Business
How Trump Decided to Pardon Silk Road Founder Ross Ulbricht
In December 2023, Angela McArdle, the chair of the Libertarian Party, flew to Mar-a-Lago to meet with Donald J. Trump.
Mr. Trump wanted to know how to win over libertarian voters, a constituency he thought could help him reclaim the presidency, Ms. McArdle said in an interview. She had an answer: Free Ross Ulbricht, a Bitcoin pioneer who was sentenced to life in prison in 2015 for creating Silk Road, the world’s largest online drug marketplace. Mr. Ulbricht was regarded as a libertarian hero for building an illegal market outside the government’s reach.
“I love freeing people,” Mr. Trump said, according to Ms. McArdle. Five months later, she hosted him at the Libertarian Party’s national convention, where he announced onstage that, if elected to the presidency, he would release Mr. Ulbricht.
On Tuesday, the day after his inauguration, Mr. Trump made good on that promise. He called Mr. Ulbricht’s mother, Lyn Ulbricht, to personally tell her that he had granted a full pardon to her son, who is now 40. In a post on Truth Social, Mr. Trump said the decision was “in honor of her and the Libertarian Movement, which supported me so strongly.”
Mr. Ulbricht’s pardon was not an obvious agenda item for Mr. Trump. Unlike the nearly 1,600 people who received pardons or commutations this week for their involvement in the Jan. 6 riot, Mr. Ulbricht had little direct connection to the president. But the move had long been in the works, after more than a decade of activism by Mr. Ulbricht’s supporters — including cryptocurrency investors, libertarian politicians and especially Ms. Ulbricht, who was a vocal proponent for her son’s release.
Many of them have enjoyed an unusual level of access to Mr. Trump. As it became clear last year that Mr. Trump would be the Republican nominee, they waged a behind-the-scenes lobbying campaign to secure a pardon — including pledging to raise money for his election bid — in what has turned into a case study of how a special interest group can mobilize to influence the president.
Ms. McArdle said she was put in contact with Mr. Trump by Richard Grenell, one of his longtime advisers and a former acting director of national intelligence, who suggested she treat conversations with Mr. Trump like a business negotiation.
“Ric was like, ‘He’s a deal-maker, Angela,’” she said. “Don’t be afraid to ask for something.”
Mr. Grenell, Ms. Ulbricht and the Trump administration did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Ulbricht’s pardon shows “that if you have a concentrated base of people around Trump, you have a very good chance at a pardon,” said Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor who teaches at Columbia Law School. “There are problems with the pardon system working that way.”
Mr. Ulbricht launched Silk Road in 2011 and turned it into one of the most popular outposts of the so-called Dark Web, a hidden corner of the internet that people can access only through a special browser. Silk Road facilitated over 1.5 million transactions, generating more than $200 million in revenue from the sale of heroin, methamphetamine, cocaine and other drugs, authorities have said. Users transacted anonymously with Bitcoin, then a nascent cryptocurrency, and could post Amazon-style product ratings.
In 2013, the F.B.I. arrested Mr. Ulbricht at a San Francisco library and charged him with running Silk Road. In court, prosecutors presented evidence that Mr. Ulbricht had also solicited the murders of people he considered threats to the business, though he was never tried on murder-for-hire charges and there was no indication that any killings took place.
At least six deaths were attributed to drugs bought on Silk Road, prosecutors said in court. A federal judge in the Southern District of New York, where the case was tried, called Mr. Ulbricht “the kingpin of a worldwide digital drug-trafficking enterprise” whose actions were “terribly destructive to our social fabric.” In 2015, he received a life sentence for drug distribution, money laundering and other charges, and was eventually moved to a federal prison in Arizona.
The punishment struck some legal experts as harsh. It also drew protests from libertarians who opposed severe drug penalties and crypto enthusiasts who viewed Mr. Ulbricht as a pioneer.
Silk Road “onboarded a million people to Bitcoin,” said David Bailey, the chief executive of the news publication Bitcoin Magazine, who campaigned for Mr. Ulbricht’s release. “He represents many of the ideological views of our community.”
From prison, Mr. Ulbricht played up his connection to Bitcoin. In October 2018, he sent a letter to his mother celebrating the 10th anniversary of the cryptocurrency’s founding and likened himself to a “proud parent” of the technology.
