By
Bena Ilyas
March 11th, 2024
As President Trump is set to leave office on January 20, 2021, Ross Ulbricht may become a free man by then.
Outgoing United States President Donald Trump may be considering pardoning Silk Road founder and operator Ross Ulbricht who is currently serving a double life sentence passed in 2015 for non-violent crimes according to White House in-house sources. According to Cointelegraph, President Trump has been noted by the unnamed White House sources to be sympathetic with the Free Ross Campaign and may add Ulbricht’s name to the list of convicts that are likely to get clemency before the President leaves office in January.
Ross Ulbricht was arrested in 2013 for running the dark web marketplace notoriously known as Silk Road, where a lot of criminal activities and transactions including the sale of narcotics, hacking guides, and money laundering were carried out. Ulbricht upon his arrest and trial was found guilty on all seven counts by a Manhattan jury. He was subsequently sentenced to double life imprisonment without parole.
The race to secure a presidential pardon has been a long haul for Ulbricht who reached out to Roger Ver back in 2019 in a bid to get through to the President. While the White House sources are emphatic about the ongoing moves by White House Counsel in reviewing all the files relating to Ulbricht’s case, nothing has been officially revealed by the White House in relation to the presidential pardon.
Will Silk Road Founder Be Free before Trump Leaves His Office?
Many activists are involving in the campaign for freedom for Ross Ulbricht and one of them spoke to the Daily Beast, a media publication agency that first broke the proposed clemency news.
“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 clamor to get the pardon from the White House has also featured an expectation from Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht who commended the Criminal Justice Reform of President Donald Trump and hoped her son can benefit from the same.
“We’re very grateful for and admire all President Trump has done for criminal justice reform, especially passing the First Step Act, because that has freed thousands of desperate and deserving people, some of whom I know. We’re praying and remain hopeful that he will show mercy on Ross, as he has others, and commute his sentence to time served and give my son a second chance at life,” Lyn told the Daily Beast.
As President Trump is set to leave office on January 20, 2021, Ross Ulbricht may become a free man by then if the sources are anything to go by.
