my head a bit, you read about his arrest while he was being arrested?
He was being arrested in the article, not IRL. When I say “Ulbricht walked into the public library and sat down at the table directly in front of me” I mean that I read
> He went... past the periodicals and reference desk, beyond the romance novels, and settled in at a circular table near science fiction, on the second floor... in a corner, with a view out the window and his back toward the wall.
and realized that I was in the Glen Park public library, at a circular table near science fiction on the second floor, in a corner with my back to the window, and facing directly towards where the article had just said he had sat.
The responses to this comment show that people's ability to read and comprehend text has decreased dramatically in the last few years. Frightening...
If every reply is pointing out how confusing it is, maybe the original comment is just poorly written.
I was afraid of this too but it turned out to be presbyopia
> When the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought
You mean "when I read the part where the FBI agents stopped to have a drink I thought"?
This part makes your comment super confusing. Where you there then or later?
I believe they are suggesting an experience of imaginatively visualising the events of the arrest linearly as they were narrated in their read-through of the article, aided by being physically present at the same location, and are referencing the article's narration partially in the present tense to similarly place us in medias res as we follow their remark.
Alternatively, they are themselves Ross Ulbricht, describing an out-of-body fever dream or post-traumatic flashback. This seems ... somewhat less likely.
Wolfgang stopped for a drink before going to the library, where he then read the Wired article about Albrecht, only to discover that 1) the place he'd just gotten his drink from was the same place the FBI agents stopped at on the day of the arrest, and 2) the table at which Albrecht was arrested was the one in front the table he was sitting at as he read the article.
I assume you mean "I could look up and see exactly the chair he had been in" figuratively?
I mean, it’s possible that the library had rearranged their chairs in the intervening years and that exact one was now at a different table, but it was certainly a chair in the same location.
this is Neurath's library¹.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neurath%27s_boat
Wait, you were reading about his arrest while he was being arrested? That article was written after his conviction?
He first read the article while sitting where Ulbricht was when Ulbricht was arrested.
I think his original sentence was absolutely deserved—even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped, I think it's clear he did many things in the same vein. Even if you support his original pursuit of a free and open online marketplace, I think most people would agree he took it a bridge too far in the end.
That said, I do think he absolutely deserved to be released, not because he didn't deserve to be locked up in the first place, but because he's clearly been rehabilitated and has done great work during his time in prison. All that considered, ten years seems like a not unreasonable prison sentence for what he did. I hope he'll continue to do good when he's released.
Ross Ulbricht was not sentenced for murder-for-hire charges.
Those allegations were used to deny him bail and influenced public perception, they were not part of his formal conviction or sentencing.
He was convicted on non-violent charges related to operating the Silk Road website, including drug distribution, computer hacking, and money laundering.
Does this change your opinion of sentencing being well-deserved?
This opinion [1] from the judge in his case indicates that the murder-for-hire evidence was admitted during his trial. The document outlines the evidence for all 6 murder for hire allegations and explains why, although not charged, the evidence is relevant to his case.
[1] https://s3.amazonaws.com/s3.documentcloud.org/documents/1391...
This opinion (after appeal) also details how they taken into consideration with sentencing. See pages 130-131
https://pbwt2.gjassets.com/content/uploads/2017/05/15-1815_o...
He was found during sentencing to be guilty of hiring a hit on a competitor using a preponderance of evidence (lower then presumption of innocence). While this is a lower standard than a conviction, it is still a higher standard than most apply in public discourse.
That isn't fair, the point of the trial is to test whether something is to be acted on. To act on something that wasn't directly part of the trial is a bit off. I'm sure the judge is acting in the clear legally, but if someone is going to be sentenced for attempted murder then that should be after a trial that formally accuses them of the crime.
It does not change my opinion that the sentence was well deserved in the eyes of the law. Those are all things, that independently, can lead to serious jail time. The scale of his operation was also substantial.
[dead]
There are murderers who hardly do more than a few years in prison. He was jailed for much longer than what violent criminals get.
yeah it's a tragedy - those violent criminals should have received more time
I don't see how that should change anyone's opinion on whether the sentence was deserved. Whether it was legally/procedurally correct, sure. Whether he didn't get the day in court he should have had, sure. But given that no-one seems to seriously dispute that he did try to pay to have the guy killed, what he deserves is a long prison sentence, and whether that's imposed by a court doing things properly, a court doing things improperly, or a vigilante kidnapper isn't really here or there on that point.
(The rule of law is important, and we may let off people who deserve harsh sentences for the sake of preserving it, but it doesn't mean they deserve those sentences any less)
> The rule of law is important,
The rule of law says innocent until proven guilty.
The reason they didn't go after him for murder for hire allegations isn't because they felt bad for him or that they didn't want to waste tax payer's money.
The reason they didn't go after him for 'murder for hire' was that they knew there was no merit in it.
This is self evident.
You say the rule of law is important, but also we should impose extra-legal long sentences even if the rule of law doesn't allow us to? How do you reconcile this perspective?
Did you read my comment? I said:
> even though the charge of hiring a contract killer to assassinate his business competition may have been dropped
Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it. In fact, reading the chat logs makes his guilt pretty clear. Of course, because the whole operation was a scam, there's little he could have been convicted of. Yet just because the murder was never carried out doesn't mean he didn't intend to have someone assassinated. In my book, paying someone money to kill another person is definitely grounds for imprisonment.
The case for this was dropped because he was sentenced for it in the other case.
So you think people should be sentenced based on charges that were not proven in court?
No. I'm talking more from an ethical standpoint. I think someone who hires contract killers deserves to go to prison. I also think people shouldn't be convicted for charges that were not proven in court. As I said before, in Ross' case, the charge was dropped.
So you should apologize for not paying attention to the original comment before stamping in to 'correct' it. A little manners goes a long way.
That happens all the time, when people confess to a charge ahead of time, instead of proceeding to a trial. Remember that the purpose of the trial is to find out whether they are guilty when there is a factual dispute about that question. Here, I suppose the existence of a factual dispute is itself disputed: does that need to go to a jury, or is it enough that the trial judge and the appeal court looked at the record and decided there wasn't a dispute?
> Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it.
If you had a trial and they can't prove that, then yes it means you are innocent of this charge in the eyes of the law
Ah that's not strictly true. I believe Scotland is the only place in the world I am aware of where there is Innocent, unproven, and Guilty verdicts. I believe in reality a not guilty verdict is, we didn't have the evidence to prove beyond a reasonable doubt this person committed the crime. Finding someone not guilty is a legal term. Considering whether someone is innocent or not is more of a moral/factual term.
> Just because the charge was dropped doesn't mean he's innocent of it
That’s exactly what it means under the presumption of innocence.
Advocating for the continued imprisonment of someone for something they are legally considered innocent of, is quite literally vigilantism.
The other user directly addressed that in his comment.
What has always sat odd with me regarding this, is we don't truly know the extent of the fbi's corruption in this. They stole, so it's not hard to imagine they planted evidence too.
I assume that the feds corruption is as bad as it is in every other high profile case case involving fed informants and politically charged topics. Randy Weaver, all the muslims they radicalized and then goaded into doing terrorist things post 9/11, the Michigan Fednapping. It seems like every time these people have a chance to entrap someone they do, but they do it in a "haha, jokes on you we run the system so while this probably would be entrapment if some beat cops did it the court won't find it that way" sort of way. They just can't touch anything without getting it dirty this way and the fact that that is a 30yr pattern at this point depending on how you count speaks volumes IMO. While I'm sure they can solve an interstate murder or interstate fraud or whatever just fine I just don't trust them to handle these sorts of cases.
It seems like all of these people they wind up charging probably are questionable people who wanted to do the thing and probably did some other lesser things but they probably would have given up on the big thing if there wasn't a federal agency running around doing all the "the informant says the guy is lamenting not having explosives, quick someone get him some explosives" things in the background.
As part of the FBI conviction they were accused of tampering user logs and taking over accounts. So… literally none of it can be used as evidence imo.
What evidence would you have even needed to plant? He ran the largest internet drug market and openly tried to assassinate a competitor.
Agreed. He willingly engaged with the alleged hitman (which ended up being the FBI contact). He didn't need to do anything or not have the thought to murder others cross his mind.
Allegedly. The 2 rules of his Fight Club were no underage sex stuff and no physical harm. That hitman claim was not part of his charges or sentencing. The heavy sentencing was to like "send a message" the judge said.
They weren't part of his sentencing because a different court entirely was pursuing the hit for hire attempt charge, but because another court in NY got the book thrown at him for running the site, they decided to drop it because it didn't seem necessary anymore.
In hindsight, the prosecution probably wished they didn't do that, since they are said to have had overwhelming evidence and proof, and there is even a Wired article about chat logs pertaining to DPR seeking services, but those are the breaks! If you don't do your due diligence, criminals can be let off on a technicality too!
I haven't looked into the case(s) for years, but prosecutors don't often just drop charges because other charges were found guilty. People get charged even after life sentences have been handed down.
Perhaps. I can't think of why they ultimately decided not to move forward with it, but here we are.
He never admitted to the attempted murder. So it's not a leap to assume that might of been tainted
But the feds would never attempt shading means of solving a problem that they're being heavily pressured to solve in a timely manner! Don't be a hecking conspiracy theorist.
Tainted how?
>we don't truly know the extent of the fbi's corruption in this
the corruption what we do know about already tainted the case to the point that it should have been thrown out.
I don't care about Ulbricht, and whether he is guilty of all or some of the charges or innocent. What bothers me in this case is that the government can get away and in particular can get its way in court even with such severe criminal behavior by the government.
Rare case when i agree with Trump:
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz7e0jve875o
"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," Trump said in his post online on Tuesday evening."
Trump even personally called Ulbricht mother. I start to wonder whether i have been all that time in blind denial about Trump.
Ross Ulbricht was not a good person. Full stop.
He organized and operated a global criminal drug ring and conspired to have people killed. The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s.
> The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar is that DPR was running his drug business in the 2010s instead of the 1980s.
Asserting moral equivalence between someone who ordered dozens of innocent women and children not just killed but dismembered - solely as a lesson for others. Orders which were actually carried out multiple times and DPR who was never charged, tried or convicted of conspiring with a supposed online hitman to kill a competitor (who both were actually FBI informants - clearly making it entrapment). Yeah, that's quite a reach.
Sure, DPR was no saint but why push for the absolute maximally extreme interpretation? Even asserting he "organized and operated a global criminal drug ring" is a stretch. My understanding is he ran an online marketplace which drug rings used to sell to their customers. I'm not aware that Ross ever bought or sold drugs as a business or hired others to do so. There is some nuance between buying, selling and delivering drugs and being an accessory enabling people who actually handle and deliver drugs. They are both crimes but not of the same severity.
I don't think anyone in here is making the case that Ulbricht is a "good person", but comparing Escobar to Ulbricht is next-level delusional.
One of these people attempted to place hits on 3-4 individuals, the other one planted a bomb on a passenger plane that resulted in the deaths of over a hundred people.
Get some perspective and/or learn your history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avianca_Flight_203
> The only difference between DPR and Pabla Escobar
The only difference?
wait what? Escobar was responsible for conservatively 4,000 people killed, some at his own hand
DPR conspired but didn't actually directly kill anyone
Not saying DPR was a good person, but a little perspective is in order
He did order (and pay for) at least one murder. It just happens that both the victim and the would-be hit man were both informants so they staged the murder. Ross’ argument is that he knew it was fake, but that makes no sense in context.
It was right that they dropped the charge because it was quite obviously entrapment. But none of it reflects well on Ross Ulbricht’s character.
Was he ever convicted on conspiracy to murder?
Because in my opinion the ethics of operating a drug ring is not as black as white as you state.
The existence of drug rings is an inevitable outcome from the war on drugs and I would argue the blame lands on the politicians who maintain the status quo that incentivises the creation of the black market for drugs.
> has done great work during his time in prison
What work?
People have served more time for selling less drugs and attempting to murder fewer people than Ross Ulbricht did.
Just because he was decent with computers does not mean he should be busted out of jail.
