The Story Of Silk Road And Ross Ulbricht with Lyn Ulbricht

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JFS 03 | Silk Road

JFS 03 | Silk Road

The fake news media continues its streak of misinformation. During the past administration, this manipulation of information took a young man for its victim, leaving him with a double life sentence with no possibility of parole. Ross Ulbricht created a video game he called Silk Road that practices the free market economics. Being young and idealistic, his vision tagged along mistakes he couldn’t handle like selling illegal stuff and accepting payment only in cryptocurrency. The actual crime is yet to be seen until this day, with no victims claiming they suffered a loss, was injured or hurt. Lyn Ulbricht retells the story of his son stepping out, but unfortunately stepping on the toes of people that got upset. Has the court violated this young man’s rights throughout the trial? Do they even have the jurisdiction over the case?

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This episode will be with Lyn Ulbricht, the mother of Ross Ulbricht, who has been convicted and sentenced to two life terms without the possibility of parole in federal prison for operating a website called Silk Road. Mrs. Ulbricht and many others feel that the conviction was an error mainly because Ross really did nothing wrong, the sentence was extreme and vastly excessive, and the court violated his rights throughout the trial and the possibility exists that the court did not have jurisdiction in the matter. Ross was a very likable young man and was a scholarship student who graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Physics and earned his master’s degree at Penn State in Material Science. While at Penn State, he got involved in the Ron Paul campaign and libertarian thinking, the philosophy of economics, and the free market concepts.

Listen to the podcast here:

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The Story Of Silk Road And Ross Ulbricht with Lyn Ulbricht

Ross created a video game having to do with economics, but was unable to get it published. He created the Silk Road website, one of the purposes of which was to market his game. Another was to protect the anonymity and identity of its users. Silk Road was intended to function very much like Amazon.com, where various vendors would offer their products for sale. The big difference was that one, a small part of the things offered for sale on the website were illegal. Two, he accepted payments only in cryptocurrency.

This case is going to be very interesting to review. You had indicated that he wanted to set this up, the Silk Road, very similar to Amazon.com. The only problem that Ross missed is that he didn’t get a chance to charge the taxpayers $1.43 per package that goes out. Jeff Bezos has convinced lawmakers to pay him $1.43 for every package that goes out at Amazon. What do you think about that?

I didn’t know about it.

It’s gaining lot of traction here. The thing that interests me about Ross’ particular case is that a band of criminals that are involved in this particular case, a portion of those criminals would be Chuck Schumer out of New York. There’s a lot of information in this case and we haven’t had a chance to go through all of it yet. The information that I’ve seen in this case is going to be very exciting to expose and bring out in the cryptocurrency space. What they’ve done to this young man, I don’t think they’re going to get away with personally. Why would you give a kid a double life sentence without the possibility of parole? Do you have any thoughts on that, Justin?

A good part of that was because of the cryptocurrency. They’re trying to put a big reign on cryptocurrencies so that it has to be regulated. There are very little regulations that apply to it. He stepped out there and, in doing so, stepped on a lot of people’s toes. On top of that, he got people really upset with him. Chuck Schumer one, because they built this case so out of proportion, it’s ridiculous. Federal sentencing guidelines that apply to every conviction of a criminal nature in the courts, this shoots those guidelines right in the foot. It doesn’t comply to any of them.

We’ve yet to see what the actual crime is. All the information that we’ve looked at so far, we’ve yet to see a victim.

We have seen a lot of accusations, but we haven’t seen anybody come forth and say that they were hurt, that they were injured, that they had a loss. We haven’t seen anybody come forth and say, “Yes, all these happened on federal property.”

The federal government is going to state, “It doesn’t have to be on federal property because of the Interstate Commerce Clause. The 42nd Federalist Papers deals with, among other things, the Interstate Commerce Clause. What the constitution was trying to do with that clause was make sure that the persons of one state who wanted to ship their product or crops through another state to get to a port of debarkation didn’t have to pay the other state or states taxes to get their product through that state to the port.

