Ross Ulbricht is the founder of the online marketplace Silk Road. John Kiriakou says Ulbricht received a sentence of “life plus 75 years” — which he calls “some draconian sentence” — before President Trump pardoned him.[1]
Kiriakou says he met Ulbricht’s mother and sister two weeks before the pardon and told them he wanted to have them on his podcast because “this entire story is so sickening and it’s such a miscarriage of justice.” He notes their advocacy campaign — t-shirts, hashtags, a sustained push across podcasts — culminated in the pardon, which gave Kiriakou hope for clemency in his own circumstances.[1]