What makes you think I support those people being locked up either? Also, afaik Ulbricht didn't sell drugs himself, he simply provided an unmoderated marketplace.
Because attempted murder is bad. I didn't think that would be contentious.
The attempted murder charge was dropped.
Under our system that means he should be considered innocent of it.
This conversation is messy mostly because people are refusing to do that, which is akin to vigilantism.
A good faith discussion should only involve the charge he was convicted of and pardoned for, which is the narcotics charge.
The prosecution dropped the charges. That does not make anyone innocent.
The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty.
Under the presumption of innocence, the legal burden of proof is thus on the prosecution, which must present compelling evidence to the trier of fact (a judge or a jury). If the prosecution does not prove the charges true, then the person is acquitted of the charges.
It is also the case that prosecutors need to decide both the probability of conviction, the effort needed to do so and whether likely conviction on other serious charges are sufficient for the people to feel that justice has been done.
> The presumption of innocence is a legal principle that every person accused of any crime is considered innocent until proven guilty.
That should be "considered innocent by the legal system". People are still free to come to their own conclusions--and act on them--even without a jury rendering a verdict.
Rather famously, for example, OJ Simpson was acquitted by a jury of murdering his wife. But most people these days would agree with the statement that he murdered his wife.
My understanding is they never brought the charges in the first place. The supposed online hitman and the victim were both FBI informants. They never brought the charges at trial because it was clearly entrapment and no one was ever in any danger.
The prosecutors later used that evidence as support for their sentencing request after Ross was convicted of only non-violent offenses, which has a much lower standard of evidence. The allegations of murder-for-hire were never tested at trial. They may have evaporated under cross-examination by a competent defense. Our system of justice holds that Ross is innocent of those allegations unless convicted at trial.
It does. Innocent until proven guilty.
He should be considered innocent by the courts - and he was (innocent of the murder for hire charges, I mean). In the public we aren't obligated to follow the same standards of evidence as the courts. I think he almost certainly did pay to have those people killed, and that can shape my opinion of him.
That's perfectly reasonable - but I don't think it should really have a bearing on whether he should be pardoned. That is not exactly a matter of the courts (by definition), but I think as an official public act it should be subject to the presumption of innocence as well.
People also served no time for selling more drugs and actually murdering more people.
According to Reuters he was found guilty of "charges including distributing drugs through the Internet and conspiring to commit computer hacking and money laundering." In addition to running an illegal market bazaar for 4 years.
What a travesty. Maybe life was too long a sentence but this was far too short.
- sackler family engineered opioid crisis and went unscathed - hacking is a bogus charge applied to everything touching PCs - money laundering is another victimless crime that very few actual money launderers gets charged with, for some reason
Yeah, the Sacklers should be in jail too.
And you didn't bother to address that he ran a market for illegal goods and services, for some reason.
So that means Sackler should be charged, not that Ross should get off lol.
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Case law obsessively cites other case law. So yeah, that's how it works. His trial was a farce and was meant to send a message to others to not, um, do drugs online or something.
Drug Cartels were just categorized as terrorist organizations so I'm not sure the current admin is ok with drugs
"But he was a libertarian!" Shrugs
I wonder if the decision to drop the "murder for hire" charges was originally influenced by his existing life sentence, and whether the pardon now alters that reasoning. Is it still possible for him to be prosecuted on those charges?
I think the attacks on some of these black and gray markets has increased crime in the real life. I wish the federal government would stop shutting them down and instead use them to build cases against people breaking the law.
For example, for a while most prostitution and sex work seemed to be online, on places like Craigslist right next to ads for used furniture and jobs. And it seemed to be really effective in getting prostitutes off the streets.
Now that those markets were shut down, I'm seeing here in Seattle we're having pimp shootouts on Aurora and the prostitutes are more brazen than ever. Going after Craigslist has had a negative effect on our cities and has increased crime, and I suspect going after SilkRoad has had a similar impact.
Any non-twitter reporting on this?
Edit: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/trump-pardons-silk-road-fou...
Will he get his possesions back then?
50,676 bitcoins, today valued at 5,3 billion USD.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-h...
No, generally a pardon does not eliminate any civil liability or entitle you to refunds once the assets have been transferred to Treasury. He would still have to answer Yes to having been convicted of a felony and he would still not be entitled to vote in states that do not permit felons to vote.
> Where a person has paid a monetary penalty or forfeited property, the consequences of a pardon depend in part on when it was issued. If a monetary fine or contraband cash has been transferred to the Treasury, a pardon conveys no right to a refund, nor does the person pardoned have a right to reacquire property or the equivalent in cash from a legitimate purchaser of his seized assets or from an informant who was rewarded with cash taken from the pardoned person before he was pardoned.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/presidential-pardons-sett...
This is obviously incorrect. Actually pardon means the charges filed has been voided, hence anything happening afterwards has had no merits and court decisions made are now rendered moot. For example, Roger Stone was charged and found guilty of multiple crimes and Trump pardoned him; he still brandish guns and was "proudly voting Trump" in 2024 in state of Florida. Getting pardon is literally like it never happened in the first place.
The pardon can restore certain rights in some cases, I'm not entirely familiar with the Stone shenanigans, but knowing the parties involved I can't assume that Stone was legally entitled to do what he did after the pardon, and maybe he was.
That said, the recovery of assets after transfer to Treasury is settled law. [1]
> More broadly, the Court ruled in several cases during this period that pardons entitled their recipients to recover property forfeited or seized on the basis of the underlying offenses, so long as vested third-party rights would not be affected and money had not already been paid into the Treasury (except as authorized by statute).
Was covered in Osborne v. United States, Knote v. United States, In re: Armstrong's Foundry, Cent. R.R. v. Bosworth and Jenkins v. Collard
Subsequent cases make it clear that the offense is not in fact "gone."
> ... the Court in Burdick stated that a pardon “carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."
> ... then, in Carlesi v. New York, the Court determined that a pardoned offense could still be considered “as a circumstance of aggravation” under a state habitual-offender law, reflecting that although a pardon may obviate the punishment for a federal crime, it does not erase the facts associated with the crime or preclude all collateral effects arising from those facts.
The court holds that it is not in fact as if it never happened.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution-conan/article-2/sec...
Your example doesn't seem to involve restoring property / funds due to a pardon that were already confiscated / already paid.
Is there some example of someone getting such money back?
Part of getting pardoned is admitting guilt - ask joe arpaio ...
So Fauci is guilty then? Has he admitted it?
No, because he was never found guilty of anything, or charged with anything. Pardons before a conviction are somewhat different than pardons after a conviction in that the state never established the facts. There's also a difference between blanket pardons and specific pardons.
As I referenced in a peer reply.
> “[A pardon] carries an imputation of guilt; acceptance a confession of it."
This is the referenced case.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/236/79
If they were from the commission of a crime, then no.
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It's a full pardon; there is no crime.
That's not how it works. The money can still be guilty of a crime outside of the Defendant's acquittal in civil cases like this.
source: hundreds of hours in forfeiture court
Pardon the money!
He can't. The President doesn't have civil pardon power.
A pardon results in the relief from the consequences of a crime. There being a pardon doesn't necessarily mean there was no crime.
Pardons are forgiveness. They don’t roll back the clock, although the Supreme Court ruled in 2021 that acceptance of a pardon is not an assumption of guilt.
That would arguably create some of the worst perverse incentives, as far as financial crimes go.
Any two-bit governor could team up with some criminal, and make enough money to be set up for life against a pardon. Even worse if it's a president, as they could likely get off scot-free.
Trump could literally scam everyone and everyone, step down, receive a pardon from the VP, and happy days.
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Hard to agree here. A jury of his peers convicted him of the crime.
I don’t believe that’s true. A pardon does not excuse a crime.
I am not sure of the legality around his possessions but they are long gone. Even the ones stolen by FBI officers during the course of the investigation.
I think that requires convincing evidence. Also, how is it relevant to the question?
It is easy to look up the cases against the agents. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/former-federal-agents-charged...
Both served time.
Thanks, that links to the charges.
"Two former federal agents have been charged with wire fraud, money laundering and related offenses for stealing digital currency during their investigation of the Silk Road ..."
I'm more than happy to have the discussion with you but I have no requirement to provide all of the information that is widely available in the public domain.
I’ll let you Google the pleas and sentences. Stop with the asinine recalcitrance.
Well the American Government auctioned the bitcoin, and the two FBI agents were tried and sentenced for theft. I don't need evidence.
I am curious how the American government can reimburse those pardoned.
I see those are your claims, but do you have evidence of them?
Its well known and well covered facts regarding this high status case, you even got links in a sibling comment so read them
Until now I oddly never questioned how any government could seize someone's bitcoin and how a government keeps the private keys of their crypto wallets secure.
a lot of known best practices were not followed in 2013.
Every advancement in crypto was done after the government made a move. And all subsequent moves netted the government less.
Now it takes more agencies to seize darknet markets, and most merchants and consumers get their money back because it was a multisignature transaction and the server stored nothing. Even domains have been seized back from the government.
The crypto space calls it "antifragility", as in the idea - and now history - that the asset class and infrastructure improves under pressure.
Hey may have other wallets...
with a name like DPR id have to assume its buried treasure
Was that profits or users’ deposits?
obviously not.
Wasn’t he in jail for hiring a contract killer?
I’m all for the freeing him of his crimes when it comes to his crypto anarchic philosophy. But I find it hard to pardon someone for contract killing essentially. Also I’m not an apologist for the FBIs handling of this case either.
No, that charge was dropped. IIRC, it was on shaky ground and they were just trying to throw the book at him.
The charge was dropped, but the court did hold a hearing on it when deciding on sentencing. They heard the evidence for and against and ruled by a preponderance of the evidence that he did in fact do it.
Then why would they drop the charge if they thought the evidence pointed to the fact he did it.
Separate courts. He was indicted and tried for all the non-murder stuff in a New York federal court. He was indicted separately in a Maryland federal court on a murder-for-hire charge.
The New York court convicted him, and then considered the murder-for-hire allegations when determining his sentence. They found them true by a preponderance of the evidence and and that was a factor in his sentence to life without parole. He appealed, and the Second Circuit upheld the sentence.
The prosecutors in Maryland then dropped the murder-for-hire charge because there was no point. They said this would allow them to direct their resources to other other cases where justice had not yet been served.
Ironically, he was only pardoned for drug related crimes, so he could still be charged with murder related ones if they were not dropped with prejudice (i didn't look)
This is all AFAIK, they haven't released the text broadly yet, but his lawyers/etc say he was pardoned for crimes related to drugs.
Even what people call a 'full and unconditional' pardon is usually targeted at something specific, not like "a pardon for anything you may have ever done, anywhere, anytime' which people seem to think it means sometimes.
It's more of a legal term of art to describe pardons that erase convictions, restore rights, etc.
Rather than clemency which, say, commutes your sentence but leaves your conviction intact.
The judge wrote at sentencing the murder for hire 'counted' as an element of the criminal enterprise. So if he was pardoned for his crimes that includes the murder for hire per the judgement of his case.
Even if correct, he would still be chargeable at the state level in any related state.
The only thing it would protect him against would be the federal murder for hire statute (18 USC 1958).
I doubt the pardon will be considered to cover that, but we'll have to wait to see the text.
One issue with any potential trial for murder-for-hire is that the allegation as presented in the Maryland indictment has two problematic witnesses: DEA agent Carl Force who acted as the hitman, now in prison for embezzling cryptocurrency from the Silk Road case, and Curtis Green, the would-be victim in this case, who has previously insisted that Ulbricht was innocent of plotting his murder (and was also recently imprisoned for cocaine distribution last year, although I don't think that would be too relevant). Maybe the other allegations might have more meat on the bone, but they didn't make it on to any indictment.
Murder is usually state-level jurisdiction, and the President can only pardon federal jurisdiction.
Yes, i'm aware - there are federal murder statutes, but they are mostly about murder of federal police officers, hate crime murders, etc.
However, murder for hire is also federal crime - see 18 USC 1958 and the DOJ CRM on this: https://www.justice.gov/archives/jm/criminal-resource-manual...
So depending on the pardon text and interpretation, he may or may not be chargeable with this statute still federally.