Justin, you used a very important word there and that was “persons.” When the code is defined, usually they’ll have a definition for “persons.”

I misspoke there. Thank you for calling it to my attention. What I meant to refer to was ‘man’ as in mankind, both genders. When a man wants to send his products or crops through another state, that state cannot tax him for doing that. That’s the whole purpose of the Interstate Commerce Clause. What the federal government has done is said, “If you have a business in one state and any part of that business could possibly touch any other state, then we can control it all.”That’s not what the intent of the constitution framers had.

The part that is really interesting in this is that the different agencies are all coming together to try to get their little fingers in the crypto pie.

Some of the states are doing that on their own.

If you have an interest in knowing which states laws are the best for cryptocurrencies, let us know because we have an interest in going through and looking at the different states. Justin, I believe that you looked at New York’s particular licensing regulations. There are some other states that are going to read very similar to New York’s regulations.

They probably all will be similar to each other. One of the terms that I have found in the New York state is a phrase, “In this state.” That leads you to believe that they’re talking about the state of New York and that’s not true. They use that term primarily when they want the legislation that they’re passing to violate your rights.

That’s one of the tricks that the globalists have put in all the different states’ licensing rules.

Here in the state of Texas, in the taxing laws, that property can be taxed and we’re domiciled here.

This is a way that they’ve set this up to circumvent their constitutional box that the administrators have to stay in. Is that what you’re saying?

In Texas, where we are domiciled and where we live, they have created legislation which ostensibly allows them to tax property. The federal government’s Supreme Court has ruled on a number of occasions that no state can tax anything, any right that is protected by the federal constitution. Men have a right to property that is protected by the federal constitution. What the state of Texas has done, and many other states, maybe all the other states, is created their legislation to say that they can tax property in this state. Anybody reading that would think, “We’re talking about the state of Texas. We’re dead. There’s nothing we could do.” You’re not dead. They can’t tax it in Texas so they tax it in this state.

The case that we have that we’ve read several times before, Butcher’s Union Case, where it says that, “We have the right to preach the Gospel, to till the soil, to practice law,” that’s a case that the Supreme Court has ruled on. The way that the deep state has gotten around that is that they’ve injected this “In this state” in there. For years, we really couldn’t figure out how they were doing this. We found out their little trick that all the professions they’ve tried to funnel into “In this state.”

There are very few occupations that can be licensed. Butcher’s Union mentions not only the practice of law but the practice of medicine, the tilling of the soil, and the preaching of the Gospel. That also included dentistry, chiropractic, plumbers, carpenters, electricians, mechanics, all those things. Business licenses are only enforced because most businesses had incorporated. When they incorporated, they became a fictitious entity and they can be controlled by the state. If a man goes into business by himself, although they’re going to try to make him get a license and they will threaten him if he doesn’t, there’s really nothing to back it up with.

JFS 03 | Silk Road
Silk Road: Business licenses are only enforced because most businesses had incorporated. When they incorporated, they became a fictitious entity and they can be controlled by the state.

It’s the misinformation and the propaganda of the fake news media that continues to roll this out. The storyline of “if you want to be an attorney, then you have to go to school and you have to get licensed,” and the same thing with the doctor and all this other garbage that they have invaded our minds with that we’ve believed, now we’re in this mess. The great part about where we are and moving forward is that all of this is starting to get exposed, as far as what the deep state has done, what the globalists have tried to do, and how America has really dodged a major bullet with our current administration. Had this thing gone the other way, this would be a horrible place to be. We don’t want to offend that other certain aspect in our society and point out that living in your mother’s basement probably isn’t a good idea and that they should go and get a job and make a living for themselves.

Are you saying that we don’t want to call the legislature and the governors of the various states to participate in this type of subterfuge are liars? We don’t want to say that?

”Liars” is a hard term, but yeah, basically. It’s going to be a lot of fun to watch how 2018 and 2019 unfold. Everybody that’s surrounded by Ross’ particular case has set their own trap. Justin, let’s bring Lyn in and find out more about Ross’ case.