“I guess I’m the estranged father in prison though, who can’t be there to help raise his kid,” he wrote in the letter, which was later published by Bitcoin Magazine.
On social media accounts maintained by his family, Mr. Ulbricht also shared artwork, updates on his prison gardening and thoughts on new technologies. The accounts posted links to online petitions asking for clemency, tagging Mr. Trump and Trump family members.
Behind the scenes, Ms. Ulbricht worked to popularize the slogan “Free Ross,” which become a rallying cry at crypto conferences. She also networked with Republican politicians and far-right influencers, hoping to reach Mr. Trump’s inner circle.
After he lost the 2020 election, Mr. Trump considered freeing Mr. Ulbricht, and at least one lobbyist was paid $22,500 to help secure his release, according to financial forms. But Mr. Trump left office without taking action.
“The higher the hope, the greater the disappointment, and our hopes were sky high for a commutation of sentence,” Mr. Ulbricht’s family posted on social media in January 2021.
The new Republican presidential campaign offered a fresh opportunity.
In 2023, Ms. Ulbricht renewed her push to connect with influential Republicans, including Vivek Ramaswamy, who was running for president, two people close to her said. Mr. Ramaswamy, who did not respond to a request for comment, committed to freeing Mr. Ulbricht if elected and spoke openly about meeting his mother.
Then in late 2023, Ms. McArdle was contacted by Mr. Grenell, who asked on behalf of Mr. Trump for advice on courting the libertarian vote, she said. Soon she was on a plane to Florida to meet Mr. Trump.
At the meeting, Ms. McArdle told Mr. Trump that Mr. Ulbricht was the victim of prosecutorial overreach and a biased criminal justice system, echoing complaints that the former president had made since leaving office.
“It’s the same court stuff in New York that has been giving you a hard time,” she said she told him.
Last year, Mr. Trump and his staff also met with Mr. Bailey and other representatives of Bitcoin Magazine, who pushed for Mr. Ulbricht’s release. Tracy Hoyos-López, who worked for the magazine, has said publicly that the introduction was arranged by Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016. (Ms. Hoyos-López is the daughter of Hector Hoyos, a friend and former business partner of Mr. Manafort.)
On social media, Mr. Bailey announced that he planned to raise a “$100m war chest for the Trump campaign.” He also went to Mar-a-Lago in June, he said in an interview, where he presented Mr. Trump with a letter from Lyn Ulbricht.
By then, Mr. Trump had already vowed to free Mr. Ulbricht at the Libertarian Party convention. He doubled down on that pledge in July at a conference in Nashville organized by Bitcoin Magazine, saying he would commute Mr. Ulbricht’s sentence — allowing him to walk free, but without erasing the conviction. Around that time, Mr. Trump also met privately with Ms. Ulbricht, said Ms. McArdle, who was briefed on the meeting.
Ms. McArdle has faced blowback from other libertarians for her dealings with Mr. Trump. But she was still in touch with the new administration last week, and requested that Mr. Trump grant Mr. Ulbricht a full pardon, not just a commutation. “Promises made, promises kept,” a Trump staffer emailed her, according to a copy of the message viewed by The New York Times.
On Tuesday night, Ms. McArdle, Mr. Bailey and Ms. Hoyos-López gathered in a livestream on X to wait for updates. Mr. Bailey told listeners that Ms. Ulbricht was in Arizona, preparing for her son’s release.
Within hours of the pardon, an account on X controlled by Mr. Ulbricht’s family posted a photograph of him leaving prison with a small plant and a sack of belongings.
“FREEDOM!!!!” the post said.
Kenneth P. Vogel contributed reporting. Susan C. Beachy contributed research.
Layoffs have continued with another tech company saying it was cutting people to enable it to use more artificial intelligence.
Groupon announced in a security filing this month that it will cut up to 400 jobs, or nearly 25% of its worldwide workforce, as part of a broader restructuring plan to make the platform AI-native. The Chicago company plans to carry out the layoffs in the coming months.
Earlier the company’s Chief Executive Officer Dušan Šenkypl had said the company “fell short of our expectations” last quarter.
Since 2022, more than 800,000 tech workers have been laid off, according to Layoffs.fyi, a website that tracks job cuts.
