Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht Went To Prison A Libertarian Hero. Trump Just Set Him Free.

Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, was unconditionally pardoned by President Donald Trump.Free Ross UlbrichtPresident Donald Trump granted Ross Ulbricht a full and unconditional pardon on Tuesday.Ulbricht founded Silk Road, an online drug marketplace.In 2015, he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the online drug marketplace Silk Road, received a full and unconditional pardon on Tuesday from President Donald Trump, who announced the move in a Truth Social post.Ulbricht had been held at the US Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona, since the FBI arrested him in 2013.The FBI described Silk Road as a "digital bazaar" for illegal goods and services that buyers and sellers accessed through Tor — a network designed to conceal its users' identity and location.The FBI said it generated hundreds of millions of dollars in sales, as well as more than $13 million in commissions.In 2015, a judge sentenced Ulbricht, now 40, to life in prison for drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering without the possibility of parole, ruling that Silk Road was "destructive to our social fabric."Libertarian cause célèbreUlbricht has become a cause célèbre for the libertarian movement.The Libertarian Party, which has long supported a criminal-justice overhaul and drug legalization, has continuously pushed for his release, viewing his life sentence as an example of government overreach.In a speech at the Libertarian National Convention in May, Trump pledged to commute Ulbricht's sentence on the first day of his administration if he was reelected president.Trump said in his post on Tuesday that he granted Ulbricht's pardon in honor of Ulbricht's mother "and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly."In 2015, Wired reported Ulbricht developed an interest in libertarian economic theory while in college and embraced the political philosophy of Ludwig von Mises, a staunch opponent of interventionism and an advocate for the idea that free-market capitalism serves a moral purpose.In a letter he wrote to his trial judge in 2015, he said he created Silk Road not to seek financial gain but because he "believed at the time that people should have the right to buy and sell whatever they wanted so long as they weren't hurting anyone else.""Silk Road was supposed to be about giving people the freedom to make their own choices, to pursue their own happiness," he added.Ulbricht also said: "While I still don't think people should be denied this right, I never sought to create a site that would provide another avenue for people to feed their addictions."However, the US attorney's office for the Southern District of New York said the "vast" majority of goods sold on Silk Road were illegal drugs.Preet Bharara, then the US attorney for Manhattan, said at the time: "Make no mistake: Ulbricht was a drug dealer and criminal profiteer who exploited people's addictions and contributed to the deaths of at least six young people."Ulbricht was convicted of seven offenses after a four-week jury trial and sentenced to life in prison.