That makes sense!
Trump said he did it because libertarians wanted it and he wanted to reward them for their support. The fact that the person released was a major drug trafficker doesn’t matter to Trump because he doesn’t think that hard about things and probably doesn’t actually give a shit.
Anyone who is both MAGA and sees the contradiction isn’t going to question it or rationalize it away. Witness all the people currently defending Trump (or politely ignoring) for pardoning cop killers.
I can see Dr Ronnie Johnson replenishing the WH medicine cabinet using this guy. Fewer questions asked.
So what is this fella going to do with himself once he’s out of jail? I would hazard a guess that it’s going to be Silk Road 2.0 Electric Boogaloo Edition.
The NYT POW on this pardon:
And of course he will become a recidivist. What else can he do? He needs many millions and he can’t do anythin honest.
I know there’s a difference between commuting a sentence and a pardon. Does a “Full Pardon” mean the FBI has to pony up the 50,000 bitcoins they just sold and give them to Ulbricht?
I was able to read probably my one free article for the year on the NYT and it doesn’t say he gets his money (either what the BTC were worth when arrested - $200 million or the BTC they sold) so I’m not sure what nuance there is between regular pardon and full pardon. If the record says he never committted a crime, how can the gov justify taking his money?
Maybe…? If I am reading this right. (I am neither a lawyer nor a constitutional scholar.)
Constitution Annotated: ArtII.S2.C1.3.7 Legal Effect of a Pardon
More broadly, the Court ruled in several cases during this period that pardons entitled their recipients to recover property forfeited or seized on the basis of the underlying offenses, so long as vested third-party rights would not be affected and money had not already been paid into the Treasury (except as authorized by statute).
But it goes on to say:
Cases following Garland and Carlisle also began to note limits to the Court’s broad framing of the effect of a pardon, however; in Knote, the Court wrote that although a pardon blots out the offence in a legal sense, “it does not make amends for the past. . . . The offence being established by judicial proceedings, that which has been done or suffered while they were in force is presumed to have been rightfully done and justly suffered, and no satisfaction for it can be required.”
I believe the general prevailing opinion today in the courts is that a pardon doesn’t eliminate a person’s guilt. Going by that, the items seized from him were seized properly, he can’t get them back because they were not obtained by him legally in the first place, and he has no claim to them anymore. But it’s not like there is no case law suggesting he couldn’t ask for it back.
The US Department of Justice (DOJ) has been authorized to sell approximately 69,370 Bitcoin seized in connection with the Silk Road darknet marketplace, a haul currently valued at around $6.5 billion, DB News reported Wednesday. The decision is set to end a years-long legal dispute over the BTC stash’s ownership.
Dunno where I read it back then yet it didn’t mention Ulbricht might be released as a campaign promise of at least clemency going back months. In that case he just gets released as a felon. A pardon clears the record. Now what a “Full Pardon” is, if it’s something different, you’d think it makes some amends. Yet the DOJ sells of BTC - and that much would have taken some time and clearly driven the price down as it the sale of the blockchains proceeded - that money goes to the Treasury.
So you’re getting pardoned and released from Supermax. “Great!”
All the money you made is pretty much gone and out of reach, “Oh well”
Maybe the “Full Pardon” is something like a “Blanket Pardon” so they can’t grab him for tax evasion or something related. I believe one of his cohorts got convicted of Tax Evasion to secure he’d serve time like Al Capone no matter how the trial turned out.
Even in the most favorable quote I could find from the Congress website, even then if the forfeited property had already been paid into the Treasury, it’s gone. So if that Bitcoin was sold then there’s nothing to give back.
Shed a tear.
Let’s ask Gemini:
The difference between a pardon and a “full pardon” lies in the extent of their legal effects.
Pardon: A general term for an official act of forgiveness that releases a person from punishment for a crime. It may or may not include the restoration of certain rights.
Full Pardon: The most comprehensive form of pardon, completely absolving the individual from all legal consequences of the crime. This typically includes the restoration of all civil rights and the removal of any criminal record.
In essence, a pardon is a broader term that encompasses various forms of clemency, while a full pardon is a specific type of pardon that offers the most complete legal forgiveness.
So that plus the Legal effects of a pardon quoted above you might have a chance of getting your stuff (of any kind) back is up to the inclination of the court, then goes on to say the court is beginning to lean to not being inclined and furthermore, if it’s gone to the Treasury you are SOL.
I’m led to believe the sale in early January was so there could be no legal hold-up or challenges (or executive orders) if he only had a 1/100 chance of getting it back.
I’ve read he might have other BTC wallets and if he still has access to those he better get a good lawyer and accountant as he will have to pay taxes if he wants to convert any of that to cash. You really cannot use “Founded and operated illegal DarkNet drugstore” as “Source of Income” or maybe you can with a Full Pardon. Anyway, on the book and speaker circuit he’ll make legal money and he has two college degrees and a squeaky clean criminal record.