Lyn, tell us a little bit about Ross, where he grew up and the last year or so before all this government stuff started.

Ross had graduated with a Master’s Degree from Penn State in Material Science. His Bachelor’s is in Physics. His training was in science. He was a scholarship student. Not a computer programmer ever. He had started a small book-selling business. He got out of that. He went out to California to join a friend from high school to look into different ventures that his friend was proposing he get involved with. At Penn State, he got involved in the Ron Paul campaign, libertarian thinking, Austrian economics, and the whole philosophy of the free market. He had actually created a video game. His idea was to have a video game where people could experience, through a video game, what a free market really was and have it be like World of Warcraft or Second Life which people all over the world could experience. He almost got it published, but it didn’t get published, so he did it on the internet.

He set up Silk Road, which was a site that would protect the privacy and anonymity of its users. It used the little-known cryptocurrency, Bitcoin. Hardly anyone had heard of it then. It was worth very little. In fact, I asked him, “Should I get some?” because he was so excited about it. He goes, “No, mom, it’s too volatile.” It was under a dollar. That was the worst advice ever, but he had a lot of it and he was very excited about it. The site was designed to be product-agnostic. It was up to users what they bought and sold with restrictions. It was based on a voluntaries’ philosophy of only things that were voluntary and did no harm. This was very clearly stated in the site. For example, child pornography was prohibited. Stolen property was prohibited. Anything violent like assassinations or something like that was prohibited. As a libertarian, the philosophy was that if you chose to use drugs, that was your personal choice. Drugs we’re not prohibited. Because of the anonymity of the site, that attracted a lot of people exchanging drugs. It was mostly marijuana most of the time.

If you remember the way that they rolled out the internet, it was supposed to be completely anonymous. We know because of Snowden and because of other deals and other people, that everything that you do, every key stroke that you make, everything else is all recorded. It’s all documented. It’s all stored for a later point in time. That point in time is prosecution or to blackmail you for something if you get out of rank and file. In America, that’s not what we were sold. That’s not the American dream at all.

That’s one of the points in the petition to the Supreme Court that Ross and his team filed, which is that all the government needs is your email address and they can track you as if you had a collar on, like you were an animal. They can take it from an email address, which you can use anywhere in the world, to your home, to your devices. As long as you use those devices, they can geographically track you. “Without a warrant” is the key word, “Without a warrant” or “probable cause.” This is a fourth amendment affront. Without protection from unreasonable searches and seizures and without legal warrants, we really don’t have a free life. We’re being tracked. It’s coming out more and more how this has been abused by politicians and by the government.

A lot of people that keep their head down, they go to work, they want to come home and relax, they go to bed, they raise their family, they get back up, and the whole routine starts again. It’s the rat on the wheel, so to speak, that the government wants to keep us running so we don’t have time to research things. One of our senators here in Texas, John Cornyn, has been a real advocate for the FISA Court and the FISA Rules to bring back in the spy grid. On the senate floor, he’s made the declaration that, “We’re not spying on American citizens.” What he is saying may technically be true but it’s fundamentally false. It is a complete lie. One of the things in 50 U.S.C. 1885a, is it talks about the language of “person.” You and I think a “person” is, “I’m a person, you’re a person, we’re all people.” That’s not how that works. In the terminology for “person,” it’s defined as this, “The term ‘person’ means A) Electronic communication service provider or B) Landlord, a custodian, or other person who may have authority or required to furnish assistance pursuant to.” It goes on and tells us to turn everything over to the government. The people in America have no clue that we’re being spied on from start to finish because we haven’t taken a stand. Any one of the people could be in the position that Ross is in right now.