I agree this has zero effect on charging him at the state level, and most states do not have statute of limitations on these types of crimes (or they are very long)
Fascinating. It is news to me that a federal court can consider the evidence for crimes not proven beyond a reasonable doubt in a criminal sentencing. Learn something new every day.
Since he was sentenced federally, he'd be under the federal sentencing guidelines, but I imagine those are pretty harsh around the money laundering and drug trafficking (since they're tuned to provide a hammer to wield against mostly narco-enterprises). I suppose the additional preponderance of evidence gave the judge justification to push the sentence to the maximum allowed in the category?
It’s extremely common in for example diversion cases and others, where the defendant has to stipulate that they are agreeable to things being presented as in charging documents and evaluated based on preponderance by a court, not by a jury and not subject to principles of reasonable doubt.
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The Silk Road run by Ross Ulbricht did not have assassins on it, nor did it have any human trafficking on it.
I support your right to disagree with the pardon. But please don't recklessly post disinformation like that.
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That's not true. It wasn't a free for all platform.
'preponderance' is the clue, criminal is 'beyond all reasonable doubt', civil is preponderance. Ross was being charged under criminal law.
This. Evidence that isn't strong enough to criminally convict can be used for other purposes (e.g. sentencing, knowledge/intent, civil forfeiture, civil damages etc).
(see OJ Simpson paying money damages for a crime he was acquitted of)
Possibly because he was already facing a long sentence and it wasn't worth pursuing that charge.
this would be a criminal charge preponderance of the evidence wouldn't be enough to convict
Sentencing phase
Wonder if he can be charged with that now? Was there anything in the pardon related to this? AFAIK there is no time limit on bringing charges related to murder?
According to Wikipedia[1], he was convicted of charges related to hacking, narcotics, money laundering, and more.
But during the trial, evidence was presented that he made murder-for-hire payments, the court found that he did by a preponderance of evidence, and the court took this into account when sentencing him.
So, he wasn't convicted of it, but it is part of the reason he was sent to jail for a very long time.
---
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
Some info from a previous thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33045520
I haven't reviewed the info for a while but it was pretty clearly entrapment as I recall.
Didn't Ulbricht actually run the Silk Road? Did someone from the FBI persuade Ulbricht to do it?
I think they're talking about just the murder-for-hire. It may have just been undercover agents the whole time and no murders actually occurred.
Yes the FBI had root or admin access to the Silk Road system and could have very easily changed or otherwise affected logs/record IDs that the technical case rested on. Two of the FBI agents on the case were later punished for corruption on the case.
He was in jail for running a darknet drug marketplace. Hiring a contract killer was a crime he was neither charged with nor convicted of.
The judge factored it into the sentencing, though. He likely did actually try to hire a contract killer - twice. In both cases he sincerely believed the murders were successfully committed, and he sent a lot of money to the assassins after being sent (doctored) "proof" of their killings.
I think it's fair to say judges shouldn't factor non-charged allegations into sentencing, but I think he's at least morally culpable, here, and should at the very least be expected to now show public contrition for repeatedly trying to murder people drug kingpin-style.
I doubt he will ever admit it, but now that he's free I still would like it. I don't care about people enabling drug sales but I do care about people with a God complex who feel entitled to end the lives of those they oppose (in one case because he thought someone stole from him, and another because he thought they would dox him).
A judge and system who would give him 2 life sentences for this should not be trusted when he also factored in things which he wasn't charged and convicted of.
There are only mandatory minimums -- not mandatory maximums in sentencing.
It is common that several outcomes are subject - with the defendants specific agreement - to be evaluated by a court on preponderance, not a jury. This was not judicial malpractice.
I am sorry but there's no way giving him more than 2 life sentences has any justification whatsoever. Even the people who actually sold drugs on his site got out in 2 years. And the person who hired someone for hitman also only got 6 years. This is exactly the type of case where pardon makes 100% sense.
Ps. El Chapo got shorter sentence than Ross.
Ulbricht was indicted in federal court in Maryland on a single murder-for-hire charge.
The case was dropped after NY conviction since he was sentencing to life, so there was little point in continuing.
Clearly that was a mistake if a lack of an attempted murder conviction helped him get a pardon.
What would give you a hint that attempted murder conviction would prevent his pardon? Trump pardoned over a thousand attempted murdered already this week.
So does this mean the war on drugs is finally over and we're going to stop mass incarceration for non-violent drug offenses? If so, that _would_ be good news.
I wonder if Assange will get the pardon he’s campaigning for:
https://www.action.assangecampaign.org.au/
Well, I think that justice has been served. The feds' prosecution of Ulbricht was the epitome of throwing the book at someone to make an example, when the government's case was pretty flawed, in my opinion. 10 years is enough time to pay the debt of running the silk road.
I am glad that Ulbricht has been pardoned and I feel like a small iota of justice has been returned to the world with this action.
wasn't there evidence of hiring a hitman to commit a murder in furtherance of the Silk Road? that's not part of "the debt of running the silk road"
Keep in mind that he spent 11 years locked up.
He's not getting off lightly!
I'm just shocked it was a full pardon instead of a commutation or something. I don't think the US is gaining a ton from keeping him locked up but he still did run an organization he knew was used for selling drugs and other illegal things and a full pardon for that seems weird. I feel like I mainly heard people talking about commuting his sentence
Is there some reason he should not be allowed to vote, own a firearm, or receive federal benefits?
Why should he be treated differently then people who committed similar crimes?
He was convicted and the party of law and order typically views these punitive post release measures to be part of the punishment.
Yes. He was convicted of several crimes.
What do you mean "lightly?" He ran an illegal drug market and tried to assassinate a competitor. We gave him the punishment that society has determined one should receive for this. Revoking his punishment is "light."
Hence why, if DPR was going to get off somehow, a sentence commutation would have been better rather than an unconditional pardon. The latter implies he did absolutely nothing wrong, which hilariously runs counter to Trump's supposed tough on drugs and crime shtick he has.
The judge issued the punishment at their sole discretion. The legislature sets the laws often without any input from the constituency.
Meanwhile a sizable campaign has materialized around this case and many people do feel he has done enough time and should be free without any restrictions
It's still not enough.
Genuine question: Of all the people to pardon, why him?
because it was a promise he made to the libertarian camp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8ofi6U0eWE
The only underlying constant with Trump that I can tell is that he personally has to profit from whatever he commits to. Anything else that sounds like a selfless principle from Trump sort of just comes and goes with Trump and you never hear about it again. Presumably Ross & Friends made the appropriate promise.
Why now, and not 4 years from now when Trump is about to leave office?
How do republicans in Idaho (who don't even have medical marijuana on the books), defend Trump pardoning someone convicted of drug trafficking?
That argument isn't contrary to the GP comment: It's very possible Trump is offered a benefit now that he wasn't offered in 2020.
You could ask the same of any deal: Why not instead of years ago? Because the deal wasn't available years ago.
He promised the Libertarians he would and he's holding true to his word. Say what you will but at least he's fulfilling his campaign promises.
What about his campaign promise for law and order?
Trump's Law, not you know, the people's law.
He promised international canvassers that we'd have peace in Ukraine on his first day in office. Whatever he arranged with druggie libertarians is chopped liver from a policy perspective. On the international stage it's the dictionary definition of a nothingburger.
Why not now?
Trump isn't up for re-election. It's his act alone.
He promised in the election to pardon other criminals and it didn't hurt him.
> isn't up for re-election
I wouldn't bet on that. He envies the czar and there may be an attempt to neutralize the 22A in the next three years.
Well even if he bet on going that route he wouldn't have to be "elected", and my last line applies none the less, it didn't hurt him during an actual election.
Yes. Except, "neutralize?" I don't know why the federal government would bother with the pretense of a 22nd Amendment when they demonstrably do not care in the slightest about the 14th or most of the Bill of Rights.
The Trump admin was already selling pardons at the end of their last term, why wouldn't they continue doing so?
You believe there are "selfless politicians" operating in America right now?
I believe there's a wide range of choices and behaviors and any poor choice is not equivalent to all poor choices.
Ah, so when challenged, you immediately acknowledge there is a spectrum and not a black and white picture. That makes for a poor thread.
I don't know what you mean.
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According to Trump, he is doing this to get libertarian support.
Trump promised to do this at the Libertarian Party convention. This case is very important to the libertarian crowd. He is a martyr for many of their ideals. After Trump was so well received at the convention the LP, recently taken over by the right faction of the party, put forth a candidate specifically chosen to not get votes so that members would vote for Trump. Trump seems to be a man of his word.
Voters wanted a better economy first, not pardons for drug traffickers and violent offenders.
This could have waited until after the midterms.
It seems like the voters that were being referred to value restoring rights. How can something immediately achievable be balanced with "the economy", a thing so broad and deeply systemic?
The people in Pennsylvania who elected him, didn't want this.
It isn't clear from your original statement that those voters aren't from Pennsylvania. I interpret your statement as discounting the weight of their vote on actions they care about. There are many perspectives, and the values of those who did vote in that direction are being addressed in some way.
A lot of republicans want a "shining city upon the hill". Drug free, sin free, tough penalties on crime.
A lot of republicans want a working economy. High paying jobs, low taxes.
A lot of republicans believe in a free market economy. Freedom to innovate, freedom to hire and fire.
And then we have this.
>This could have waited until after the midterms.
He promised to pardon the rioters during the election and it didn't hurt him. I think he decided it wouldn't hurt him (and Trump cares bout that first) and if he thought about the midterms ... maybe won't hurt then either.
Congress isn't directly involved in any of this anyway.
Congress is involved. They have to prove they can govern. It's hard to be the party of "law and order" if you need only to kiss the ring for your release.
Eh, lowering the price of eggs is not as easy so
It was one signature? Doesn't seem like a big time sink. Many of these early actions were prepared prior to inauguration.
In war, you point your biggest gun at the enemy. You don't shoot yourself in the foot.
This is 100% true. I am posting from an anon account (obviously), but I was heavily involved in this. I worked with members of the party to push part of their strategy - mainly the coalition with trump and an effort to get vivek and elon involved. We spoke about this in 2023. I didn't care about Ross, had my own motivations, but I wrote some of their playback with AI and it worked. I didn't know about certain things (like the losing candidate for example). I wrote strategy that seems to have made its way all the way to Trump's team.
Without proof this is just a bedtime story.
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> Trump seems to be a man of his word.
when there's political gain, sure
You may not like Trump but I remember he fulfilled or attempted to fulfill a lot of his campaign promises back in 2016 as well. Biden, the career politician, talked a lot about many things before election and then forgot about them after he was elected. For example, universal health care. Obama promised to enshrine a woman's right to abortion as law, and then when he had the House and Senate after he was elected, he said "it's not a priority for me." Then we lost Roe V Wade.
>or attempted
That's a really low bar with that bit added. "I didn't say it would be easy" was his line about his token tariffs the first term ... then he never tried again for the rest of that term.
He also lies all the time about many things. People are are sometimes honest are called 'liars'.
> when he had the House and Senate after he was elected, he said "it's not a priority for me."
How could he get it through the Senate without a filibuster-proof majority?
Trump did just about what every president does - makes promises and then does some of them, tries to some others (successful unless thwarted by Congress), and ignores others.
Obama didn't have the votes in the Senate (to overcome the filibuster, also not as many Dems congressmen supported it as you might think). Neither did Clinton (people thought it would happen then)
I'm privately predicting the senate will remove the filibuster this term.
> universal health care
that was Obama - Biden never promised that
Biden delivered on the IRA and climate change bill.
Trump promised to "drain the swamp" and filled it instead. I can't think of any major campaign promise that he fulfilled - he didn't even build the wall (probably his main promise).
When did Biden talk about universal healthcare?
Let's go through Trump's campaign promises: Infrastructure, Border wall, increased US manufacturing, repealing ACA, "drain the swamp". He achieved zero of those.
Biden in contrast followed up on his campaign promises: Infrastructure, increased US manufacturing, expanding ACA plus lowering costs. Among others.
>Trump seems to be a man of his word.
One of the big reasons I voted for him. He actually keeps the promises he made as far reality will allow.
