Trump's Pardoned Favorite Drug Dealer Ross Ulbricht, Wonksplained

Whatever happened to Donald Trump calling for the death penalty for drug dealers?

Jan 28, 2025

A day after That Man pardoned his paramilitary squad of January 6 rioters, he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, owner/operator of Silk Road, the biggest online drug marketplace in history. Whatever happened to Trump heaving, “We're going to be asking everyone who sells drugs, gets caught selling drugs, to receive the death penalty for their heinous acts. Because it's the only way”?

Short answer, it was a blatant favor to Libertarians and cryptobros for their support, unsubtly exactly the kind of quid pro quo bribery that Amy Coney Barrett warned everybody about in her US v. Trump concurrence. Which Trump freely admits, because SCOTUS made payback to supporters (and everything else Trump might do as Holy Executive) legal. The Libertarians booed him at their convention, and that promise plus embracing RFK Jr. was a way to bribe them back.

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The pardon isn’t on the White House website, but That Man announced it on his Truth Social:

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!

It was just one life sentence, such a drama llama.

Coincidentally, on January 9 the government finally got the go-ahead to sell what’s now $6.5 billion worth of Bitcoins that were seized from Ulbricht, which investors worry will tank the market.

Anyway, why do the Libertarians support Ulbricht, to the point that the chair of their party flew down to Dear Leader’s roach motel to ask for his release?

Short answer, Ulbricht helped build the market for Bitcoin into what it is today, with his early adoption. And along with the drugs, he pushed libertarian philosophy, hosting movie nights and a book club (the list is still on Goodreads). According to himself, he wasn’t just dealing drugs, you see, it was a social experiment to “use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and aggression amongst mankind”! The $1.2 billion in drug transactions was practically a coincidence, your honor. Also, it must be said, he is white and named Ross. Would cryptobros embrace him with the same fervor if he were a Ramon, Raheem, or Rajeet? And would a Ramon, Raheem, or Rajeet have the audacity to set up such a scheme in the first place, or try to use libertarian philosophy as his defense? Not likely.

Ulbricht was/is a book-smart guy, an Eagle Scout who went to Pennsylvania State for a Master’s in materials science and engineering. But his main interest became libertarian theory, getting into Ludwig von Mises, Ron Paul, and heated debates about how people should be able to buy and take drugs and the government should not butt in, because car companies kill people too, and grownups should be able to do what they want, MOM.

Do we really want NO restrictions on drugs at all, though? Do we want speedballs and cyanide available for sale next to the Chik-O-Stiks at the 7-11, hallucinogens mixed up by some kid in his high school chemistry lab, or Amazon selling human kidneys and grenade launchers, and eBay selling fake passports? Should you be able to order up a hitman like it was UberEats? To all of this, Ulbricht said yes! Though he did draw the line at child sexual abuse material.

The Silk Road story began after Ulbricht got his Master’s then moved back home to Texas, was not making much money selling used books online, and applied to be on “The Amazing Race” and got turned down. And he watched a lot of “Breaking Bad.” When Bitcoin launched in 2009, he saw an opportunity, and used his programming skills to build the Silk Road website on the dark Web, accessible on the onion-routing Tor network that was developed by the Naval Research Laboratory for secure communications. Then, Ulbricht grew some mushrooms to sell, and launched the site in 2011, and astroturf-advertised his wares on Shrooms dot com and a Bitcoin forum, under the name Altoid, like “hey, has anybody tried this site?” It worked, and his Amazon for drugs was up and running!

But, quality control of product was a problem. His girlfriend’s friend bought some bad acid from his site, and blasted him by name on Facebook. Freaked out about getting caught, he pretended that he sold the site to somebody else, renamed himself Dread Pirate Roberts after the Princess Bride character, and fled the country for a while. Still, the site was a wild success, with exponential growth, and Ulbricht eventually felt safe enough to return to the US, settling in San Francisco and hiring administrators to help him.

A writeup in Gawker was free advertising too. For customers AND the Feds! Ulbricht gabbed with reporter Adrien Chen like some kind of Carol Channing, because one thing libertarians all seem to have in common is a self-righteous inability to shut up. “‘The state is the primary source of violence, oppression, theft and all forms of coercion,’ Silk Road wrote to us. ‘Stop funding the state with your tax dollars and direct your productive energies into the black market.’” This “administrator” had so much to say that investigators suspected Chen was the administrator himself. (“One bitcoin is worth about $8.67,” Gawker advised. Back then it was lowercase bitcoin, because it was the only bitcoin. One Bitcoin is worth $102,670 today.)

