Dem
47
GOP
53
On Monday, Donald Trump pardoned the vast majority of the 1/6 insurrectionists. Apparently, he did not put his pardon pen away, because on Tuesday he announced another high-profile exercise of the pardon power. The beneficiary of the latest Trump beneficence is Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht. Until yesterday, Ulbricht had been serving a life term in federal prison, by virtue of having founded and operated a "dark web" network that facilitated $200 million in illicit trade—primarily illegal drugs, but also prostitution, child pornography, and other such things.
The official reason for the pardon is that Trump promised it to supporters, many times, while he was campaigning. Ulbricht is something of a folk hero to Libertarians, given his creation of a network that allows people to subvert both the law and the economic system (transactions were conducted via bitcoin). He's like Robin Hood, except with cryptocurrency and, you know, kiddie porn. Delivering on this promise was easy enough for the President, since he doesn't really care how many lawbreakers are out there (as long as they are not brown-skinned).
While the official story behind the pardon undoubtedly goes far in explaining what happened, it doesn't explain all of it. Trump feels a kinship with Ulbricht, and went so far as to declare that "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." Even more importantly, Trump wants to send the message that there's a new crypto sheriff in town, and that on that front, just about anything goes. Exactly why Trump might want to use his powers to do anything possible to stimulate the crypto economy, we will leave readers to figure out for themselves. (Z)