Trump Is Considering Clemency for Silk Road Founder

[jct74]

Trump Is Considering Clemency for Silk Road Founder
Two sources tell The Daily Beast that the president has expressed sympathy for the situation of Ross Ulbricht, who is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

Asawin Suebsaeng and Adam Rawnsley
Dec. 15, 2020

In his final weeks in office before Joe Biden’s inauguration, President Donald Trump is weighing granting clemency to Ross Ulbricht, the founder and former administrator of the world’s most famous darknet drug market, Silk Road, The Daily Beast has learned.

According to three people familiar with the matter, the White House counsel’s office has had documents related to Ulbricht’s case under review, and Trump was recently made aware of the situation and the pleas of the Silk Road founder’s allies. Two of these sources say the president has at times privately expressed some sympathy for Ulbricht’s situation and has been considering his name, among others, for his next round of commutations and pardons before the Jan. 20 inauguration of his 2020 Democratic opponent.

It is unclear if Trump has arrived at a final decision yet, but Ulbricht has gained some influential backers in the president’s political and social orbit. Behind the scenes, he has the support of some presidential advisers, as well as criminal justice reform advocates with close ties to the administration and Trump family, including Alice Johnson, according to people with knowledge of the matter.

“I’ve had documents forwarded to my contacts in the White House as early as February,” activist Weldon Angelos, a former music producer and ex-federal inmate, said in a brief interview on Tuesday evening. “In the beginning of the year, [Ulbricht’s] family had reached out to us for our support, and my organization and I have endorsed his full commutation, and I am hopeful that President Trump will commute his sentence in its entirety. This case has perhaps more support than I’ve seen in any case of this kind.”

The White House did not respond to a request for comment on this story Tuesday.

...

read more:
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-...dering-charges

[Contumacious]

That is really great news and a fantastic Xmas present 🎁

[Matt Collins]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/trump-con...003711390.html

[Krugminator2]

Ulbricht would be my top choice for a pardon. He is a hero. Hope he pardons Manafort too as his sentence was insanely excessive for what amounted to hiding income offshore.

[jkr]

paging Julian Assange. Julian Assange to the white courtesy phone...

[Anti Globalist]

Didn't he allegedly hire a hitman to kill someone?

[danda]

Didn't he allegedly hire a hitman to kill someone?

A rumor/smear. All based on a setup/sting by corrupt federal agents who themselves later went to prison for their actions during the investigation. Ulbricht was never tried or convicted for such.

[Occam's Banana]

https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/...77996470374400

Video clip here: https://video.foxbusiness.com/v/6216769220001

Thomas Massie:
- "[Ulbricht's sentence] is the greatest violation of the 8th Amendment that I'm aware of [...]"
- "There's a good chance [clemency] could happen. [...] There's nobody more deserving of clemency than Ross Ulbricht [...]"

Also Thomas Massie:
- "Tulsi Gabbard and I introduced a bill to repeal the PATRIOT Act, to repeal the FISA amendments act, to forbid the government to put secret back doors into [encryption ...] It would also make it illegal to go after whistleblowers like Edward Snowden [who] deserves a pardon as well."

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Didn't he allegedly hire a hitman to kill someone?

A rumor/smear. All based on a setup/sting by corrupt federal agents who themselves later went to prison for their actions during the investigation. Ulbricht was never tried or convicted for such.

I remember reading a transcript from the "biker" testifying against Ulbricht. The language was so fake that a grade schooler could have spotted it.