What's really stupid is that keeping promises made isn't the norm for politicians, of all kinds.
Presumably musk pushed for it. Not sure who else in/near the administration would even have him on their radar
Whether or not he was the sole or even primary reason, he knew about it beforehand as seen by his tweet last night saying it was coming soon. Love him or hate him, it's a bit concerning that he has that level of access IMO.
The tweet:
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1881524296386031892
It’s been a campaign of Mike Cernovich’s for a long time.
And Trump cares what Mike Cernovich thinks because.... ?
Take your best guess, I believe in you
Musk is definitely a fan recreationally chemistry
The clips of him rolling his eyes and head around in boredom at the inauguration definitely looked like he was suffering from some kind of withdrawal symptoms.
Trump promised it when he attended the libertarian convention
What do you mean? Trump just pardoned or commuted pretty much all of the J6 crowd. One guy convicted of crimes that don't require proving violence beyond a reasonable doubt is pretty tame in comparison. He is one of thousands.
Trump know the Jan 6 rioters and supported them. Pardoning is important to justify his claim that nobody did anything wrong as that the election was "stolen by the Dems".
I can't imagine he would have known Ross Ulbricht's case.
What? All crimes were proved beyond a reasonable doubt according to a jury of our peers. (Or they plead guilty).
The violent element was not proven for Ross. The judge decided on preponderance of evidence he hired the hit man, and sentenced him as if he did.
Row was convicted of crimes by a jury of his peers though.
There are no mandatory maximums in sentencing guidelines. Just mandatory minimums.
I'm indifferent to him being pardoned. But people saying he didn't deserve any punishment seems weird to me.
To me too. But life without parole seemed weird as well.
That's why commutation is a thing. The courts have ruled this as within the pardon powers. His sentence could be changed to reflect something much more aligned with other convictions for the same crimes.
Is SBF next in line for a pardon?
These discussions are very interesting. So many red flags from Trump (this pardon, ending birthright citizenship...), and people try to justify these things. America is unfortunately heading for a very dark time. Politics aside, I am rather uncomfortable with the power the president possesses. We were always mindful that there are systems of checks and balances. However, given the current court overturned a precedent (Roe), I am unsure what the future holds. This pardon makes me very uneasy.
I had no idea this was a campaign promise. Why? I don’t understand.
Crypto currency proponents benefit from the existence of dark net marketplaces because they are some of the main places for the non-speculative use of crypto currencies. I think Ross and his pardon represent a sort-of metaphor in crypto-currency proponents' eyes for the government's toleration of these dark net crypto marketplaces.
Wouldn't be surprised if he is sitting on a billion dollars of hidden crypto somewhere.
It would have to be bitcoin, which isn't very hidden
If you meant Trump, it's not hidden, they released a Trump meme coin and the rug pull was after the inauguration timed with the release of the Melania meme coin, though entirely speculatively makes more sense for the investors to be foreign governments buying influence less obviously than the last Trump administration like Saudi Arabia hiring his son in law.
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"Wouldn't be surprised if " is speculation. Nobody should be surprised if a pirate has buried treasure.
* Ulbricht's conviction became a cause célèbre in American libertarian circles.
* In May 2024, candidate Donald Trump said that if re-elected President, he would commute Ulbricht's sentence on his first day in office
~ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Ulbricht
I doubt Trump cares about Ulbricht as much as he cares (for whatever reason) about the continued support of various American libertarians (Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and various crypto elites).
While he has made many promises this is significant for being one that he has kept.
RFK Jr is definitely not a libertarian (even compared to someone mainstream like Gary Johnson or Jared Polis), he supports strong state intervention in many areas of the economy and society
Trump went around to a huge number of niche communities and promised to fix their core concerns in exchange for their support. The crypto and libertarian communities are obsessed with freeing Ulbricht. It was honestly a brilliant strategy, and probably the reason he won. Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.
Unfortunately you could level the same type of name calling towards Democrats. It's now public record they colluded with all the major media outlets, coerced big tech to censor and debank opponents, imprisoned whistleblowers, violated bodily autonomy with unconstitutional mandates, weaponized the courts to conduct lawfare, and now issued an unprecedented number of pre-emptive pardons for unspecified crimes committed by Fauci, Hunter Biden, et al.
I remember when the Democrats were the anti-war party, but Biden was escalating the Ukraine war in the final days of his presidency, and celebrated Dick Cheney's endorsement of Kamala Harris. Crazy how things have changed so much. The left unanimously viewed Bush and Cheney as obviously psychopathic war criminals, and now almost all the Neocons have jumped over to the Democrats. The left used to be extremely skeptical of globalization as evident by the Seattle WTO Protests, mass immigration as evident by Bernie Sanders' comments on its effect on workers' wages, and Big Pharma's perverse incentives to keep people sick and regularly consuming drugs. Yet the media has utterly psyop'd the progressives... it's kinda disturbing.
Authoritarianism is also popular with the democrats right now, but I don’t see how anything I said is name calling: I used terms with a specific meaning appropriate for the context- the only reason they have a negative connotation is because of what they actually mean. Do you know of other terms with the same meaning and more neutral connotations?
> Ironic that an authoritarian fascist was able to get elected by enlisting the help of anti-authoritarian communities with a single issue promise.
Ironic? It's the oldest trick in the book bro
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In 2016 John McAffee tried to run for president as a libertarian candidate, RIP.
He was a drug addicted pedophile, making him a perfect fit for the party.
Unfortunately my previous comment was flagged, presumably by pedophiles or their supporters.
You would think that having so many prominent child rapists in the government would give them pause, but I guess that's what they want.
What is the age of consent for whales?
Lol, that tweet I remember!
I know he was a drug addict, but a pedophile? I never heard about that, can you tell me more or are you just being weird?
> Unfortunately my previous comment was flagged, presumably by pedophiles or their supporters.
Or, you know... people who think it's a dick move to call an entire political movement pedophiles without a shred of evidence.
It's a trite thing to say, but when it comes to Trump it fits the pattern of inside dealing ... I'm guessing he personally will profit from this somehow / someone promised a donation / money.
To the libertarians.
I am active in libertarian circles and Ulbricht was a cause celebre. The 2024 election was a game of inches, and many libertarians I know voted Trump purely on this issue. It is possible this was a key way Trump eked out a victory.
He did not "eke out a victory". He swept _all seven_ battleground states and won the popular vote by almost 2.3 million votes.
It was a decisive electoral vote victory, but 2.3 million votes difference works out as 49.8% of the popular vote to 48.3% of the popular vote.
I believe around 230,000 votes across Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin would have made the difference.
I think that counts as eking, personally.
+1 Trumpcoin has been added to your account.
Libertarians are very hard to take seriously because of shit like this. Nothing about Donald Trump is Libertarian.
They just won something they cared about: perhaps you should be taking them even more seriously than you did.
And even if you are not a fan of a political group, you are the one being judgemental here on a factor that is very unlikely to be universal within the group.
Treating anyone according to political labels is divisive.
Biden could have taken the wind out of Trump's sails by commuting Ulbricht's sentence when he was in office. If you don't think a group's interests are worth listening to, don't be surprised when that group votes for someone who does.
Very little about the Libertarian party is libertarian. Yet another party carrying water for authoritarianism, with the difference being that the implementation is through corporations.
Libertarians are a self selecting bunch. Very few were raised into this philosophy. You can appreciate that my self identification as a libertarian is a careful, reasoned decision and not one that was flippantly made. It is the philosophy that is the most accurate and truthful to me.
Read my comment again. I self-identify as a libertarian as I see individual freedom as paramount. But I kept going with the analysis to realize that the Libertarian Party does very little to represent that ideal.
My apologies, I thought you were accusing libertarians of authoritarianism (the irony!).
I find the Mises Caucus at least useful in pushing to do more than simply be an affinity group for people pretending to play politics. I find partying with LP officials to be very hilarious, what a group of odd balls. But the party itself has no hope of electoral victory, which is why everyone should vote Republican in the current iteration of two-party politics from the libertarian lens.
My point is that even if there were an electoral victory, the Libertarian Party would not bring individual freedom. They are operating from an assertion that starting with a list of moral axioms, every implication will be morally right by construction. By itself this is terribly mistaken (see Godel), but it goes askew even sooner when a few poor axioms are allowed to remain through "pragmatism", regulatory capture, etc.
As for the current political environment, I'd say that bureaucratic authoritarianism is at least the devil we know and can be routed around by individuals, whereas autocratic authoritarianism is at best a wildcard that stands to destroy a good chunk of the laws that have actually been restraining naked power.
yeah but freeing ross was a key campaign promise made by trump to sway libertarian voters
However both Libertarians and Trump are transactional.
I don't judge anyone too hard when they're willing to bend a bit to get someone out of jail after the key has been thrown away. I didn't vote Trump but I will admit the possibility of Ross being released made me pause when I marked my ballot, even his mom's image flashed in my mind and I felt guilty for not helping.
because the crypto bros love him
who else will buy new treasury DOGE coins?
This is wonderful. I've never argued that Ross shouldn't have served time but it's always been clear his prosecution and sentencing were excessive and unjust. The prosecutors asked for a 20 year sentence, which seemed disproportionate given the sentencing guidelines for a first-time offender and the non-violent charges he was convicted of. But the judge sentenced Ross to TWO life sentences plus 40 years. There's no doubt Ross made a series of unwise and reckless decisions but serving over ten years of hard time in a FedMax prison is more than enough given the charges and his history.
It's just unfortunate that Trump, and now, excessive pardons are politically polarized, which could cloud the fact that justice was done today. I don't credit Trump in any way for doing "the right thing" or even having a principled position regarding Ross' case. Clearly, others with influence on Trump convinced him to sign it. It doesn't matter how it happened. Biden should have already done it.
Without any snark, why? What's the motivation?
There's probably still some SR btc they wanted the keys to.
Two life sentences was a bit harsh. 11 years seems about right to me.
I suspect the idea beyond "Free Ross" in some circles was that his conviction wasn't so much about drug dealing, but rather it was more a political prosecution for popularizing real uses of cryptocurrencies.
Possibly a deal with the Libertarian Party, which chose not to run their candidate in several states to help Trump: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY
It was one of the promises he made at a Bitcoin conference he attended a few months ago. It has been a popular issue in crypto circles
Just feels all around
Absolute no brainer, he should be celebrated. Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform. Of course if we had less draconian drug policy, it wouldn't be necessary but here we are.
> Countless lives were saved via the harm reduction effect of a peer reviewed, reputation based platform.
The basic immorality/pointlessness of the war on drugs aside, I don't know how you can assert this: it's not like there's a chain of provenance, and there's no particular guarantee that whatever grade of pure drugs was sold on Silk Road is the same purity that ended up in peoples' bodies.
My understanding of the Silk Road case is that, at its peak, it was servicing a significant portion of the international drug market. The dimensions of that market include adulteration; Silk Road almost certainly didn't change that.
The overwhelming majority of listings on the site were for personal use quantities.
The overwhelming majority of drug sales are for personal use. That doesn't mean that large sales weren't made, or that those weren't in fact a significant portion of the site's revenue.
Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren't less safe than street drugs. Most of them were likely "fell off the truck" samples from the original manufacturers being sold by people with an in on the supply, but no otherwise-easy access to an out on the demand.
Their observation was that reputation mattered on SR a lot and a well-kept reputation was valuable at scale in a way that it isn't for being a street-corner pusher looking to stretch your buck by cutting your supply with adulterants. The smart play was to provide a high-quality product at a reasonable price (the latter being the easiest part since they were bypassing the obscene markup of official channels).
> Anecdotally, Planet Money looked into this years ago and their reporting was that as far as they could tell, drugs on Silk Road weren't less safe than street drugs.
Yeah, I'm not saying they're less safe. In fact, on average, I'm willing to bet that the drugs sold on Silk Road were much safer than their street equivalents.
My point was about large sales: Silk Road moved not just personal drug sales, but also industrial quantities of drugs that were almost certainly re-sold. Those latter sales are impossible to track and (by volume) almost certainly represent the majority of "doses" sold through SR. Given that, I doubt the OP's assertion that SR itself represents a particularly effective form of harm reduction.
