Drugs, Crypto and the Pardon of Dread Pirate Roberts

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Monday December 01, 2025 · 6:37 PM PST

2025/12/01 · 18:37

Opioids, including fentanyl, were available on the Silk Road website.

Donald Trump is giving hypocrisy a bad name. His pardon of former Honduran president and convicted drug trafficker Juan Orlando Hernandez has re-focused attention on his baseless contention that he is fighting the illegal drug trade. He has used this as a pretext for his scandalous treatment of immigrants, his tariffs, and for his lawless attacks on boats in the Caribbean. But Trump’s indifference to drug addiction has been apparent for a long time.

It’s been obvious since at least January 21, 2025, the first full day of Trump’s second term. That was when he pardoned Ross Ulbricht, who created and ran the Silk Road website, a dark web marketplace for drugs and other illicit goods and services. Ulbricht, whose online pseudonym was “Dread Pirate Roberts”, was serving a life sentence for distributing narcotics, money laundering, creating fake ID’s and computer hacking. He was prosecuted by U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Preet Bharara, who was fired during Trump’s first term.

All Silk Road transactions were paid in crypto, to protect customers’ and sellers’ anonymity. (Don’t let anyone tell you that crypto has no practical uses.) Ulbricht’s pardon was promoted by libertarian crypto bros like Bitcoin Magazine editor, David Bailey. As late as 2021, Trump considered crypto a “scam”. Bailey led the effort to change Trump's mind, and succeeded, bigly. He is now Trump’s crypto advisor, helping to shape policy and fill regulatory positions. According to Reuters, the Trump family made $800+ million from crypto in just the first six months of 2025. The crypto folks know how to talk Trump's language.

In all the recent reporting on pardons, drugs, immigration, tariffs and boat attacks, I’m still looking for someone to refer back to the Ulbricht pardon. It perfectly illustrates Trump’s flagrant and open efforts to subvert U.S. drug laws for monetary gain. Efforts that have been underway, literally, from day one.

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