Clemency for Ross Ulbricht?
Manage episode 449155204 series 3588874
Clemency for Ross Ulbricht!
You will hear from very well respected people who have been on the right side telling truth about government crimes. Thomas Massie, Tulsi Gabbard, Jo Jorgensen, RFK jr, Vivek Ramaswamy and Donald Trump all think he should be pardoned or have his sentence commuted. And of course the Libertarian and anarchist communities have his back.
First lets steel man the case for Ross.
What did he do? He basically made an online black market. People could buy and sell whatever so long as it didnt harm a third party, so this put restrictions on child porn, stolen goods etc. (But not really because sellers can just lie). Using Tor and BTC to hide identities for a “free market experiment” Ulbricht and others built a digital black-market used to sell typical things but mainly used to sell narcotics. He’s been in prison for 11 years already even though he never committed any violent acts. His sentencing was for two life sentences plus 40 years with no parole. This appears to go against the 8th amendment.
In 2020 Thomas Massie explained:
Who are the two federal agents mentioned in this clip and what were the horrendous accusations that were dropped and Ross wasn’t even charged with doing?
Carl Force, a special agent with the DEA, and Shaun Bridges, special agent with the U.S. Secret Service were both arrested for stealing crypto in the Ross Ulbricht investigation.
Force was a lead agent in the case and was the main investigator communicating with Ulbricht. Bridges was the computer forensics expert on the case. These are the two who apparently just made up murder for hire charges against Ross that mysteriously were dropped. They accusations are what got Ross denied bail.
The government agents tasked with policing crypto were themselves stealing crypto.
Bridges allegedly stole $820,000, using a series of wire transfers to move Bitcoin that earlier had been stolen from Silk Road in early 2013 and deposited in a Japanese bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, according to prosecutors. Two days later, Bridges signed the government’s warrant to seize millions of dollars in bitcoin from Mt. Gox accounts.
Force allegedly set up fake online personas and tried to extort money from Ulbricht, including once trying to get $250,000 from him in exchange for not providing information to federal investigators, the criminal complaint says.
Using the online persona “French Maid,” Force did succeed in getting $100,000 in Bitcoin from Ulbricht, which Force deposited in his personal accounts, the federal complaint says. He later used a series of Bitcoin and personal U.S. dollar transactions, including a $235,000 wire transfer to an account in Panama, to launder the stolen money, prosecutors allege in the complaint.
According to prosecutors, Force also used his position as an executive at a digital currency exchange called CoinMKT, in which he was an investor, to seize accounts of customers. He transferred $297,000 in illegally-seized digital currency to his personal accounts.
Sounds really bad. And it gets worse however don’t rush to Ross’s innocents just yet.
In addition to this it appears the NSA through the illegal means of parallel construction led to the FBI catching Ross. Or as Edward Snowden alluded to, the NSA may have used quasi legal means via the five-eyes to outsource spying forbidden in the US to a partner and letting them do the dirty work.
Furthermore the charges that were brought up to deny Ross bail but were never followed through on were accusations of 6 hire to kill orders.
Why would they accuse Ross of hiring hit men and then all of those counts went away?
Here is where the details matter.
The free market is my religion crowd is going to be going nuts.
1 it was just drugs which ought to be legal anyway
2 ok they are illegal but his sentence is too steap. He has served 11 years already that’s enough.
3 He was a 26 year old guy that made a website for encrypted transactions, but he didn’t sell drugs himself
4 The agents in the case were thieves themselves!
5 Chuck Schumer and horrible government people just hate the idea of BTC and wanted to make an example out of someone.
6 The charges about hired guns were all dropped so they probably made them up.
7 The FBI broke the 4th amendment on searches and seizures, they lied about the process of catching him. The NSA was likely illegally involved.
OK so far sounds like Ross got screwed. And in typical fashion the government is a bunch of lying criminals.
The second part is certainly true.
However…
He is pretty damn guilty unless there are multiple Dread Pirate Roberts. $1.2 Billion in drugs is not a minor operation. Narcotics were backbone of Silk Road.
He also didn’t get a fair trial and federal agents Carl Ford and Shaun Bridges were stealing crypto themselves. Sure and they were both jailed for that too. But Ross absolutely was DPR and though scammed by James Ellingson about fake hits. He was under the impression they were real and was also knowingly moving mass qualities of LSD.
They didn’t include the murder for hire charges in 2015 because they didn’t catch “redandwhite” until 2018 plus the 1.2 billion dollars in drug sales was enough to put Ross away forever anyway.
I know we automatically think government bad, website guy good, but in this case both were bad. I don’t really care if ppl buy sell or do drugs it’s their body but silkroad also allowed for blackmailing, extortion and Ross was willing to kill people so he is where he belongs. They only question is how long should he stay there? Is he really still a threat to society? I don’t think so but to pretend he’s is a dindu is wrong.
To prove multiple Dread Pirate Roberts, all they would only need to prove that DPR sent a message or logged in while Ross had an alibi. This could be done with any message to any one too and yet his defense couldn’t do that even once. He DID try to have people killed. Let him rot.
12 episoder