Donald Trump Signs 'A Full and Unconditional Pardon' for Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht

The story is developing and will be updated with the latest information as it becomes available.

• Ross Ulbricht founded Silk Road, an early dark web platform that facilitated the exchange of various goods, both legal and illegal, including drugs and most commonly small amounts of cannabis. Transactions were primarily conducted using bitcoin.

• The website explicitly prohibited activities that involved involuntary harm to third parties and was a significant early test of Bitcoin as a regular payment method on a larger scale.
• Silk Road protected consumers not only from the risks of arrest and black-market violence but also from rip-offs by using an escrow system that delayed payment until shipments were received, writes Reason.

"Ross Ulbricht has been a libertarian political prisoner for more than a decade. I’m proud to say that saving his life has been one of our top priorities and that has finally paid off," Libertarian National Committee Chair Angela McArdle said in a statement on Tuesday.

• In 2015, at a federal trial in the Southern District of New York, Ross Ulbricht was convicted of money laundering, computer hacking, and narcotics trafficking. Although he was not personally convicted of selling drugs or illegal items, he was held accountable for the activities conducted by others on the Silk Road website.on the site.
• Judge Katherine B. Forrest sentenced Ross Ulbricht to a double life sentence plus 40 years without the possibility of parole for operating outside the law. In contrast, the average prison sentence other defendants related to the case, including actual drug sellers, individuals who helped run Silk Road, and those behind Silk Road 2.0, was six years.

• Besides the sentencing, Ross Ulbricht also faced false, unproven allegations of planning murder-for-hire, amplified by sensational media reporting. These allegations were never charged or proven in court and were eventually dismissed. Ulbricht consistently denied them, and those close to him never believed the claims. The only alleged victim, Curtis Green, supported Ross's clemency.

"He's already served 11 years. We're going to get him home," Trump said at the Libertarian Party convention last May.

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