And as people bought bitcoin to buy drugs, fake IDs, et cetera (transactions that Ulbricht took at least a 6.23 percent cut of), bitcoin became more valuable. And extra bonus, before 2014, virtual currency gains were not taxed. He was soon making millions, though he didn’t spend much, either out of a sense of frugality, or because he didn’t want to attract attention.

But, movies about drug lords (besides Emilia Perez) always have one plot. Because there really is only one plot. Maybe somewhere out there is a lady drug queenpin living on a pile of riches, but in the movies and in real life, it always goes the same: Guy joins or starts a drug empire, and works his way to enough prominence that law enforcement takes notice. Then the law starts picking off the low-level dealers and working their way up the chain, and soon the kingpin can’t trust anyone. People start turning on each other, and fraud, robbery, blackmail, and violent threats ensue, because nobody can complain to the Better Business Bureau when deals go wrong. And then the kingpin gets caught by some dumb mistakes, and thrown in jail, the end!

And that’s exactly what happened! Scammers saw the opportunity for exit schemes, in which they collected money for drugs and then dipped with the money, Ulbricht got burgled of some Bitcoins by hackers, a dirty Secret Service agent and a dirty IRS agent, and he was approached with a blackmail scheme threatening to expose site users. Having a database of users’ identities was at least one problem that Avon Barksdale did not have.

And eventually drugs coming through the mail attracted the interest of Homeland Security and the DEA, duh, who seized smaller packages and worked their way from the buyers to their sources, and eventually tracing shipments back to an administrator that they nabbed and then posed as, getting access to chat logs. Ulbricht’s operational security was also not great: Hacker James Zhong was able to steal more than 50,000 of his Bitcoins, and the Feds were able to figure out the location of Silk Road’s server, and get into it. And an agent made contact with Ulbricht and was able to easily befriend him, pretending to be some kind of multinational Don Eladio Vuente going by the name of “Nob” and offering to buy the site and asking him what it was worth, to which Ulbricht helpfully replied, “no less than nine figures!” LOL.

Arresting Ulbricht got urgent after he ordered six murders of people he thought were blackmailing him, stealing from him, or potentially witnesses against him, and the Feds helped one would-be victim fake his torture and death by advising him to have his wife douse him in soup.

After getting the fake murder pics, Ulbricht said he was “a little disturbed,” but added “I don't think I've done the wrong thing,” and said that he “would call on [the agent] again at some point, though I hope I don't have to.”

Agents were eventually able to identify Ulbricht by tracing him to his original marketing posts on Shrooms dot com, and he was busted in the San Francisco public library, after agents staged a domestic dispute and distracted him before he could get his laptop closed, giving them access to all of his accounts, chat logs and Bitcoins. Oops!

At his sentencing, Ulbricht had the gall to try to frame his drug operation as some kind of a benefit to society.

“I remember clearly why I created the Silk Road. I wanted to empower people to be able to make choices in their lives, for themselves and to have privacy and anonymity.”

But the judge was not fucking having it:

“No drug dealer from the Bronx selling meth or heroin or crack has ever made these kinds of arguments to the Court. It is a privileged argument, it is an argument from one of privilege. You are no better a person than any other drug dealer and your education does not give you a special place of privilege in our criminal justice system. It makes it less explicable why you did what you did.”

Ulbricht was convicted of 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. He was sentenced to life in prison, and had to give up that nine figures of Bitcoin. He was never charged or convicted for those attempted-murders-for-hire, though, and the case may be too tainted because IRS agent Shaun W. Bridges and Secret Service agent Carl Force IV got busted for dipping in Ulbricht’s honeypot. Naturally, Ulbricht fans say that the stealing Feds are proof that Ulbricht was set up, and the Deep State invented the website themselves, or something.

But TL;DR, Ulbricht’s a murder-minded drug dealer like any other, he’s just one who’s a libertarian with a degree and a book club.

Nobody ever said Trump was a man of principle, but the hypocrisy and self-dealing here is extra-bad, even for him. But here we are!

Ulbricht is grateful, at least, calling it an “important moment” for “everybody, everywhere who loves freedom,” because prison did not dim his sense of self-importance.