A cocky FBI decided to taunt President-elect Donald J. Trump with an X-post of Ross William Ulbricht’s laptop less than a month before Trump returns to the White House and has the authority to keep his promise to commute Ulbricht’s double life sentences with a 40-year kicker without parole following his Feb. 5, 2015, conviction.
“On the Silk Road, a darknet site run by American cybercriminal Ross William Ulbricht, bargaining for illegal goods and services was as easy as clicking a button. #FBI investigators seized Ulbricht’s laptop and took down his criminal enterprise,” said the FBI’s X-post, which linked to an article about Ulbricht’s laptop and how the FBI keeps it as a war trophy, along with other artifacts, such as J. Edgar Hoover’s fedora hat, John Dillinger’s death mask, and a 1932 fingerprint kit.
On the Silk Road, a darknet site run by American cybercriminal Ross William Ulbricht, bargaining for illegal goods and services was as easy as clicking a button. #FBI investigators seized Ulbricht’s laptop and took down his criminal enterprise. Learn more: https://t.co/pgf8POSzwl pic.twitter.com/HwmnUClbgA
— FBI (@FBI) December 28, 2024
Ulbricht, who was also known as “Dread Pirate Roberts,” created the online Silk Road market from 2011 to his Oct. 1, 2013, arrest and seizure of the laptop.
Trump made his pledge in his May 25 address to the Libertarian Party Convention: “If you vote for me on Day One, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to time served.”
@realDonaldTrump told the @LPNational Convention May 25, 2024, he’d commute Ross Ulbricht’s sentence to time served. Ulbricht was sentenced to spend his life in federal lock up–after the feds convinced a jury he was responsible for all crimes done on his Silk Road portal. pic.twitter.com/JEhfZUFGt5
— ReporterMcCabe (@ReporterMcCabe) December 29, 2024
The X-post is not only a taunt for mentioning the man Trump promised to release from prison; it is a stunning contrast to the FBI’s handling of R. Hunter Biden’s laptop. John Paul Mac Isaac, owner of the Wilmington, Delaware, computer repair shop, handed the Hunter Laptop to the FBI in November 2019, but none of the crimes Biden was charged with were related to conduct documented there.
Hunter’s father, President Joseph R. Biden Jr., pardoned him Dec. 1 from any possible federal crimes from Jan. 1, 2014 through Dec. 1, 2024.
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Who Is Ross Ulbricht and Why Did Donald Trump Just Vow to Commute His Sentence?
As Ulbricht languishes at the U.S. Penitentiary in Tucson, Arizona, Hunter visited the Virgin Islands as part of the president’s entourage this weekend, including a Mass Saturday at Holy Name Catholic Church in the St. Croix town of Christiansted.
Ulbricht was convicted of drug trafficking, computer hacking, and money laundering—crimes he did not actually commit, but the Justice Department convinced the jury that the Austin, Texas, native was criminally responsible for any and all crimes perpetrated on his online portal.
In addition to his enhanced double life sentences, the federal government recovered a cache of Bitcoin stolen from Ulbricht that today would be worth roughly $5 billion, which the federal government then applied to the $184 million fine tagged onto his incarceration.
The rest of the Bitcoin was seized by the government on Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020,
The graduate of the University of Texas at Dallas exhausted his last appeal in 2018, meaning that at the age of 34, he was looking at the potential of multiple decades of federal time.
Maria Bueno, the co-host of the “WeAreChange” Rumble show, is one of the leading advocates for Ulbricht’s release.
“The FBI and other government agencies are corrupt institutions that will go after American citizens and frame them for alleged crimes,” Bueno said.
The Miami resident said in the middle of the case against Ulbricht, corrupt federal agents were caught running their own crime operation.
“DEA agent Carl Force and Secret Service agent Shaun Bridges were both charged and served time for wire fraud and money laundering,” she said. “It is also suspected that the murder-for-hire scheme was orchestrated by them; however, those charges were dropped.”
The murder plot was another bizarre twist in the case. Federal prosecutors never charged Ulbricht with the murders that drug dealer James Ellison claimed he committed on behalf of the Silk Road founder.
The feds charged Ellison with narcotics and money laundering crimes.
A Justice Department press release described the murder plots in detail but then added this disclaimer: “Law enforcement does not possess any evidence that the purported murders Ellingson claimed to have arranged actually took place.”
Bueno said Ulbricht’s mistake was capitalism.
“Ross Ulbricht is guilty of building a free-market website that used Bitcoin, and for that crime, he was sentenced to 240 years in jail,” she said.
“He did not sell drugs himself and was not able to present a defense at trial. The jury never heard about the corrupt agents with access to the administrative side of the website.”
