[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 19 (Wednesday, January 29, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S461-S462]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                             Trump Pardons

  Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise briefly to just draw my colleagues' 
attention to two items that, although seemingly unconnected, happened 
last week that I think are deeply connected.
  On Inauguration Day, January 20, President Trump declared a national 
emergency at the southern border of the United States. I just want to 
read two sentences from that declaration, January 20, 2025:

       Hundreds of thousands of Americans have tragically died 
     from drug overdoses because of the illicit narcotics that 
     have flowed across the southern border.

  I think 100 people in this Chamber would acknowledge that to be true.
  The second sentence in the same order:

       As Commander in Chief, I have no more solemn duty than to 
     protect the American people.

  I think 100 people in this Chamber would agree that is the most 
solemn duty of the Commander in Chief.
  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.
  I want to read a summary of the crimes for which Mr. Ulbricht was 
imprisoned and raise the question of why the President, who had 
expressed concern about drug running and said that his top goal was to 
protect the American people, would choose to do this on the second day 
of his Presidency.

       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.

  Two hundred million dollars.

       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 
     his 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.

  That account is from one of the many news articles describing the 
prosecution of Mr. Ulbricht and the pardon that was issued by President 
Trump on January 21.
  I just want to raise the obvious question: If illicit narcotics 
trafficking is sufficient to declare a national emergency, then why, 1 
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, 6 overdose deaths of individuals, and other challenges?
  One of the problems with the surplus of Executive orders in the first 
few days is that sometimes the sheer number can cause you to lose sight 
of some of what is happening. And I would assert that the pardon of Mr. 
Ulbricht undercuts the legitimacy of the claim

[[Page S462]]

that what President Trump is worried about is drug trafficking because 
if drug trafficking is bad, it is not only bad at the southern border; 
it is bad when somebody sets up an online drug trafficking market 
generating $200 million in revenue from illicit drugs and leading to 
overdose deaths of individuals.
  This is an action that is water under the bridge. There is nothing 
that can be done about it now. But if the only thing that can be done 
is to put it on the public record so that people can be aware that less 
than 24 hours after this emergency declaration, this drug trafficker 
was pardoned, I feel like that is an important thing that needs to be 
made visible to the American public.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.