The surge in pink slips started in 2023, when companies that had gone on hiring sprees during the COVID-19 pandemic began to cut back. From January to April this year, U.S. tech employers announced 85,411 job cuts, up 33% from the same period last year, according to global outplacement and executive coaching firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.
Groupon said in the filing that the decision to shift toward an AI-based company is to “better deliver on our mission, serving both customers and merchants.”
The company said the layoffs will cost it as much as $13 million, but save it more than $20 million per year.
This announcement comes as many e-commerce companies are shifting their business models to AI to reduce costs by automating many roles.
Artificial intelligence has also triggered fierce competition for top talent and is also fueling tens of thousands of layoffs this year. The result is that the class divide is widening in Silicon Valley as a tiny group of employees are landing unprecedented packages for AI skills, while many others struggle to find work.
The have-nots are doing everything that used to guarantee great jobs — refreshing resumes, optimizing LinkedIn profiles and doing interviews — but companies are much more picky these days. The tech jobless are rethinking their lives. Some are taking pay cuts, while others are leaving tech. Some are going back to study or launch startups. Some have retired.
Groupon shares, which have fallen 27% over the last 12 months, slipped 1% on Thursday to $21.20.
Walt Disney Co.’s ABC has filed renewal applications with the Federal Communications Commission “under protest” after an order mandating a years-early review of the network’s eight television station licenses.
The criticism was part of the network’s applications for the FCC review, which were filed ahead of a deadline Thursday. In an objection to the early renewal, Disney’s New York station WABC called the FCC order “unlawful, arbitrary and unconstitutional” and said it was “legally indefensible.”
“The Commission had not demanded early renewal in over five decades,” the station wrote in its filing. “And it has never before demanded simultaneous license renewal applications from a group of stations commonly owned with a network as it has here. The order has no legitimate purpose.”
The licenses for the eight ABC-owned TV stations, including KABC in Los Angeles, were originally scheduled for renewal between 2028 and 2031.
The FCC order came shortly after ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel made a joke about First Lady Melania Trump looking like an “expectant widow” days before a gunman tried to breach the White House Correspondents’ Assn. gala last month that President Trump attended.
Trump has frequently threatened to have TV station licenses pulled when he is unhappy with their coverage, but the order is the first time the government has acted on his wishes, sparking anger from free speech advocates. The FCC has said the order is part of an investigation into whether Disney’s diversity and inclusion policies violate federal law and the agency’s rules against “unlawful discrimination.”
In its response, WABC said the “only plausible reason” to issue the order was to “punish the station for speech the government does not like.”
“The ultimate injury here is not to the station or its parent company. It is to the public,” WABC wrote. “When a broadcaster must weigh regulatory retaliation before making editorial decisions, the public loses access to journalism that is free from government influence.”
FCC Chairman Brendan Carr said in a statement Thursday that Disney filed its applications to renew its broadcast licenses only after the company was told its previous answers were “disingenuous, deficient and improper.”
“Contrary to Disney’s claim that the FCC called in their broadcast licenses for early renewal for no reason, the record shows something very different,” Carr said. “Broadcast licensees have a unique obligation to operate in the public interest. The FCC will follow the facts and law wherever they may lead.”
FCC Commissioner Anna M. Gomez, the panel’s only Democrat who has backed Disney in its fight, cheered the Burbank media and entertainment company’s filing, saying in a post on X that she was “glad to see them expose the FCC’s actions as nothing more than naked political retribution and an unlawful assault on free speech and a free press.”
Times staff writer Meg James contributed to this report.
Andrew here. Warning: If you bet on prediction markets about things you could know about from your work, it may be insider trading. That’s the lesson from new charges against an employee of Google.
Also, Jamie Dimon is thinking about spending $20 billion on acquisitions; we go through some possible targets. And take our quiz about the U.F.C. fight scheduled to take place at the White House.
Gaming prediction markets
In the public’s view, prediction markets are a way to bet on the N.B.A. playoffs, the Texas Senate race or what Costco executives will say on their next earnings call.
They’re also often seen as a hive of insider trading, a view reinforced by charges filed on Wednesday against a Google employee who made more than $1 million on Polymarket. The case raises more questions about how these platforms are policed — and who should do the policing.
