01/29/2025 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 01/29/2025 20:05
BROADCAST-QUALITY VIDEO OF KAINE'S FLOOR SPEECH IS AVAILABLE HERE.
WASHINGTON, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Tim Kaine (D-VA) spoke on the Senate floor to discuss President Trump's alarming pardon of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of Silk Road, the world's largest online drug marketplace. Trump pardoned Ulbricht, who was serving life in prison, on his second day in office. In 2015, Ulbricht was convicted on seven counts, including distributing narcotics and conspiring to launder money, for his involvement with Silk Road. Government investigators identified six individuals whose lethal overdoses were caused by drugs purchased on the site, one of whom was 16 years old.
"On Inauguration Day, January 20, President Trump declared a national emergency at the southern border of the United States, and I want to read two sentences from that declaration," said Kaine. "Hundreds of thousands of Americans have tragically died from drug overdoses because of the illicit narcotics that have flowed across the southern border…As Commander in Chief, I have no more solemn duty than to protect the American people."
Kaine continued, "Those two sentences are why I was so surprised at an action the President took the next day, January 21, 2025: the pardon of drug kingpin Ross Ulbricht."
"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," Kaine said. "At least six deaths were attributed to drugs bought on Silk Road."
"I just want to raise the obvious question. If illicit narcotics trafficking is sufficient to declare a national emergency, then why, one day later, was it a justifiable, appropriate, laudable use of presidential power to give a pardon to somebody who had set up an online global digital drug trafficking network that had generated $200 million in revenue, 1.5 million transactions of sales of illicit drugs, six overdose deaths of individuals, and other challenges?" Kaine asked.
"I would assert that the pardon of Mr. Ulbricht undercuts the legitimacy of the claim of what Mr. President Trump is worried about is drug trafficking," Kaine concluded. "…If the only thing that can be done is to put it on the public record so that people can be aware, less than 24 hours after this emergency declaration, this drug trafficker was pardoned, I feel like that's an important thing that needs to be made visible to the American public."
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