Almost 100% of the evidence was digital in this trial. There were no fingerprints, there were no witnesses that said Ross did anything. There is no DNA, which they already make mistakes with DNA anyway. To me, it’s a very troubling precedent because it takes nothing to create or delete digital evidence or tamper with it. In fact, tampering was discovered of the evidence after the trial. It shows that someone went into the evidence and deleted a big portion of it. I’ve talked to forensic experts and they say there is no way to tell if digital evidence has been tampered with at all. There’s no way. There’s no record of it. Nothing. It’s just gone or planted. You can’t tell what happened. When you think about caging people based on images on a screen that were anonymous, they can be so easily tampered with. There were so many violations in Ross’ trial. It would take hours to go over. In a general application, I find it extremely troubling. It’s not like governments throughout time haven’t framed people and had show trials. All you need is a computer and if you want to get fancy, Photoshop. That’s it. Even a bank, even a mortgage company will not take a screenshot of a bank statement because they know how easily tampered with it is. You have to bring your bank statement in and show them the actual statement because they don’t trust it. Meanwhile our courts, the trial level of precedent has been set here, and at the appellate level too, that it’s okay to use digital evidence almost exclusively. That’s a very scary thing for the digital age.

You’ve had a chance to see this firsthand how the justice system works for the government. What they have interest in is a conviction. That’s all they have an interest in. I saw an article that spoke about Ross’ Bitcoins would be at $1.9 billion. These are Bitcoins that the government came in and stole from him with force, took away the Bitcoins, and then went out. A lot of people don’t realize that these are for-profit agencies. That agency took his Bitcoins, sold it, turned it into cash to fund whatever they wanted to do in their particular agency.

The reason it’s worth so much is because Bitcoin has shot through the roof in value. When Ross acquired Bitcoins, it was under a dollar. Now they’re $14,000 to $15,000. It wasn’t that he had that much money. He just appreciated so much. I talked to somebody who said, “I was selling gold on Silk Road.” Most people don’t realize Silk Road had lots of things for sale. It was like Amazon. It had art and books and raw milk and all kinds of legal stuff. It was not allowed to be mentioned at trial. The only thing that was allowed to be mentioned at trial to the jury was drugs, and it wasn’t even allowed to be mentioned that most of the drugs was marijuana in small amounts.

Here’s one of the interesting things that a jury cannot do, and that is a jury can never unhear something. Once the prosecution floats that out there, the prosecution and the judge belong to the same organization and for the most part are on the same team. The judge is the information regulator. He shuts down a certain portion of information and won’t let it in, but he’ll allow the other information.

Not only that, but this judge went back retroactively and flagged everywhere where the prosecution should have objected. I have friends who have been to lots of trials who said, “I’ve never seen anything like this.” Judges are supposed to be impartial. They’re not supposed to help the prosecution and hinder the defense.

The only way that a judge can remain a judge, even someone appointed for life, is as long as they are in good behavior. Not being in good behavior, they’re supposed to be removed. We’ve seen this in a very high-profile case with the Bundy’s. They just got released. We’re seeing some things change in this country. We’ve been through, and we’re still beginning to digest this, the transcripts. It’s appalling the things that are in there. How can this happen this way?

She struck a bunch of it from the record. I don’t believe that’s even in there. I was a very patriotic person. I believed, and I still do believe, that our country was founded on very lofty ideals. It’s being hijacked. I wasn’t a big fan of the government, but I was appalled at what I would see. I bring it up to our lawyer and he goes, “They do that.”He’s so jaded at this point, being a criminal defense attorney. He’s like, “They do that.”I’m like, “How can they do that? This is crazy.” He goes, “They do it.” They do whatever they want within limits obviously. She said she wanted to give Ross the worst possible penalty. That’s the death penalty. She can’t do that. She would have if she could have. She said she would. Everything the government does is essentially ultimately backed by force and violence. It’s just a matter of how far you want to take it. That’s all it is. You can’t argue with that. That’s why they do what they want. Prosecutors are being taken more to task, like in the Bundy case, because they had been running the justice system forever.

JFS 03 | Silk Road
Silk Road: Everything the government does is essentially ultimately backed by force and violence.

