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.
In an expansion of its business of processing pharmaceuticals in Earth’s orbit, Varda Space Industries is renting a large El Segundo plant where toy manufacturer Mattel used to design Hot Wheels and Barbie dolls.
The plant in El Segundo’s aerospace corridor will be an extension of Varda Space Industries’ headquarters in a much smaller building on nearby Aviation Boulevard.
Varda will occupy a 205,443-square-foot industrial and office campus at 2031 E. Mariposa Ave., which will give it additional capacity to manufacture spacecraft at scale, the company said.
Originally built in the 1940s as an aircraft facility, the complex has a history as part of aerospace and defense industries that have long shaped the South Bay and is near a host of major defense and space contractors. It is also close to Los Angeles Air Force Base, headquarters to the Space Systems Command.
Workers test AstroForge’s Odin asteroid probe, which was lost in space after launch this year.
(Varda Space Industries)
Varda is one of a new generation of aerospace startups that have flourished in Southern California and the South Bay over the last several years, particularly in El Segundo, often with ties to SpaceX.
Elon Musk’s company, founded in 2002 in El Segundo, has revolutionized the industry with reusable rockets that have radically lowered the cost of lifting payloads into space. Though it has moved its headquarters to Texas, SpaceX retains large-scale operations in Hawthorne.
Varda co-founder and Chief Executive Will Bruey is a former SpaceX avionics engineer, and the company’s spacecraft are launched on SpaceX’s workhorse Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.
Varda makes automated labs that look like cylindrical desktop speakers, which it sends into orbit in capsules and satellite platforms it also builds. There, in microgravity, the miniature labs grow molecular crystals that are purer than those produced in Earth’s gravity for use in pharmaceuticals.
It has contracts with drug companies and also the military, which tests technology at hypersonic speeds as the capsules return to Earth.
Its fifth capsule was launched in November and returned to Earth in late January; its next mission is set in the coming weeks. Varda has more than 10 missions scheduled on Falcon 9s through 2028.
For the last several decades, the Mariposa Avenue property served as the research and development center for Mattel Toys. El Segundo has also long been a center for the toy industry as companies like to set up shop in the shadow of Mattel.
The Mattel facility “has always been an exceptional property with a legacy tied to aerospace innovation, and leasing to Varda Space Industries feels like a natural continuation of that story,” said Michael Woods, a partner at GPI Cos., which owns the property.
“We are proud to support a company that is genuinely pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, and are excited to watch Varda grow and thrive here in El Segundo,” Woods said.
As one of the country’s most active hubs of aerospace and defense innovation, El Segundo has seen its industrial property vacancy fall to 3.4% on demand from space companies, government contractors and technology startups, real estate brokerage CBRE said.
Successful startups often have to leave the neighborhood when they want to expand, real estate broker Bob Haley of CBRE said. The 9-acre Mattel facility was big enough to keep Varda in the city.
Last year, Varda subleased about 55,000 square feet of lab space from alternative protein company Beyond Meat at 888 Douglas St. in El Segundo, which it started moving into in June.
Varda will get the keys to its new building in December and spend four to eight months building production and assembly facilities as it ramps up operations. By the end of next year, it expects to have constructed 10 more spacecraft.
In the future, Varda could consolidate offices there, given its size. Currently, though, the plan is to retain all properties, creating a campus of three buildings within a mile of one another that are served by the company’s transportation services, Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Barr said.
“We already have Varda-branded shuttles running up and down Aviation Boulevard,” he said.
Ships near the Strait of Hormuz before and after attacks began
Every day, around 80 oil and gas tankers typically pass through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow waterway off Iran’s southern coast that carries a fifth of the world’s oil and a significant amount of natural gas.
On Monday, just two oil and gas tankers appear to have crossed the strait, according to a New York Times analysis of shipping activity from Kpler, an industry data firm. Since then, one tanker passed through.
“It’s a de facto closure,” said Dan Pickering, chief investment officer of Pickering Energy Partners, a Houston financial services firm. “You’ve got a significant number of vessels on either side of the strait but no one is willing to go through.”
Tankers have been staying away from Hormuz since the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran that began on Saturday. A prolonged conflict could ripple broadly across the global economy, threatening the energy supplies of countries halfway around the world and stoking inflation.
International oil prices have climbed 12 percent since the fighting began, trading Tuesday around $81 a barrel, and natural gas prices have surged in Europe and in Asia.