What happened: The Google employee, Michele Spagnuolo (who used the handle AlphaRaccoon), was accused of betting on what people were searching for on Google — wagers he was sure to win because he had access to internal search data.
“Spagnuolo correctly predicted virtually all of the outcomes on these positions,” the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wrote in its complaint.
A Google representative said in a statement that using confidential information for making these kinds of bets was “a serious breach of our policies.”
Spagnuolo isn’t the only person charged with insider trading on Polymarket. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last month accused Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Special Forces soldier, of betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, an operation he participated in.
Insider trading is an increasing problem for prediction markets. Polymarket has faced significant scrutiny because its unregulated offshore platform has long made it easy to bet anonymously. (Kalshi, which is regulated in the U.S., has also suffered from insider trading.)
Polymarket has started clamping down on that practice, according to The Information — though some longtime users have chafed at those efforts. “Polymarket will go down the drain if they make KYC mandatory,” one user wrote on the company’s Discord discussion forum, referring to “know your customer” practices.
What are policymakers doing? Critics have accused the C.F.T.C., the primary American regulator of prediction markets, of failing to adequately police the industry. (Mike Selig, the commission’s chairman, told ABC News that his agency actively patrolled for wrongdoing.)
Some lawmakers are seeking to crack down on insider trading, including Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and several bipartisan groups of senators.
Why it matters: Prediction markets have become big businesses. (Kalshi was most recently valued at $22 billion.) But a growing perception that they’re rife with cheating could threaten their popularity.
HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to fund U.S. drone companies. Shares in Unusual Machines, a drone start-up in which Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisory board member, are soaring in premarket trading after The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported on the potential investments. (The Times hasn’t independently confirmed the report.) The deals, aimed at bolstering domestic production, are still in the negotiation stage — equity stakes are a possibility — as the Pentagon vets the companies, The Journal adds.
Investors brace for Thursday’s inflation data. The Personal Consumption Expenditures report for April, which will be closely watched by the Fed, is expected to show on Thursday that headline inflation hit a three-year high of 3.9 percent. The wartime energy spike is a big culprit, and that’s likely to tie the Fed’s hands on interest rates. Lisa Cook, a Fed governor whom President Trump has tried to fire, is the latest policymaker to say that there’s even a rate increase in the cards.
Jensen Huang reportedly agrees to join the board of a Chinese university. Huang, the Nvidia C.E.O., is expected to be the latest U.S. business leader to join the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, The Financial Times reports. Tim Cook, Apple’s departing C.E.O., is the chairman, and Michael Dell and Elon Musk are members. (Nvidia is trying to jump-start business in China as the Washington-Beijing trade war continues.) Laura Loomer, a right-wing agitator, quickly seized on the Huang news, calling it “a massive scandal!!!!” on social media, and a national security risk.
What might Dimon buy?
Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, is sitting on a pile of cash and says he’s open to a deal. He even put a number on it: up to $20 billion.
While that’s not a big sum relative to the bank’s assets, it got us thinking: Where could JPMorgan, whose last major acquisition was First Republic during the 2023 regional-banking crisis, go fishing for a company to buy? Brian O’Keefe asked Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo.
Here are three possibilities:
Wealth management. Driven by solid margins and lucrative high-net-worth customers, this area of finance has experienced an M.&A. boom in recent years. (The First Republic deal already bolstered JPMorgan’s wealth-advisory ranks.) Such a move would tick a lot of boxes, Mayo said, adding, “It could be a high-end private bank, it could be kind of a mass-affluent brokerage firm, it could be wealth advisory.”
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Mary Erdoes, who runs JPMorgan’s wealth management division, told analysts in February that her unit had reviewed 25 potential deals last year and passed on all of them.
Payments. JPMorgan has invested heavily in new payment platforms, including in JPM Coin, a digital token it has tested with Coinbase and Mastercard. The bank handles between $5 trillion and $10 trillion in transactions daily, Mayo said. “There could be more opportunities to enhance the efficiency, the effectiveness, the timeliness or the geographic reach in the payments area,” he added.
Digital banking. Dimon recently singled out Revolut, the British banking app that is plotting expansion into the U.S., as an emerging competitive threat. “To the extent that an acquisition could help JPMorgan become the next Revolut outside the United States, that would seem to be attractive,” Mayo noted.