People are becoming more aware, but many people aren’t. People are trying to get through their day. They’ve got heavy tax burden, most of them. They’re trying to provide for their families and raise their kids in a deteriorating culture and just get through. It is no fun to face this stuff. Personally, sometimes I’m like, “I can’t take any more,” but I do because of my situation. It is uncomfortable. It is very discouraging and depressing to think of our country being hijacked. At the same time, if we don’t, it’s going to happen. We’re at a tipping point in history. We’re going to go one way or the other. It’s like a crossroads. Are we going to take the road to more innovation and freedom, or are we going to go the way of government control and oppression? Maybe we’ll feel safer, although we really won’t be, maybe things will be less private but more convenient, we’re at a crossroads here. I hope it’s not too late.

Getting to the root of the real issue, back in January of 1988 on the front page of The Economist, it had a picture of the eagle coming out of ashes with what looks like gold coins on it. The Economist is owned by the Rothschild family. It said,“30 years from now, everything will be digital.” How do they know 30 years from now what was coming in advance if this has not been a well-orchestrated plan? Our country is in a real interesting situation that the globalists want to kill America because America is the last hope. America is the last light. If they can get America, it’s over for the entire globe, for the rest of the world. There has to be a change. We fight this thing correctly through accountability and holding our public servants accountable, remembering that they serve us, not the other way around.

All of these laws are written for them, for “persons”, not “for the people.” The people need to take their stand and they need to get active. In 2018, we’re coming up for mid-terms. We need to get active and say, “There are abuses that happen in the court rooms every day.” For a defense attorney or for any attorney to say, “They do that,” just because they do that doesn’t mean it’s right. We need to correct this. Those people in Washington that live in their own bubble need to be sent home by the people if they’re not going to act right, and that includes the judges. If the judges sit on the bench in bad behavior, they need a pink slip. Go get a real job someplace. Let’s run through some of the things that happened the first year or so that this transpired. What was the trigger in all of this where Ross may have said, ”Mom, something strange happened yesterday?” The strangest as far as there apparently were two FBI agents that, according to the story, stole Bitcoins and later on got charged for that.

We didn’t learn about that until after trial. First of all, they were not FBI. They were at the core of the investigation out of Maryland DHS. One was DEA, one was NSA and Secret Service. Shaun Bridges was working for the NSA at the time. This did not even come out until his sentencing way after trial. The defense and Ross knew about one of them, Carl Force. They never even told about Bridge’s existence until after trial. Force fought pre-trial to be able to have the jury know about this. This is rampant corruption. Not only stealing, but they had unfettered access to the site and to the evidence. They could change anything. They had passwords. They could change chats. All this evidence that the jury is watching and looking at, they had the ability to change.

Did they steal passwords?

It was corrupted. They had a backdoor to Silk Road because they arrested a man named Curtis Green who was a top admin on Silk Road. Through him, they got the back door. Curtis Green has recently tweeted. They claim that Ross arranged a murder for hire against Curtis Green. They faked it and they have an indictment in Maryland based on the word of this corrupt agent who’s now in prison. Curtis Green himself, the alleged victim, the person who supposedly Ross is organizing a hit, which is totally antithetical to his personality and his history, Curtis came out in a tweet and said, “I don’t think Ross has it in him to do this. I don’t think he deserved this sentence. I don’t think he’s dangerous.” This is the victim. Even he sees the absurdity.

The government never charged a trial. They have it in this indictment that’s been sitting there for four years. You can indict anybody for anything. That doesn’t require proof of anything. These corrupt agents, that all came out after trial. The judge allowed it to be precluded from trial. The jury never knew a thing about them. We all had to act like, “I didn’t know about it.”They had to avoid the issue of the fact that there are these corrupt agents who were all over that site. I personally believe, and a lot of people do, that there was more. I think they were two corrupt agents, but I believe there’s at least a third, maybe more, who’d never been caught. Another thing about these agents is that there are numerous emails that were encrypted that the government never required to have them decrypted. There’s still sealed evidence about them. There are still all kinds of redacted information about them. I’m like, “Why? They’re in prison. Ross is in prison. Let’s see the whole story here.”

