alt Hacker NewsRoss Ulbricht granted a full pardon
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I regret not voting for Trump. Hopefully most of his BS will be contested and the good stuff he does sticks.
I wonder if this action was executed at the suggestion of Mr. Musk?
It seems questionable Trump even understands or cares what Silk Road did or how it worked.
A. His prison sentence was totalitarian and three letters stole his crypto and illegally convicted him.
B. Orange is not a hero. I don't bow down to Kim Jong Un/Hitler wannabees.
C. Tor is a three letter honeypot.
I really wonder who benefits from this. Trump only does things that are good for him, or those close to him. I realize he's been making connections to the crypto world, and has his own meme coins. Does pardoning Ross somehow make crypto more valuable?
For all his many defects and cloudy motives for doing it, Trump deserves applause for this. It's with actions such as this that he also shows why he's a genuine maverick of a president, with who it's genuinely possible to expect deeply unexpected actions (for better or worse).
For all his talk of being progressive and cultivation of a youthful maverick image of his own, you would have never seen such a move from Obama and forget about it under the mealy mouthed Biden or a hypothetical Hillary administration. With Trump, rather uniquely and singularly, it happened.
Ulbricht made many mistakes, less so morally but definitely legally, of the kind with which he could have expected to cause punishment to rain down upon him, but the way in which his case was managed and the way in which he was sentenced truly were both disgusting in numerous ways.
They were classic examples of prosecutorial and political vengeance and give much truth to Trump's own description of the same as "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!”
If you in any way mistrust heavy-handed government prosecutions and persecutions, it's hard to disagree much, even if it's also not hard to imagine Trump being just as abusive in other contexts where prosecution of enemies would suit his interests and personal vengeance.
Now if we see him pardon Snowden too, i'd happily give a standing ovation.
Before someone here smugly chimes in about how Ulbricht also tried to hire out a murder by contract, bear in mind that this accusation was riddled with holes, suspicions of entrapment and in any case wasn't formally used for his sentencing, AND still wouldn't justify the kind of onerously grotesque sentence that was dumped on him. Pedophiles who committed child murders have been sentenced to less than Ulbricht was.
This pardon is corrupt. Ross' parents donated to Trump and he pardoned their son as a favour.
Whether or not you think he deserved the prison time, the problem here is how utterly brazen Trump is in accepting bribes.
Words can't describe how happy I am.
If I wanted to know this, I’d visit Reddit.
those thinking this is a criminal who shouldn’t be released i recommend reading this thread https://x.com/tayvano_/status/1641931312385888256
Hacker news absolutely loved this 1700 comments which makes me want to list all hacker news threads ordered by most comments because these are usually the best ones
This thread really shows how unhinged the community is. Dude hired contract killers and ran the most prolific darkweb forum for whatever. He's not some martyr. He's just a bum.
The sympathy for this guy from so many of you makes me sad.
The messages show he wanted and thought he was getting people murdered. But that's perfectly OK because it was actually the evil FBI he was talking to!
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