{"id":20516,"date":"2025-01-22T10:00:18","date_gmt":"2025-01-22T08:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/donald-trump-pardons-ross-ulbricht\/"},"modified":"2025-01-22T10:00:18","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T08:00:18","slug":"donald-trump-pardons-ross-ulbricht","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/donald-trump-pardons-ross-ulbricht\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump Pardons Ross Ulbricht"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump has signed an order granting a full and unconditional pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the darknet market Silk Road. The U.S. leader <a href=\"https:\/\/truthsocial.com\/@realDonaldTrump\/posts\/113869112741612092\">announced<\/a> this on Truth Social.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">FREEDOM!!!! <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/itRuuyFAxe\">pic.twitter.com\/itRuuyFAxe<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Free_Ross (@Free_Ross) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Free_Ross\/status\/1881925029497377104?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 22, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Trump spoke with Ulbricht&#8217;s mother, expressing gratitude to her and the Libertarian movement for their support during the election.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cThe scum who worked on his conviction are the same crazies involved in the current weaponization of government against me. [Ross] was given two life sentences plus 40 years. Ridiculous!\u201d Trump wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>The Free Ross family page on X responded to the news.<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Ross was just granted a FULL AND UNCONDITIONAL PARDON by <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">@realDonaldTrump<\/a>. Words cannot express how grateful we are.<\/p>\n<p>President Trump is a man of his word and he just saved Ross&#8217;s life. ROSS IS A FREE MAN!!!!!<\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Free_Ross (@Free_Ross) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Free_Ross\/status\/1881851923005165704?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 21, 2025<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p> <script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"wp-block-quote is-layout-flow wp-block-quote-is-layout-flow\">\n<p>\u201cWords cannot express how grateful we are. President Trump is a man of his word, and he just saved Ross&#8217;s life. Ross is a free man!\u201d the tweet stated.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p>Ulbricht&#8217;s release was <a href=\"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/news\/donald-trump-advocates-for-us-leadership-in-cryptocurrency-industry\">one of Trump&#8217;s campaign promises<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In May 2024, Ulbricht himself conveyed through relatives his immense gratitude and <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/RealRossU\/status\/1794865086135521737\">anticipation of a &#8216;second chance&#8217;<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Ulbricht&#8217;s case garnered significant public attention. Over 250 organizations, notable individuals, and opinion leaders <a href=\"https:\/\/freeross.org\/\">advocated<\/a> for his release. In 2019, prominent venture capitalist Tim Draper joined their ranks. Later, Elon Musk remarked that the sentence given to the Silk Road creator was excessively harsh.<\/p>\n<p>On the eve of the pardon, Polymarket users assessed the likelihood of Ulbricht&#8217;s pardon within Trump&#8217;s first 100 days in office at 97%.<\/p>\n<p>Silk Road, established in 2011, is known as the first modern internet marketplace of the &#8216;dark web&#8217; with a bitcoin-based payment system.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>U.S. authorities arrested Ulbricht in October 2013. In May 2015, U.S. District Judge Katherine Forrest found him guilty of drug trafficking, conspiracy to transport drugs, computer hacking, money laundering, and leading a criminal enterprise. The platform&#8217;s creator received a double life sentence without the possibility of parole, of which he served 11 years.<\/p>\n<p>Previously, Ulbricht fully relinquished claims to millions of dollars in bitcoin confiscated by U.S. authorities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>President Donald Trump has signed an order granting a full and unconditional pardon to Ross Ulbricht, the creator of the darknet market Silk Road. The U.S. leader announced this on Truth Social. FREEDOM!!!! pic.twitter.com\/itRuuyFAxe \u2014 Free_Ross (@Free_Ross) January 22, 2025 Trump spoke with Ulbricht&#8217;s mother, expressing gratitude to her and the Libertarian movement for their [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20515,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"select":"","news_style_id":"","cryptorium_level":"","_short_excerpt_text":"","creation_source":"","_metatest_mainpost_news_update":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[991,1568,236,26],"class_list":["post-20516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-and-analysis","tag-donald-trump","tag-ross-ulbricht","tag-silk-road","tag-usa"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"views":"80","promo_type":"","layout_type":"","short_excerpt":"","is_update":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/forklog.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}