It would have to be, just as a theory, that they want to cover something up. Do you think potentially that people in the government did things that they don’t want other people to know, and that’s why they went after this?

I personally do. Edward Snowden came out and said that he believes the NSA was involved in Ross’ case. It’s a video right on our website where he said that. Parallel construction to me is all over that thing. All these stories that they have about it and the media writes about it as if it’s true. I’m like, “Really? You really think that’s true?” Some of them are pretty lame actually.

Who was the victim in this particular case other than Ross?

There were no victims. No victims came forward to trial to say that Ross had hurt them. Nothing. At sentencing, the prosecution brought in two parents who said that their children took drugs from Silk Road and died as a result. One was a heroin addict and one took something at a party. We hired a forensic pathologist to say, “Is this true? Can you prove this?” He said, “No, you absolutely can’t, even if they died of drugs at all.” In any case, it’s like saying Ross was running the site at that time. The government had the server at the time. It’s like, “Is Jeff Bezos responsible for the cyanide that a girl bought on Amazon and killed herself with?”Her mother was suing Amazon back in 2013. Is Jeff Bezos responsible? I’m not defending Silk Road and I’m certainly not defending drug use. I think it’s a terrible tragedy and I really feel for any parent who’s lost a child to alcohol, to drugs, or any way. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not here to defend Silk Road or dark web sites or anything. I am here to defend fair trials. It brought an element of emotionalism into the sentencing that was very manipulative and really didn’t belong in the courtroom. You can’t even say they were victims because it was never brought to trial. It was never proven. It was never even mentioned at trial. At trial, not one victim came forward.

For every crime that is part of the corpus delicti, there is a verified claim made by a victim. I have a number of case laws in that.. You have to be able to verify. You have to have a victim that had a loss or was harmed or was injured. The loss, harm, or injury must be the result of the criminality of another. They have to be able to show those things in every crime, whether it’s a battery, whether it’s theft.

Will they have to prove those or could they just allege those?

No, they have to prove them. There has to be a verified claim.

They didn’t even allege him.

I haven’t read all the transcripts yet. The attorneys who represented Ross at trial, are they the same attorneys that crafted his appeal?

Yes, they’re the same as the appeal. They’re not the same as the petition to the Supreme Court.

They send in a petition to the Supreme Court. They’ve not been accepted?

No, it’s still in process. Friends of the court briefs you. You have until 30 days after to submit those, but it’s docketed. It’s a whole process. It’ll be premature to accept it now.

Are you aware that there are two different court systems? There is a United States District Court, which is where he was tried which is formed by Article Four of the Constitution. A District Court of the United States is an Article Three court, a court that was ordained and brought about by Article Three of the Constitution. That’s where Ross needed to be. The problem is there are none of the 50 states, with the exception of Hawaii, and I can prove that to you. As we looked at the transcript, there were a lot of cases where this is a real good time for the defense attorney to stand up and say, “Objection.” Those things never happened. That assumes facts is not in evidence, not previously agreed to, and requires a legal opinion by the fact witness or whoever is there on the stand.

I agree with you. To be fair, the judge shut him down repeatedly. It was a tough trial. I don’t know if anyone could have won it. There were parts of it where I’m like, “Stand up and say something.”

Ross was not against the prosecution. He was against the prosecution, the judge, and his own lawyer because they’re all part of the same cabal, unfortunately. People don’t realize that until they get into the ring of something like that. Before they’re asking their attorney, “Shouldn’t you be objective here?”“No, that’s fine. We’ll go and have drinks later, the three of us. You’ll be going someplace else, ”that’s usually how that comes down until people understand what’s really happening.