Or as another framing: SR gave tech dorks a way to buy cheap, clean drugs. But those aren't the people who really need harm reduction techniques; the ones who do are still buying adulterated drugs, which are derived from the cheap, clean drugs on SR.
You shouldn't assume that all "street transfers" of drugs are peaceful or have a positive outcome for those involved. Harm reduction comes in many forms.
I'm pretty sure my comment says the exact opposite. I'm saying that SR was a massive operation that fueled street traffic, which in turn lacked any of the harm reduction virtues that SR is being assigned.
No no no, he is right. Its safe because if you receive a bad batch of drugs you can leave a negative review on the page of the drug cartel that has your name and address, no chance of that having any repercussions for you at all.
I haven't seen anything to suggest that anyone was harmed for leaving a bad review.
Do you know many people who'd be willing to risk their life to give the Sinaloa cartel a bad yelp review?
Sinaola cartel sells lsd, dmt and mushrooms in personal quantities?
As far as I remember, those weren't the only drugs sold there, nor was there any rule enforced regarding "personal quantities".
Not that it matters, as it was an illustrative example.
even if its not perfect for every situation it was a lot better then what existed.
negative reviews aren't the only review, absence of positive reviews is a signal, along with a lot of other positive reviews. later markets at least had reviews outside the markets too
if you are in the bulk and resale drug market you probably aren't getting package with your name on it to your home.
Yup. Drugs and the accompanying business disputes (there's a reason street dealers are armed or have armed people around) that would be normal in any other industry are sooo many people's (who would other wise not be violent criminals) entry point to violence. Letting parties remain at arms length yet transact successfully is such a huge step forward compared the prior status quo. Anything that gets buyers and sellers (either at the retail or distribution level) in illegal industries farther from each other is a win as far as I care.
Does trump also support needle exchanges and safe consumption sites?
As well as online drug marketplaces? Or would running one without legal trouble require a campaign-contribution booster pack?
What a beautiful political anschluss between people who just want to ban contraceptives and abortifacients, and people who just want to shoot up heroin. Not sure how you square that circle[1], but it's 2025, and here we are.
It's very telling about libertarian priorities when a cryptobro running an online drug marketplace who tried to hire a hitman gets amnesty, while hundreds of thousands of people who have been convicted of drug possession[1] do not. Likewise, somehow reproductive rights are just not a libertarian issue, either. It's not a party of freedom, it's a party of freedom for wealthy men.
[1] Biden gave a blanket pardon for people convicted of marijuana posession, but that's far less important for libertarians than Ulbricht.
He tried to hire multiple hitmen.
There is absolutely no way harm reduction was the reason Trump pardoned him.
It's absolutely one of the reasons why it was politically beneficial for him to enact the pardon.
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How are cartels terrorist organizations but online drug markets are not illegal ?
Good - edit - from what I recall he was some kid in a library running a website that got out of hand - he was an idealist who reminded me of Aaron. But I don’t know much more than that. Just my 2 cents.
Not going to try and sway you here but to learn more, read or listen to "American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road".
Truly fascinating story and good story telling.
I would find this easier to celebrate if it was a commutation and not a pardon, or if it was a pardon that went hand in hand with a change in the laws he broke.
> a pardon that went hand in hand with a change in the laws he broke
Trump doesn't have the power to unilaterally change laws (fortunately!)
Because their isn't a change in law doesn't mean the convictions were secure and bound by law before.
https://archive.today/FNvkp
In one message, Ulbricht informed ELLINGSON that “[the murder target] is a liability and I wouldn't mind if he was executed.” In another message, Ulbricht stated: “[the murder target] is causing me problems . . . I would like to put a bounty on his head if it’s not too much trouble for you. What would be an adequate amount to motivate you to find him?” ELLINGSON responded, “[the p]rice for clean is 300k+ USD,” and the “[p]rice for non-clean is 150-200k USD depending on how you want it done.” ELLINGSON further explained, in part, that “[t]hese prices pay for 2 professional hitters including their travel expenses and work they put in.”
Ulbricht later sent ELLINGSON $150,000 worth of Bitcoin to pay for the purported murder. ELLINGSON and Ulbricht agreed on a code to be included with a photograph to prove that the murder had been carried out. In April 2013, ELLINGSON and Ulbricht exchanged messages reflecting that ELLINGSON had sent Ulbricht photographic proof of the murder. A thumbnail of a deleted photograph purporting to depict a man lying on a floor in a pool of blood with tape over his mouth was recovered from Ulbricht’s laptop after his arrest. A piece of paper with the agreed-upon code written on it is shown in the photograph next to the head of the purportedly dead individual.
Later in April 2013, ELLINGSON and Ulbricht exchanged additional messages regarding a plot to kill four additional people in Canada. Ulbricht sent ELLINGSON an additional $500,000 worth of Bitcoin for the murders. ELLINGSON claimed to Ulbricht in online messages that the murders had in fact been committed.
That is table stakes for Trump
From wikipedia:
> "full and unconditional pardon for any crimes related to drugs".
Does "any crimes related to drugs" include the murder for hire allegations? Does this mean new charges related to that could be brought against him?
Seems like it.
1.
Did Donald Trump call white supremacists “very fine people” re Charlottesville?
Answer that question and I suspect I know how you think you feel.
2.
This pardon is good.
3.
I don’t think people realize the true impact of the lawfare and assassination attempts on Trump and many of his supporters. Most thought we have couldn’t have a more cynical view of establishment after Russiagate, but oh how we were wrong. Read Trump’s post on this pardon. There is a personal undercurrent.
4.
Re why not first term pardon, Trump was utterly isolated in 2020 and it was not a good time to say the least. The coalition be has now formed is so beyond 2016, heck even anything in recent memory, that I think we will be seeing many more things just like this. The Golden Age of Common Sense.
those thinking this is a criminal who shouldn’t be released i recommend reading this thread https://x.com/tayvano_/status/1641931312385888256
When Snowden, is my question. RFK put a lot of words into "if I am in charge that'll be my first thing". Yeah, he's not the president but he's also not nobody anymore.
private intelligence still has a few ways to go before whistleblowers don't have all their rights stripped by the state
NGL it would be pretty funny if Snowden gets to return to the west but we hadn't actually fixed any of the stuff he brought forward in the meantime. Not sure what I would do in his shoes... I guess a pardon is pretty impossible for future presidents to get around, TBF
The courage a lot of these whistleblowers have shown is admirable. How the American public outrages, though: Facebook has targeted ads. How they don't outrage: their government is illegally tracking their own citizens' movements and communications including overseas.
Not going to say Ulbricht is a hero like some of the others, but he trail blazed like none before him! And he deserves his freedom years ago.
I'd be worried about the Russians putting him in jail if the US pardoned him.
I don't think Putin would want to taint his relationship with Trump on his first week on the White House.
That doesn't mean that he would want to be seen to be a pushover https://thehill.com/policy/international/5098063-donald-trum...
For someone that likes to take top secret documents and share them with unauthorized people, Snowden sounds perfect for this guy to pardon
This thread is a great lesson in "Politics is a mind virus"
I recommend you read the HN thread when Ulbricht was sentenced [0] first, then come here and read all the "Honest, genuine question, why?"s
Then start practicing not letting politics influence your thought process
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9626985
Or it could be different people commenting than on that original thread? And people might have changed their minds? HN is not a monolith. Humans are not static. You don't need to blame it on "politics being a mind virus".
But “mind virus“ is such a cool phrase, and it implies that people who disagree with you are not just wrong, but diseased. Great bit of rhetoric.
I don't know. I personally know people that lost their minds because of an election. Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level.
Yet some of these people have rearranged their entire lives around a singular politician. Ended relationships, moved, started therapy or medication.
It happens on both sides and its pretty sad.
What else would you call that?
>Completely well off people, whose lives are not affected at all by national politics, apart from slight changes in tax rates. They live in a state and city that shares their politics. They're isolated from everything on the national level...
>What else would you call that?
This is one of those comments that accidentally reveals more than intended because I would call that "empathy". You are revealing that the only reason you think people should be concerned about politics is when it directly effects them. Some people actually genuinely care about other people and seeing someone elected who has promised to hurt people is a disturbing and troubling turn of events even if they themselves are likely to be safe.
So you’re saying people are making a rational estimation of the various harms caused to their fellowmen, determining that political actions in Washington are the primary component, and feeling bad about the harm?
I don’t buy it. Citing empathy is moral language to justify bad actions.
>So you’re saying people are making a rational estimation of the various harms caused to their fellowmen, determining that political actions in Washington are the primary component, and feeling bad about the harm?
Trump released an executive order yesterday that said some of my friends are no longer considered citizens of this country. Yes, sometimes it is incredibly obvious when Washington is to blame for people's suffering.
Your friends were born 29 days in the future?
See Section 2b of https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/01/prot...
> Some people actually genuinely care about other people and seeing someone elected who has promised to hurt people is a disturbing and troubling turn of events even if they themselves are likely to be safe.
Ya but, it's all a bit silly isn't it? Realistically those people wouldn't be doing any of that unless they were addicted to media and perhaps by consequence emotionally volatile. If I chose not to be chronically keeping up with stuff on a moment to moment basis that only has vague intangible impacts on my life or those around me, specifically online, does that make me less empathetic or less tolerant of having all my time, energy, and attention stolen from me? That's not always the case, but it often is, and if it's actually relevant, you're opting into poor mental health despite having zero control over anything even if you care, so you might as well not be so tuned in; which part is the good part again?
It's a bit fatalistic perhaps, but I feel like the greatest trick social media (and Trump) ever pulled was convincing us we'd be pariahs if we opted out. If not for chronically keeping up with nearly literally every word the new batch of chronies has to say, they might not be saying it.
>If I chose not to be chronically keeping up with stuff on a moment to moment basis that only has vague intangible impacts on my life or those around me, specifically online, does that make me less empathetic or less tolerant of having all my time, energy, and attention stolen from me?
Some people view empathy as an active ability to "put yourself in someone else's shoes". Other people view it as a passive feeling along the lines of "it hurts to see other people hurt". If you can just stop being empathic by not thinking about it, you are in the first group. Some of us are in the second group and can't just decide to ignore it.
I think you should manage your health and safety first and those closest to you.
You're not helping by inflicting harm on yourself and those around you. If you want to canvas for the other side, donate, volunteer, great. But these people are obsessed and inflict a lot of damage on themselves for no good purpose.
Most people empathize to those that are infected with a virus. It's often out of their control. You can only offer them help and suggest they touch grass once in a while. But you shouldn't feed into their self delusions that self harm and obsession with things out of their control is healthy and a good way to live their life
The empathy you are showing in this comment would feel a lot more genuine if you didn't reveal with your prior comment how little empathy plays into your overall worldview. I'm personally fine, you don't have to waste your time telling me how to live a better life. I was just trying to explain to you what you were seemingly misunderstanding about your fellow humans.
Belief.
Belief short circuits reason.
It’s religious conflict. Nobody cares really about differences in tax rates. But differences in foundational beliefs about the world and humanity will do that.
Integrity?
Talk like this is never apolitical. No political change can occur without discussion first and therefore preemptively dismissing political discussion is inherently an endorsement of the current power structures.
There is no way to actually discuss this specific story without discussing politics. A president pardoning someone is an inherently political act and that is only emphasized when it was done on his first day in office and with a statement that includes lines like "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." That is all part of the story of what happened here and it involves politics whether you like it or not.
i prefer 'mind-killer', myself.
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/9weLK2AJ9JEt2Tt8f/politics-i...
People generally do not come up with absurd beliefs all on their own, those do spread like a virus and as a consequence of all that social contagion, they do not seem all that absurd anymore to the person who contracts them.
Yes let's use word that need massive essays to explain what one person believes they mean... Like "woke". And not just stick to words we know the meaning of. That surely aid the discussion. /s
Exactly. If anything, the one thing that’s guaranteed in these types of threads is that someone will make this same tired argument of “aha, but HN back then said differently” as if it’s some kind of gotcha. I used to always look, and not only was it never the same people but the threads are largely more balanced than the original poster let on. It’s like the contrarian dynamic, which dang has to explain over and over and over and over and over again.
https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
This is often a bit of a cop-out.