A senior Iranian military official threatened on Monday to “set on fire” any ships traveling through the Strait of Hormuz. Vessels in the region have already come under attack. Several oil and gas facilities have also been struck or affected by nearby shelling, though the damage did not initially appear to be catastrophic.
Where ships and energy facilities have been damaged
A fire broke out Tuesday at a major energy hub in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, from the falling debris of a downed drone, the authorities said. On Monday, Qatar halted production of liquefied natural gas, or fuel that has been cooled so that it can be transported on ships, after attacks on its facilities.
The sharp reduction in tanker traffic is reducing the supply of oil and gas to world markets, pushing up prices for both commodities. And the longer that ships stay away from the Strait of Hormuz, the less oil and gas get out to the world, which could raise prices even more.
Shipping companies have paused their tankers to protect their crew and cargo, and because insurance companies are charging significantly more to cover vessels in the conflict area.
On Tuesday, President Trump said that “if necessary,” the U.S. Navy would begin escorting tankers through the strait. He also said a U.S. government agency would begin offering “political risk insurance” to shipping lines in the area.
In addition to tankers, other large vessels regularly go through the strait, including car carriers and container ships. In normal conditions, nearly 160 make the trip each day.
Some ships in the region turn off the devices that broadcast their positions, while others transmit false locations — making it hard to give a full picture of the traffic in the strait.
The Shiva is a small oil tanker that has repeatedly faked its location, according to TankerTrackers.com, which tracks global oil shipments. It is suspected of carrying sanctioned Iranian oil, according to Kpler. The Shiva was one of the two tankers that crossed the strait on Monday.
The oil and gas that typically move through the strait come from big producing countries like Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran and United Arab Emirates, and are exported around the world.
Where tankers moving through the Strait have traveled
In 2024, more than 80 percent of the oil and gas transported through the Strait of Hormuz went to Asia. China, India, Japan and South Korea were the top importers, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Countries have energy stockpiles that could last them into the coming months, but a continued shutdown of the strait could damage their economies.
Several big disruptions have roiled supply chains in recent years, but the tanker standstill in the Strait of Hormuz could have an outsize impact.
Paramount Skydance’s jubilation over its come-from-behind victory to claim Warner Bros. Discovery has entered a new phase:
Call it the deal-debt hangover.
Two major ratings agencies have raised concerns about Paramount’s credit because of the enormous debt the David Ellison-led company will have to shoulder — at least $79 billion — once it absorbs the larger Warner Bros. Discovery, bringing CNN, HBO, TBS and Cartoon Network into the Paramount fold.
Fitch Ratings said Monday that it placed Paramount on its “negative” ratings watch, and downgraded its credit to BB+ from BBB-, which puts the company’s credit into “junk” territory. Fitch said it took action due to “uncertainty” surrounding Paramount’s $110-billion deal for Warner Bros. Discovery, which the boards of both companies approved on Friday.
S&P Global Ratings took similar action.
To finance the Warner takeover, Ellison’s billionaire father, Larry Ellison, has agreed to guarantee the $45.7 billion in equity needed. Bank of America, Citibank and Apollo Global have agreed to provide Paramount with more than $54 billion in debt financing.
“Potential credit risks include the prospective debt-funded structure, Fitch’s expectation of materially elevated leverage and limited visibility on post-transaction financial policy and capital structure,” Fitch said.
Late last week, Paramount sent $2.8 billion to Netflix as a “termination fee” to officially end the streaming giant’s pursuit of Warner Bros. That payment paved the way for Warner and Paramount’s board to enter into the new merger agreement.
Paramount hopes the merger will be wrapped up by the end of September. It needs the approval of Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders and regulators, including the European Union.
Paramount executives acknowledged this week the new company would emerge with $79 billion in debt — a considerably higher total than what Warner Bros. Discovery had following its spinoff from AT&T. That 2022 transaction left Warner Bros. Discovery with nearly $55 billion of debt, a burden that led to endless waves of cost-cutting, including thousands of layoffs and dozens of canceled projects.
Warner still has $33.5 billion in debt, a lingering legacy that will be passed on to Paramount.
Paramount plans to restructure about $15 billion in Warner Bros. Discovery’s existing debt.
Paramount CEO David Ellison at a 2024 movie premiere for a Netflix show.