I have never dealt with anything close to this before, my husband hadn’t. I’ve learned a lot, but it’s like figuring it out on the fly. It’s an overwhelming situation. We’re not giving up. I’m not going to leave Ross to die in prison as long as I have breath in my body. We’ve got an excellent team, atop flight law firm, Williams &Connolly. The head of their Supreme Court practice, Kannon Shanmugam, he won an award. He’s excellent. Everyone says so. He’s won in front of the Supreme Court many times. I feel like Ross is in good hands. We’re working through the system. The system has him. I feel like we have to do this.

A lot of people have that same feeling that are in your position. They need to be able to talk to somebody that knows, the professional, of how this thing transpires. The problem in that scenario is that he’s in the system and the people that you hope to guard him are also in the system. There is no difference between Ross and anybody that’s out there. They could have stuff planted on their computer, dragged through a court room, where you have the judge that’s against you and the jury that’s against you, because they have given the indictment that there was nobody that said, ”He’s not a Martian. Really? He didn’t come from Mars. He doesn’t have green antennas.” There’s nobody in there that can say that. They can say pretty much whatever they want to in that particular room.

JFS 03 | Silk Road
Three Felonies A Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent

There’s a book, Three Felonies a Day. They have so many laws on the books now that no one can say how many. That’s how many. We’re all committing unknowingly or knowingly three felonies a day. The reality is that if the government wants you, they will have you. That’s not a good position for free people to be in. That’s not a good position at all. In fact, are we free?

There’s a veil that’s been pulled back that the American, in 2016 and maybe moving forward, have been able to look into. It could be all the way back from 2012. The American people have been able to look into this darkness and see this corruption. The question before the American people is, “What are you going to do about it?” If your answer is a resolving,” We’re not going to do anything about it because I’m so busy on Facebook and I’m so distracted over doing these meaningless things,” those societies don’t stay around very long. I’m hoping that this change that we have in Washington, in the swamp that’s there, one guy cannot drain the swamp. We should not put it up to one guy to do that because what that eventually moves into is a dictatorship years later if it goes unrestrained or if people don’t get involved to help on that. How long did the trial actually last? Do you remember?

It was very fast. It was three weeks for a trial of this magnitude. The jury came to their verdict of guilty on all counts in three hours, and that included lunch and a break. We were so shut down. I was shocked that it was so fast so are the people who walked over to me. They said, “If the jury took that long, it just shows there’s definitely something wrong here.” After the sentencing, I went to the hospital and literally almost died from a stress and heart condition called broken heart syndrome. By the grace of God, I didn’t. It was very close but I’m fine. It’s incredibly painful and stressful to go through that. Poor Ross, he just sat there. He wanted to testify and the lawyers always say, “Don’t testify.” He had to sit there and listen to that, everybody saying these things about him, and he wanted to answer. It’s been a nightmare. I just hope and pray that it can ultimately be something that could be used for good, that it can shine a light. I have gotten to know many people and families in the prison, in the system, who are trapped, many of them with excessive sentences that are unnecessary. I see the suffering of the children of these people, and statistically, they will feed the system. It’s really a national disgrace that we have more incarcerated citizens than any country on earth.

This is the land of the free. If you’re a danger to society and you’re violent, society needs to be protected. If someone’s put into a life sentence like Ross, he’s so young, do you honestly think he’s not going to mature and change? Even a violent person might, but Ross isn’t even violent. His designation score is 12. That includes his charges, which add a bunch of points. That puts him one point above a camp which has no fences it’s so low. In fact, when he went into prison, they were like, “What are you doing here?” They go, “It’s the sentence.” This life sentence, this Draconian, over the top sentence from this judge is what has him in a maximum security prison with violent gangs and violent people. Frankly, I feel like he’s in danger. He’s handling it, but it’s wrong. They call it a correctional institute. It’s a criminal manufacturing institute. You almost have to become aware of all of that and you learn things to survive. It’s not correctional. It’s the biggest joke. Everything’s whitewashed. Ross even said to me, “I haven’t met one truly evil person in here, but there are violent people, there’s volatile people, and there’s people who you can be collateral damage in a race war.”Ross is in a riot. That’s the kind of place he’s been put. This is a person who’s never harmed anyone, who has no violence in his history at all, who’s basically a very wonderful person. There’s 100 letters on our website by people who know him, saying to the judge, “Please give him the least amount of sentence,” which is still twenty years. That was a mandatory minimum. That’s a generation. That’s a long time for a young person like him, and she went to the maximum.