Any time a criminal is caught, people want them to do hard time, but people believe we're too hard on crime if you don't use examples. People think the government should spend less, but are far less likely too agree to any specific cut. People thought Musk was a genius until they realised he is also a jerk.
And while it's sometimes different people, it's suspiciously reliably consistent in what you see said and upvoted.
Based on the sheer number of posts that have misrepresented the charges or misunderstood why he was actually in prison, it appears to partially be a lack of knowledge on the case, likely due to time hazing some of the memories. Of course someone will change their mind, and some may have their view influenced by who happens to support him.
"Politics" is a dismissive word for crypto's evolution over the last decade. North Korea ransoming our hospitals, industrial scale gambling and scam enablement, wealthy kingpins buying self-serving policy. Crypto grew up. So did our opinions.
That doesn't change what Ross Ulbricht did, but we can now see him as continuous with a great evil that we couldn't see at the time. With more information, our opinions changed, and they were right to change.
The main thing I notice is that back then we were writing paragraphs.
Wow. I thought you were being glib, but the average comment length is noticeably higher in the linked discussion. While length isn’t necessarily a valid proxy for meaningful conversation, this was definitely an eye-opening contrast to the current thread.
The value of the <EOS> token has gone up since then.
I mostly stopped typing in paragraphs because I use a smart phone for most of my internetting. It's a lot easier to write your thoughts on a keyboard
Using a touchscreen halves my IQ.
(I'm challenged enough to start with.)
Well, that thread is almost a decade old. HN a decade ago was a very different vibe than today.
You are insinuating one thing, but perhaps it is also possible reason is that the same people with those old views of the crimes have grown and their views changed. I know mine certainly have gone that way. I’d have to imagine other users have grown with me.
I don't see anything special about that thread. There are in fact more people there who believe the contract killing allegations than now.
Nah social media is just about engagement. People who are happy with the article don’t bother to comment. Those who are outraged comment. It’s just two different groups of people commenting
At the time of sentencing, did we already know that the murder for hire plots were created by corrupt Secret Service and DEA agents on trial next door? and all of that was withheld from the defense and the jury?
because that's where the story really jumps the shark. I'm all for some accountability - such as the 12 years in prison already - but that particular case should have been dropped for several reasons, I've seen cases dropped for way less.
It’s different people commenting on each post. There’s no “mind virus”.
Man, that shit is so old. Even if you're right, which I don't think you are, you are adding nothing to the conversation but cynicism.
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your victim complex is causing that feeling
I’m confused as Trump said he wanted to be tough on crime and drugs and “kill drug dealers”, but he just pardoned one of the worlds largest drug dealers.
He was never a drug dealer, he provided a platform that was used to sell drugs. The pardon was a surprise, however his sentence was unfairly strict and he was clearly made an example out of that hasn't happened to any other platform provider.
Just as an example, there have been investigations in to the use of Snapchat as a method for drug dealers and gangs of drug dealers to access kids to sell them drugs However there has been absolutely zero discussion in the public domain even about shutting it down or requiring new laws to stop this, let alone considering charging the owners.
Hmm, but you have to be squinting pretty hard to see an equivalence between Snapchat and silk road
Even if you compare like for like, SR Vs SR2, the responses, charges, and sentences still aren't the same.
There is a huge difference between a communication platform that some users abuse for illegal purposes, and a platform whose primary purpose is a marketplace for illegal goods.
Actually the marketplace was just a marketplace, it then was primarily used for illegal goods. It hasn't really ever been proven that it was setup as a marketplace for illegal goods.
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Are you really confused? Did you believe him? He commits many crimes himself and so do his associates.
I suppose it could be made consistent if we posit the existence of another hidden rule. For example, the skin-color or political-connectedness of the accused.
I think you need much more than "feels" to make claims like that, especially as they are directly contrary to HN guidelines, but also because making baseless claims, especially about other commenters, is a meaningless, inflammatory response.
So far you don't know what you are talking about and are making things up. If you do know what you're talking about and aren't making it up, please share your evidence and reasoning.
I mean daily we have responses and posts based on feels, but anyway I would state mine is based on fact.
Firstly, The sentence for running the exact same website, was 5 years.
https://www.vice.com/en/article/silk-road-2-founder-dread-pi...
The two life sentences and 35 years extra that were given to Ross were most certainly abnormal and used to make an example of. I have yet to see this comparison made although if anyone could provide valid reasons in the difference I would be open to listening.
Secondly, the sheer number of posts on this site stating didn't he hire a hitman. No, and there was no conviction of that.
I distinctly remember listening to recordings of him hiring a hitman. It's been a long time and my memory is certainly prone to error, but that sort of thing does stick with you. I especially remember the irony because he also preached about non-violence at some point, obviously until someone's continued existence became inconvenient for him.
I don't agree with that and I don't understand why those charges were not taken to court (I don't believe it was purely because he already had 2 life sentences as when the appeals were going to the supreme court and there was a risk of him winning, it surely made sense to secure him if you had the evidence to proceed with another case). Whether that was true or not though, someone can only be sentenced and punished on what one was convicted of. Anything else is not based in justice or law.
I don't really believe that the US is a country ruled by law any more, but in some idealized land of the law you are probably correct. But you won't convince me that OJ Simpson walking on a double homicide he clearly committed is justice. For Ulbricht, it actually feels like things more or less balanced out, but he did try to have someone killed, and I don't think that's a nice thing to do.
Did the judge conclude, as part of sentencing, that hiring a hit (or two?) was likely?
What reasoning did the judge give for the sentencing? They might involve similar websites but the crimes can be much different. Two people can run the same drug cartel at different times, but that doesn't mean their crimes are the same.
I think one can say the sentences were too severe and still think some sentence was fine.
I would agree with this. He deserved punishment as he did break the law.
Your link says that was a court in England. England generally has different sentencing standards than the US.
Valid point, however even those involved that were comvicted in the US such as Brian Farrell only received single digit sentences.
The new google thinking model was actually really helpful in doing sentiment analysis on this!
Sentiment analysis of the Hacker News comments on Ross Ulbricht's life sentence reveals a complex and diverse range of opinions, but with a predominantly negative sentiment towards the severity of the punishment. Here's a breakdown:
Predominantly Negative Sentiment (towards the sentence):
Disproportionate Punishment: Many commenters feel the life sentence is excessively harsh for the crimes Ulbricht was convicted of, arguing that it's disproportionate to non-violent offenses, especially when compared to sentences for violent crimes like murder or for financial crimes.
"Running a Website" Argument: There's a recurring sentiment that Ulbricht is being punished for "simply running a website," minimizing the scale and impact of Silk Road while emphasizing the non-violent nature of the core charges (drug trafficking, conspiracy, etc.).
Critique of the War on Drugs: A significant portion of the comments express strong opposition to the War on Drugs, viewing Ulbricht's case as another example of its failures and injustices. They advocate for drug legalization, decriminalization, and treatment-focused approaches.
"Making an Example" Criticism: Many believe the life sentence is intended to be a deterrent, a "show trial" to discourage others from creating similar online black markets, which they see as unjust and unequal application of justice.
"Political Prisoner" Label: Some commenters go as far as labeling Ulbricht a "political prisoner," suggesting his sentence is politically motivated due to the government's fear of uncontrolled online activities and cryptocurrencies.
Concerns about Justice System Hypocrisy: There's anger and cynicism about the perceived hypocrisy of the US justice system, contrasting Ulbricht's life sentence with the lack of accountability for powerful figures in government and finance who have caused widespread harm (e.g., financial crisis, war crimes).
Empathy and Sadness: Many commenters express sadness and empathy for Ulbricht, feeling his life has been tragically ruined by the sentence.
Neutral and Informative Comments:
Fact-Checking and Clarification: A large number of comments focus on clarifying the facts of the case, particularly regarding the charges, the murder-for-hire allegations, and the legal procedures. They provide links to court documents, news articles, and legal resources to ensure accuracy.
Legal and Technical Discussions: Many comments delve into legal technicalities, such as sentencing guidelines, the definition of conspiracy, entrapment, and the admissibility of evidence.
Objective Analysis of Evidence: Some commenters try to objectively analyze the evidence, particularly regarding the murder-for-hire allegations, trying to assess the likelihood of Ulbricht's involvement based on the available information.
Comparisons to Other Cases: There are comparisons to sentences in other drug trafficking cases, financial fraud cases, and even murder cases to contextualize Ulbricht's sentence.
Questions and Seeking Information: Many comments are questions seeking clarification on specific aspects of the case, legal arguments, or the broader implications of the sentencing.
Mixed/Nuanced Sentiment:
"Harm Reduction" Argument: Some commenters explore the argument that Silk Road, despite its illegality, might have offered harm reduction benefits compared to traditional street drug markets (safer drugs, reduced violence). However, this argument is often countered by the prosecution's perspective and the evidence of Ulbricht's violent tendencies.
Acknowledging Ulbricht's Mistakes: While critical of the sentence, some commenters acknowledge Ulbricht's operational security failures and the inherent risks of running an illegal enterprise.
Moral Ambiguity: Some comments grapple with the ethical dilemmas of Ulbricht's actions, especially regarding the murder-for-hire allegations, questioning whether violence could be justified in certain extreme situations (e.g., protecting users from blackmail).
Positive Sentiment (towards the sentence):
Justification Based on Murder-for-Hire: A smaller group supports the life sentence, primarily based on the allegations that Ulbricht attempted to hire hitmen. They view this as evidence of a dangerous mindset and a justification for severe punishment.
"Kingpin" Argument: Some see Ulbricht as a "drug kingpin" running a massive criminal enterprise, believing the life sentence is appropriate for someone operating at that scale.
"Social Fabric" Argument: A few commenters agree with the judge's statement that Silk Road was "terribly destructive to our social fabric," viewing the sentence as necessary to protect society from such online criminal platforms.
Overall, the sentiment leans heavily towards considering the life sentence as unjust and excessive. While some acknowledge the severity of the crimes and the murder-for-hire allegations, the dominant feeling is one of dismay at the harshness of the punishment and a critique of the broader context of the War on Drugs and the US justice system. The comments reflect a strong libertarian undercurrent within the Hacker News community, questioning the legitimacy of drug prohibition and advocating for more lenient and rehabilitative approaches.
For anyone who followed the Silk Road / Ross Ulbrict saga, this is all obvious and surface-level.
I think this comment would have got less downvotes if you could have made it somewhat shorter. Walls of text like this just scream Unabomber manifesto to me :)
It was pretty out of left field and seemingly uncharacteristic for the him to do this. It's fair to ask why. I think Trump is terrible in every way, think the pardon is fine, but can't help but wonder why and other questions about it
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Donald literally cites Mommy Ulbricht's political inclinations...
Could you post the literal text? I don't really want to make a Doubleplustruth Social account, and it doesn't seem to be in other news excerpts.
His posts are public:
https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/1138691127416...
"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. 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!"
finally! let’s go!
though he was very stupid with how he did it, I am happy he is a free man
Wait, is he smart or stupid ?
The laws should change too. Legalize and regulate drugs and access.
congratulations, team Ross!
Trump refused to pardon Assange and Snowden. I suppose he has priorities.
In 2021, presumably during SBF's (big Democrat donor) FTX scam, Trump thought that Bitcoin was a scam:
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-57392734
Now he is best friends with the "crypto", AI, and H1B bros.
> “All my Republican donations were dark,” [SBF] said, referring to political donations that are not publicly disclosed in FEC filings. “The reason was not for regulatory reasons, it’s because reporters freak the f—k out if you donate to Republicans. They’re all super liberal, and I didn’t want to have that fight.”
> Given that he donated nearly $40 million to Democrats in the 2022 election cycle—and he admitted to giving an equal amount to Republicans—his total political contributions may have actually been around $80 million.
https://time.com/6241262/sam-bankman-fried-political-donatio...
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Yep. He's not opposed to a scam so long as he's on the money-receiving side of it.
To wit his wife just launched one.