There are some big asterisks to consider. Because of its size, JPMorgan would most likely be barred from buying another U.S. lender on antitrust grounds. For that reason, Mayo thinks that a deal, if there is one, would probably happen abroad.
Dimon himself is being coy. The bank may have amassed ample capital for acquisitions, but “it’s not burning a hole in our pocket at all,” Dimon said on Wednesday at an investor conference. “If it sits there for a while, no problem,” he added.
Dimon did not suggest any potential targets on Wednesday.
Here are some guesses:
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Aberdeen Group, Invesco or Julius Baer in wealth management?
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Revolut is too big, but how about Wise or Toast in payments?
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Or what about Monzo or Bunq, fintech banks that have grown rapidly in Europe?
Meta will charge for its chatbot
Meta will begin charging customers for access to its A.I.-powered chatbot, a big change for a company best known for its free products — and the latest sign that even deep-pocketed companies are wrestling with the enormous cost of artificial intelligence.
On Wednesday, we looked at how companies were reining in the costs of consuming A.I., including by switching to cheaper models. Meta’s move shows that the companies supplying A.I. models are also reckoning with ballooning costs, and seeking revenue to make up for those losses.
Meta is spending a fortune on A.I. Last month the company increased its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as high as $145 billion, and Meta’s C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, said it would spend at least $600 billion on A.I. infrastructure in the next few years.
Some investors have looked skeptically on that plan. The company’s stock is down 2.3 percent this year.
Meta will use paid subscriptions to offset some of its A.I. investment. The basic tier of the chatbot, Meta One Plus, will be $7.99 per month. A premium version, Meta One Premium, will cost $19.99. From Bloomberg, which reported the subscription news earlier:
Meta has long argued that its A.I. investments are already paying off in the form of highly targeted and efficient advertising, which is improved thanks to A.I. models. But the company is also looking for other ways to recoup its A.I. spending, and consumer chatbot subscriptions have become popular with several other A.I. competitors, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI. Both rivals offer similarly priced subscription tiers.
The company has sought to expand its subscription business, testing plans for WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. It has also tried to cut costs in other corners of its business. This month, Meta laid off 10 percent of its employee base, about 8,000 workers.
Investors, eager to see revenue gains from A.I., cheered Meta’s subscription-chatbot plan. The company’s stock price was up 3.7 percent at the market close on Wednesday.
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Elsewhere, shares in the software maker Snowflake are soaring in premarket trading on Thursday after it reported strong quarterly results that suggested that A.I. agents weren’t clobbering its core subscription business. Salesforce’s analyst call on Wednesday, however, renewed fears that this sector was still vulnerable to A.I. disruption.
Quiz: U.F.C. on the South Lawn
This question comes from a recent Times article. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.)
President Trump is getting ready to celebrate his 80th birthday — and America’s 250th — with an evening of mixed martial arts. Preparations are underway to host Ultimate Fighting Championship matches in an octagon on the White House’s South Lawn on June 14. Construction of the temporary arena, along with a 90-foot-tall arch known as “The Claw,” featuring LED lights and audio equipment, began this week.
U.F.C. plans to spend around $60 million on the event, said Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, U.F.C.’s parent company, on a recent earnings call. (He added that U.F.C. would lose about $30 million on the event but that it would be “an investment for the long term.”)
The expenses include about $700,000 to repair the lawn after the fight, Dana White, the U.F.C. president and chief executive, told Sports Business Journal.
How many people will the temporary arena hold for the U.F.C. event at the White House?
THE SPEED READ
Deals
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“SpaceX-Tesla Merger Is ‘Only a Matter of When,’ Early Investor Says” (Bloomberg)
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Shares in the European food-delivery company Delivery Hero are down sharply on Thursday after Uber, which is pursuing a takeover bid for the company, raised its stake to nearly 37 percent. (WSJ)
Politics, policy and regulation
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The attorneys general of New York and New Jersey subpoenaed FIFA over soaring World Cup ticket prices. (WSJ)
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Gov. Gavin Newsom of California said he would impose a 100 percent tax on payouts to state residents from the $1.8 billion fund tied to the Justice Department’s settlement with President Trump. (Politico)
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