(Evan Agostini / Invision / AP)
Paramount told Wall Street it would find more than $6 billion in cost cuts or “synergies” within three years — a number that has weighed heavily on entertainment industry workers, particularly in Los Angeles.
Hollywood already is reeling from previous mergers in addition to a sharp pullback in film and television production locally as filmmakers chase tax credits offered overseas and in other states, including New York and New Jersey.
Some entertainment executives, including Netflix Co-Chief Executive Ted Sarandos, have speculated that Paramount will need to find more than $10 billion in cost cuts to make the math work. More recently, Sarandos went higher, telling Bloomberg News that Paramount may need $16 billion in cuts.
Cognizant of widespread fears about additional layoffs, Paramount Chief Operating Officer Andrew Gordon took steps this week to try to tamp down such concerns.
Gordon is a former Goldman Sachs banker and a former executive with RedBird Capital Partners, an investor in Paramount and the proposed Warner Bros. deal. He joined Paramount last August as part of the Ellison takeover.
During a conference call Monday with analysts, Gordon said Paramount would look beyond the workforce for cuts because the company wants to maintain its film and TV production levels.
Paramount plans to look for cost savings by consolidating the “technology stacks and cloud providers” for its streaming services, including Paramount+ and HBO Max, Gordon said. The company also would search for reductions in corporate overhead, marketing expenses, procurement, business services and “optimizing the combined real estate footprint.”
It’s unclear whether Paramount would sell the historic Melrose Avenue lot or simply centralize the sprawling operations onto the Warner Bros. and Paramount lots in Burbank and Hollywood.
Workers are scattered throughout the region.
HBO, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery, maintains its West Coast headquarters in Culver City; CBS television stations operate from CBS’ former lot off Radford Avenue in Studio City; and CBS Entertainment and Paramount cable channels executive teams are located in a high-rise off Gower Street and Sunset Boulevard, blocks from the Paramount movie studio lot.
“The combination of PSKY and WBD could create a materially stronger business than either individual entity,” Standard & Poor’s said in its note to investors. “However, this transaction presents unique challenges because it would involve the combination of three companies, with the smallest, Skydance, being the controlling entity.”
David Ellison’s production firm, Skydance Media, was the entity that bought Paramount, creating Paramount Skydance.
Ellison has not announced what the combined company will be called.
Paramount shares closed down more than 6% Tuesday to $12.45.
Warner Bros. Discovery fell 1% to $28.20. Netflix added less than 1% to close at $97.70.
Startup Varda Space Industries snags former Mattel plant in El Segundo
Meet the Mexican American talent behind ‘KPop Demon Hunters’
DTLA has a new theater — inside a fake electrical box
Sen. Padilla preps for Trump trying to seize control of elections via emergency order
After rash of overdose deaths, L.A. banned sales of kratom. Some say they lost lifeline for pain and opioid withdrawal
Florida High School Football Rankings: Top 25 teams – Oct. 21
Cleary's 21 help Le Moyne down Central Connecticut State 69-64 in OT
How old is Bo Nix? What to know about Oregon quarterback ahead of 2024 NFL Draft
99th annual Pony Swim held in Virginia
Indiana Members Credit Union announced as new anchor tenant at Bottleworks District
Which oil and gas facilities in the Gulf have been attacked?
Mojtaba Khamenei, son of former supreme leader, tipped to become Iran’s next head of state
Video: Senators Question Kristi Noem on ICE Immigration Tactics
Combustible Republican Senate primary in Texas heading into overtime
Hungarian veto proves EU needs less unanimity, says new Dutch PM
-
World6 days agoExclusive: DeepSeek withholds latest AI model from US chipmakers including Nvidia, sources say
-
Massachusetts7 days agoMother and daughter injured in Taunton house explosion
-
Denver, CO7 days ago10 acres charred, 5 injured in Thornton grass fire, evacuation orders lifted
-
Louisiana1 week agoWildfire near Gum Swamp Road in Livingston Parish now under control; more than 200 acres burned
-
Oregon5 days ago2026 OSAA Oregon Wrestling State Championship Results And Brackets – FloWrestling
-
Florida3 days agoFlorida man rescued after being stuck in shoulder-deep mud for days
-
Maryland3 days agoAM showers Sunday in Maryland
-
Wisconsin2 days agoSetting sail on iceboats across a frozen lake in Wisconsin