I thought it was a ridiculously long sentence compared to what other people have received. 10 years was right. That's enough time. I know that he was accused of hiring a hitman, but he was never convicted of that. It should have never been used in his sentencing. I think the government tried to make an example out of Ross Ulbrich, and it was a miscarriage of justice.
A. His prison sentence was totalitarian and three letters stole his crypto and illegally convicted him.
B. Orange is not a hero. I don't bow down to Kim Jong Un/Hitler wannabees.
C. Tor is a three letter honeypot.
This is a rare Trump win. There are many things to criticize him for, but this pardon isn't one of them. I don't think anyone, after researching this case, would be okay with the life sentence handed down to Ross.
Most people in real life don’t even know who this guy is. This is a guy that online people know. I will agree it’s a win, he was unfairly sentenced. I just wish I would have been able to buy from SR. I did get to browse it before it was seized.
Life no but probably more than he did in the end. He was really turning into a syndicate boss. The deep ars technica article was pretty depressing.
I am surprised Trump pardoned him, not unhappy bout it tho!
A "darknet" site where you can trade illegal shit is right up the alley of Trump and his cronies, so of course he would pardon this guy. Next step is to give him a job.
Let’s do some crimes
Among other things this guy was trying to have people murdered.
I guess this is why he was upset about Mexico sending drug dealers and murderers - he didn't want competition for our homegrown drug dealers and murderers.
Obligatory "This is good for bitcoin"
Trump freed him because libertarians voted for him - he openly said so. Meanwhile, he's waging a war on fentanyl! He should've freed Snowden instead.
This great pardon, and the pardon of the Jan 6 patriots, makes the election of Donald Trump worth it!
The only thing left is to pardon Edward Snowden.
I thought Trump was gonna murder drug dealers not commute their sentences, oh wait this one is white and loves crypto
Crypto oligarchs calling the shots in The Bronzer Strikes Back.
Interesting. I wonder who pushed Trump to do this. Gotta be Musk. Who else?
The LP presumably
Disclosure - I immensely dislike Trump and think Ross Ublricht deserved to be convicted.
That said - There is no evidence that anyone was ever killed, there is pretty thin evidence that he actually ever intended to hire any hitmen (though he may have defrauded people who thought they were hiring hitmen), and a life sentence for non-violent drug trafficking seems draconian. I certainly don't think this should have been one of Trump's priorities (I'm guessing it came through Vance, Musk, or someone else in the crypto community), but I don't have a big problem with it.
I don't see how this benefits the American economy, jobs, or national security. I do see that for a cohort of people in the Libertarian community this was held to be a central Tenet: Ulbricht was their "hostage" just as the Proud Boys thought their leader was.
But, I can't see how this becomes net beneficial in Congress, or in the wider economy. At best it's providing lower friction movement of goods and services. They tend not to go to Federal Tax collecting exchanges, so I cannot for the life of me see how this helps the exchequer, but maybe thats the point?
Pardons for drug dealers and cop killers. Crime is legal now.
Do you think it's possible the 11 years he spent in prison could have had any rehabilitation effect? Or should we jail anyone who ever commits a crime to a life sentence?
Whether Ulbricht is a changed man is somewhat immaterial to the signaling to other young would-be drug kingpins that the President thinks you shouldn't be punished so harshly for setting up online black markets.
A) yes, probably
B) I don’t see this sort of leniency being offered to other drug dealers, in fact, the Trump administration wants to designate Mexican cartels as terrorist organizations.
C) a day 1 pardon communicates that it’s a top priority of the administration that drug dealers and cop killers (Jan 6) get freed.
D) he was convicted by a jury of his peers who know full well what a judge would sentence him to. Now Trump comes out to overrule that.
The time to change sentencing would have been pre-trial. We tried doing that, but that was a massive loser electorally.
E) it wasn't merely commutation, it was a pardon. A pardon means that President is declaring the defendant not guilty. A commutation merely reduces the sentence.
Drug dealers, cop killers and family members. America's institutions continue to devolve into a cruel joke.
I am happy to see that Trump is a man of his word. I voted for him just because of this campaign promise. I would have voted for almost anyone who promised this.
How could that possibly be the most important political issue?
I am very sympathetic to the idea of voting just for Ross. It is unclear to me which candidate would be better, since neither of them are close to my political beliefs at all. It is a deadlock and I seem completely unrepresented. The consequences of voting based on any big issues I care about seems completely unpredictable; politics is a game of lies, smoke and mirrors. So I would perhaps rather vote for the candidate that would definitely save one person's life that is important to me.
Unless it's your day job: never try to unpack the priorities of a voter. You'll just get sad.
(For consideration on this topic: https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691138732/th...)
What were your number 2 and 3 issues, out of curiosity?
Were there any accompanying policies that you would say, "despite promising to free Ross Ulbricht, I don't think accompanying Policy X would be worth it?"
This one act was more important than the Paris agreement?
Immensely more important than an ineffective agreement on an overblown problem.
Yes. The Paris Agreement is a bunch of virtue signaling WEF nonsense. The biggest polluter is not reducing CO2 emissions, and the United States is reducing them, both in absolute terms and per capita, at a great cost to its industrial capacity: https://ourworldindata.org/co2/country/china?country=CHN~USA
You're right. I guess we just shouldn't do anything. And somehow it's virtue signaling and reduces output?
How do you feel about him backing down on H1B visas, price of groceries, peace in Ukraine...
The latest string of pardons are blatant political power moves. He pardoned _all_ of the January 6 insurrectionists. Many of these people have been filmed attacking police and literally raiding the nations capitol to overturn 2020 election. Violent folks being released back into the public is not good.
Now he’s just getting favors with crypto bros and “libertarians”. Man is building his personal army filled with angry racists, poor men that can be easily manipulated.
Sends a clear message - do this illegal thing for me, I’ll sign away any consequences.
Since no one is posting it, here's Trump Truth Social post on the matter:
"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. 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!"
At the same time he is threatening to tariff China 10% due to their responsibility for fentanyl, lol
Fentanyl wasn't big yet when Silk Road was around. And besides, people were buying straight from China off the clearnet
I think serious jail for running an illegal drug marketplace is good, even if he used lots of neat tech to do so..
I knew people who were wringing it out of medicated patches and sniffing it out of Afrin bottles during high school in the 90s. I also knew someone who ODd and died from tainted/fake pills they bought from one of The Silk Road's (immediate) successors.
Some number of people also OD on "traditional" street drugs every day. So, this is really not a sound argument.
I think they're pointing out the hypocrisy of wanting to crack down on drugs while doing this.
I see so many Trump adjacent folks demanding we lock up drug dealers, deport them, whatever. But they want to let this one go.
Orange man is a classic tough-on-crime guy, very selective what crimes and what demographics of criminals he is tough on.
I see those people in my personal life, too. Ironically, they're also the ones who regularly drive drunk and do a little cocaine now and again because _it doesn't really count_.
Mr. Trump isn't exactly known for making distinctions like that.
I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they're sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!
Is it due to HN policy? I guess they're subjective and ideological, and prone to starting arguments rather than debates.
Maybe "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." or "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."?
I'm honestly just curious as a conscientious internet citizen lol
> I have nothing in particular to say about the dead comments in this very young thread, but they're sort-of-interesting comments to have been killed so quickly!
[dead] is different than [flagged][dead]. [dead]-only (no [flagged]) means they're auto-dead, they aren't killed by someone reviewing the comments (moderator or users flagging). One of the two commenters was shadow banned years ago but still gets vouched for occasionally (including by me at times). The other one was shadow banned (looked through their history) 11 days ago, with a comment from dang at the time stating as much. They also get vouched for on occasion, based on their comment history.
> Maybe "Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That tramples curiosity." or "Please don't pick the most provocative thing in an article or post to complain about in the thread. Find something interesting to respond to instead."?
dang does usually respond to people with something like that first, then for people who get repeatedly flagged or repeatedly engage in certain kinds of behavior, he bans them.
Jtsummers is correct.
Just to add one point, flagged comments are mostly flagged by users (as opposed to mods). We can only guess why users flag things, but from looking at a sample in the current thread it's probably because they're mostly flamewar-style comments and/or political-battle style comments (or both). Those aren't good for HN because what we want here is curious, thoughtful conversation.
Nothing wrong with HN in particular. Every polarising discussion on a platform with moderation or up/down voting system ends up this way. This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politics
Removing moderation or voting systems (simple chronological comment sorting) creates another set of issues so this problem can't be solved without entirely changing discussion formats
> This structure is fantastic for technical discussions just not amazing for politics
No, it's not. Because the same magnification effect causes the causal, simple and correct sounding to float to the top and the nuanced "<signs deeply> so I dealt with this for 20yr and here's the deal" takes that nobody wants to hear because they're not simple and easy wind up at the bottom but above the flagrantly wrong crap and the trolls.
There's a reason that nothing with real stakes adopts this format and technical discussions that matter still mostly happen in some sort of threaded format that doesn't allow voting or any sort of drive-by low effort interaction to effect much.
Format like this is good for driving interaction, which is why public facing websites use it for their comment sections.
Interesting -- what other system could you possibly have, other than votes...? I'm not sure I understand what you're suggesting. I guess traditional forum threads (sometimes with votes, a-la GitHub) are nice, but ultimately that's just trading "correct sounding" for "early commenter".
Otherwise, the only thing that comes to mind is StackOverflow functionality where OP can mark a single answer as "accepted" and push it to the top instantly (which obv. wouldn't translate well to general discussions).
Paraphrasing an aphorism I saw elsewhere: "Crime is legal now".
“If a law is unjust a man is not only right to disobey it, he is obligated to do so” - Thomas Jefferson
1. There is no evidence jefferson ever said this
2. There is no evidence anyone else ever said this, either
The closest you get is MLK.
See https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...
But MLK also talks about moral obligation and not other forms of obligation.
He was not trying to create a free for all where everyone gets to decide which laws are okay or not, because he (and jefferson) were not complete morons.
Touche, however there is plenty of evidence of people throughout history making this assertion, including MLK.
He was trying to create a more just, egalitarian society. I don't understand how you can consider acting in accordance with leading research on successful drug policy "moronic"?
Successful drug policy meaning what here?
Least amount of harm to both the individual and society as a whole whilst recognizing people's fundamental right to bodily autonomy.
MLK was himself referencing Saint Augustine:
>Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Considering that his rhetoric was very much based on Christianity, it's clear what standard of "unjust" he was applying.
> Considering that his rhetoric was very much based on Christianity, it's clear what standard of "unjust" he was applying.
Considering the diversity of standards of justice within the history of Christianity (which, in just the US, includes—relevant to this topic—MLK, sure, but also the Southern Baptist Convention, founded explicitly in support of slavery), I don't know that having rhetoric grounded in Christian theology tells much of substance about the standard of justice one is appealing to.
Is it unjust to prohibit the sale of illegal drugs, weapons, etc.? Society has good reasons for regulating certain goods. I regularly see people in my community who are enslaved by fentanyl and I wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy. The society I live in decided to make selling it illegal. What is unjust about that?
As I recall weapons weren't permitted on the platform.
The society didn't decide, the ruling class decided to use drug policy to attack their own citizens.
History shows that prohibition is an abject failure. The fent epidemic is symptomatic of this failed policy.
If they actually cared about the epidemic, addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin whilst also having ready access to treatment.
But then we'd have empty prisons and the police would be free to solve real crimes so we can't have that.
> addicts would have access to regulated, pharmaceutical grade heroin
We tried that, it was called the opioid epidemic and Purdue was the pharmacist. We had readily available, doctor-prescribed, high quality narcotics available to anyone who wanted them and the result was an epic disaster that cost thousands of lives.
> weapons weren't permitted on the platform
My mistake.
Is Trump pushing for broad drug decriminalisation? I feel like that would be necessary for this pardon to make sense on the basis of current drug laws being unjust.
Last I heard he was promising to make drug dealers eligible for the death penalty: https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2024-election/trump-wants-e...
Not exactly, fentanyl epidemic was specifically started by one family seek profit and ousted doctors to over prescribe it while claiming it was mildly addictive.
The war on drugs have caused immeasurable harm due to failure to understand most people use drugs either as escapism or as a tendency.
That's why it has failed.
I think you have fentanyl and oxycodone mixed up
So we like drug markets now ?
How are cartels terrorist organizations?
I like free markets.
There are healthier middle grounds we could explore where e.g. advertisements are banned and individuals could register themselves as being banned from participating in certain addictive vices because they don't consistently have the willpower to quit or don't want to tempt fate trying it (and make it a crime to sell to an individual who has voluntarily banned themselves), but it's hard to argue that The War on Drugs has been in any way just.
I expect in such a society, certain groups (e.g. Mormons) would normalize banning yourself from vices the day you turn 18.
What is just is decided both by an individual and the society they exist in. "It is one's moral obligation to fight injustice" is a pretty common tenent to hold. Injustice can be city laws encouraging anti-homeless spikes. Injustice can also be genocide in a remote country. Those injustices get fought in very different ways. One can be handled by individual vigilanteeism and peacefully petitioning local governance. The other might require global war.
In my personal belief, everyone[0] has the right and moral obligation to fight the injustice they care about at the level they can manage. If that's handing out water at the protest or inventing penicillin, do what you personally can do to improve the world.
[0]the average layperson, obvious exceptions for power/money apply
Sure, but the facts matter. Making millions of dollars by operating a marketplace for illegal drugs is not even close to the same ballpark as protesting a draconian anti-homeless law, let alone resisting genocide!
The only reasonable argument for drug legalization, in my opinion, is the libertarian one - the idea that you should be free to take the drugs you want to take. I am sympathetic to this argument. I am someone who is able to make wise decisions about the drugs I take. But I also recognize that millions of my fellow citizens are not. The harm to society from drug addiction and overdoses outweighs the benefit to me getting high whenever I want.
so we all individually can just decide a law is unjust? that'll be fun
Don't worry - jefferson never actually said this because he wasn't a complete idiot.
Don't take my word for it though, the monticello folks looked into it too - https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jeffers...
It is a fun quote though, because it's one of those quotes that people want to use to justify their own dumb behavior.
"If you don't like the law, feel free to ignore it" - Albert Einstein
If you come to disagree with the justice of a law, your options are to conform or, yes, decide that the law is unjust.
I mean strictly speaking the people voted for Trump, so collectively they're all okay with this.
Of course Trump's platform was enormously based on law & order and combatting the drug trade, which he seems to think should still be actually illegal and is not ending the war on drugs so, I don't know - make of that what you will.
Maybe Thoreau? That's more authentic and gets at similar themes. On more than one level considering his circumstances and run-ins with law enforcement.
”Under a government which imprisons any unjustly, the true place for a just man is also a prison."
I wonder how this sentiment is going to play out in Luigi Mangione's trial.
Thomas Jefferson was a slave owner.
So were most aristocrats of the time. Applying presentism doesn't invalidate the idea.
But there were also abolitionists at the time, even amongst that class. Jefferson not being among them does, actually, diminish his standing and his views on justice. This quote, for example, does not acknowledge that there are also laws which are unjust to obey; such as the owning of human beings in chattel slavery.
I don’t think suggesting that his quote would imply his slaves would be justified in violating their own enslavement is any kind of presentism.
It is just hypocritical: even his time most people knew slavery was unjust.
He never actually said it, either.
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… in a society where slavery was legal, widespread, and rarely questioned.
Murder has never been legal.
He tried to have multiple people murdered.
Jefferson did, certainly. He was instrumental in starting a war from what I understand.
Ross though? The government alleged it but never bothered to prove it. Furthermore the government agents involved were laughably corrupt, so anything they alleged needs to be taken with a massive grain of salt. For all anybody here know, they fabricated the entire assassination story to distract the public from their plot to loot Ross's money (which unlike the assassination stuff, has been proven in court.)
lol
Providing online forums is legal now.
Given there are at least thousands if not millions of people who "provide online forums," and pretty much this single one is in prison, I have to wonder if there's something unique about this case?
I don't know anything about this guy. Is there really nothing unique about his case?
Dread Pirate Roberts is legend, look up the silk road marketplace.
Theres probably a movie or two about it too
Oh so it was a marketplace, not a forum. Like one that allowed people to openly transact illegal goods? That makes more sense.
It's weird that GP seemed to purposely obscure that.
Yes, it was the biggest drug market on the dark web at that time, and the 50,676 bitcoins seized by the feds from then is today worth 5,3 billion dollars to give you an idea.
Also there was a long side story with disappeared bitcoins, presumably stolen by federal investigators.
Silk Road was, at its height, uniquely successful and making an absolute mockery of the United States government's capacity to regulate drug trafficking. In addition, he fashioned himself an anti-establishment persona, going by the handle "Dread Pirate Roberts" online.
He was unique in his magnitude of success. Governments can successfully magnify their enforcement ability by making an example of outliers.
It was a forum that mocked the government's ability to regulate drug trafficking and therefore he was prosecuted?
I find that hard to believe.
Running an elicit drug and whatever else you want to sell market is legal now.
This was a pandering to get Libertarians' votes. It has nothing to do with the crime itself. I wouldn't commit any crimes and expect to get away with them unless I anticipated becoming the pawn in someone's scheme to get elected.
Hiring a hitman is legal now.
The seven offenses in question: distributing narcotics, distributing narcotics by means of the Internet, conspiring to distribute narcotics, engaging in a continuing criminal enterprise, conspiring to commit computer hacking, conspiring to traffic in false identity documents, and conspiring to commit money laundering
A judge bypassed the jury and prosecutor and sentenced him as if he hired hit men and admitted doing so. The sentence upgrade was based on a preponderance of evidence, whereas they would have had to proven beyond a reasonable doubt had he been charged.
Framing this as judicial activism is false. Many sentencing arrangements include - with the agreement of the defendant (since it is their rights in this case) - to have other related activities factored in exactly this manner.
It happens all the time in pleas and diversion agreements, so don’t frame it as a reckless lone judge going off the reservation.
To be fair - he was not pardoned for that, he could still be charged for it. He was only pardoned for crimes related to drugs.
do you know that is actually the case ? i've been trying to find the text of the pardon and haven't been able to yet. can only find Trump's description of it as "full and unconditional"
edit: i see your other comment with the context
They unfortunately have not released the text yet.
It should eventually pop up here: https://www.justice.gov/pardon/clemency-recipients
(among other places)
He was never tried for that. Don't believe the disinformation.
blatant entrapment and gaslighting for more than a year by law enforcement dedicating 24h to it.
the real criminals for that prank were never even tried.
Looks like the "real criminal" was charged.
https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-drug-vendor-w...
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This conversation is presently flagged. Why? When Ross was sentenced HN had a discussion about it with more than 600 comments. His conviction has been discussed numerous additional times in other threads throughout the years. His pardon is plainly on-topic for HN, and this discussion is a necessary followup to those previous discussions.
Of course it's on topic. Why did users flag it? Probably some combination of not liking the event itself and fatigue with political stories. But that's just a guess.
In any case, we turned the flags off when we saw it.
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A possible line of reasoning is that drugs should be legal, but the property and violent crimes committed around them shouldn't be, in the same way that adults are legally permitted to drink alcohol, but they're not legally permitted to drive drunk. The "ruining cities" is about the crimes, not the drugs themselves.
(I think.)
That's the logically consistent line of thought, yes. Which is one I don't particularly disagree with, because of the harm the war on drugs has caused.
But the inconsistency comes from people advocating for a black market drug site and bending towards the far right. The same people who in the same breath also further criminalize drugs, reduce access to things that help addicts while arguing that drug dealers should be deported and our streets swept.
The logical inconsistency is that 'their' drug dealers are conducted by people of virtue therefore they did nothing to break the law. And not being willing to deal with the actual fallout of said illegal drug empire.
> But it seems they don't have a problem with someone running an illegal underground drug smuggling network because...?
People have a soft spot for enterprising wunderkinds of certain demographics, even if he wasn't actually a kid when he start SR.
A good boy like Ross doesn't belong in prison, but the person arrested for smoking crack does, is a common sentiment.
Most libertarians considered the Silk Road a place to buy psychedelics like LSD or mushrooms or experimental synthetic drugs (not that these don’t come with numerous risks). Not a bulk heroin warehouse. So the perception is different from that of a wholesale fentanyl clearing house.
Just because the far right complains about 'drugged out zombies' ruining cities thanks to drug smugglers from Mexico, doesn't mean libertarians think that. Libertarians have been opposed to the "war on drugs" for decades.
Well for one, Libertarians are not far right in the way you are describing...
They've gone full doublethink, like when Trump claimed Jan 6 was done by antifas, but then pardoned them all and no one seemed to remember.
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I don't understand how she's not in prison and SBF is
Pretty sure she is currently in jail.. if not, she's finished doing the time she was sentenced.
Her husband took the fall, whatever the facts actually are, and got a longer sentence.
SBF - well the scale, number of laws violated, duration, number of victims, profile of victims, complete lack of contrition, etc would be why he got a much longer sentence.
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I really wonder who benefits from this. Trump only does things that are good for him, or those close to him. I realize he's been making connections to the crypto world, and has his own meme coins. Does pardoning Ross somehow make crypto more valuable?
It’s also just good politics. There are a vocal group of voters that are in favor of this, so it gets those people on his side. And no reason not to (politically), as most people just don’t care about this topic, or if they do and disagree with the decision, this isn’t going to be the action that moves the needle for them on how they feel about Trump or the Republican Party.
Trump made the deal at the Libertarian National Convention to garner their support.
A video from Reason magazine a few days ago[0] mentioned a deal between the Libertarian Party leadership and Trump in which they selectively didn't run their candidate in several states in order to help Trump. If this is true, Trump could have reneged, but evidently decided whatever political blowback for pardoning Ulbricht (which is probably small potatoes at this rate) wasn't worth the credibility cost.
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhDKYYdD2vY
I wonder if he is going to be able to launder and cash out whatever crypto he squirreled away. His finances are probably going to be closely watched.
Starting a business that accepts crypto payments is going to be a tell.
He has admitted his wrong doings and made efforts to change whilst in prison. I doubt he will go straight back to a life even remotely close to before. He was doing good in prison for other inmates and I imagine he will continue doing the same now he has this second chance.
What the future holds for someone who was pardoned is likely decided based on very different rationalization compared to how one acts while serving a lifetime prison sentence.
Whilst I understand your point of view that the change in circumstances can change how someone decides to act, I don't believe there is much history to show someone who gained a surprising second chance outside of prison has gone back to their previous life.
> I don't believe there is much history to show someone who gained a surprising second chance outside of prison has gone back to their previous life.
Didnt have to look far, from dec 9:
https://lawandcrime.com/crime/exonerated-man-heading-back-to...
Of course, there will be an outlier. I didn't state no history. One person doing wrong after being released shouldn't mean no one gets released.
No but recidivism should be factored into such a decision.
It's vindication of political violence that's the problem. If political violence is sanctioned, then there is no law.
If he’s smart he’ll go Jordan Belfort style and make money with book, speaking, and movie deals.
That's the old way of doing things.
Now it's all about podcasts, energy drinks and crypto coin rug-pulls.
does he even need to launder it ? The pardon may cover any proceeds given Trump described it as "a full and unconditional pardon"
Pardoned from the crimes convicted of? Or pardoned from any crime. I found the Biden pardon to be particular egregious because of how vague it was.
Presidents and governors should NOT have the power to pardon people. And if they do it should be ONE pardon per term.
The authority to pardon is one of the most direct indicators we have for the moral character of an executive.
Until you can prove to me that all courts, judges, attorneys, and juries are above reproach and no innocent people are imprisoned there absolutely should be a method for someone to pardon. Sometimes a pardon will be issued for people you disagree with, but that’s part of it. Just like somebody will say something that pisses you off, but that’s the cost of free speech
The sympathy for this guy from so many of you makes me sad.
The messages show he wanted and thought he was getting people murdered. But that's perfectly OK because it was actually the evil FBI he was talking to!
Surely you must understand that he was also white and solid middle class.
And he was able to code sloppy LAMP code.