[Tweet “This is the land of the free. If you’re a danger to society and you’re violent, society needs to be protected.”]

Chuck Schumer was behind the case. She was recommended by Chuck Schumer, and his special counsel for many years was the lead prosecutor. This is a political case. The biggest drug dealer on Silk Road only got ten years. He actually sold drugs. They didn’t say Ross ever sold any drugs. They said he was a website operator. Jeff Bezos is being sued by a mother whose daughter bought cyanide on Amazon. I don’t hold him responsible for that, but it’s the same principle. Craigslist, how many people died and murdered because of ads? If this were a civil case, Ross would not be held liable at all for what was on the website. That’s the law. He’s the first person who’s being held criminally liable for what’s on a website. That’s starting another precedent here. Who’s responsible?

When we use the word “dark web,” from my understanding, the dark web is not the idiot Google where you just type in what you want to search. Google is a platform that is over the dark web. Google is an application that sits on top of the internet. If you know coding, then you don’t need Google. There have been a lot of people that have said, “Google is so entrenched with our government.”Washington DC, NSA, and all these different agencies don’t want anybody to go outside the application because inside the application they’ve built a model to track everybody. What Ross did is not illegal. Programmers do it every single day. That’s where we really need to begin to expose what the real facts are behind this. What did he actually do and who is the victim? If there’s no victim, there’s no crime.

No victims were named. You’ve put your finger on why I think they went after him so hard and why they are making him their trophy, and now they’re just fine. The guy who took over Silver Road 2 was actually a bigger and sold more drugs. He’s free. Apparently, they don’t think he’s that dangerous. It was Bitcoin. It was very threatening. Chuck Schumer was a senior member of the Senate Finance Committee. He was also on the Banking Committee. That was very disturbing to the financial powers that there was this alternate currency that was beyond their control. The other thing is Tor. It’s a monetary revolution really and you nailed it when you said about the privacy. First of all, you had to know how to open a Bitcoin account and you had to know how to use Tor, the onion router, which is anonymous. You could operate anonymously on Tor, which is an alternate browser. That’s what makes it the dark net as opposed to Google. The government even said in their papers about Ross’ case that anyone who uses Tor has criminal intent. Dissidents use Tor, anyone who wants privacy, journalists use Tor. For them, that’s how they see it though, “You’re trying to keep something from us so you must be a criminal.” Between Tor and Bitcoin, that’s why they went after Ross. I don’t think they care about drugs. They proved it with the other sentences involved.

Anybody that doesn’t follow their narrative must be a criminal. Have you ever heard of Ricky Ross?

I have heard of him, yes.

Ricky has an amazing testimony that he was the drug dealer that the government put out there to deal all the drugs that came in. We have interviewed a gentleman by the name of Cody Snodgres that was a CIA Operative. Cody has talked about where the government came to him and said, “We want for you to be involved in blowing up the Oklahoma City Building.” They offered in cash. He has now come out and given his testimony on the air. He’s written a book, a 600-page book, that he just tells all. Everything.

Do you know the reason why they blew up Oklahoma City? That’s where all of Clinton’s files were shipped over to. When they blew that building up, they went in after that and demolished that building. They actually had three different entities to blow that building up. Only one of them worked. The other two entities did not work. They wanted to blow that building all over Oklahoma City. It was only for that one reason. Now all of a sudden, there’s a guy that’s a firsthand witness. Justin, do you remember, was he a CIA operative for 30 years or 40 years?

I don’t remember the exact length of time but it was over twenty years.

He tells stories and gives account of how the government has been behind all of this stuff. It’s time that the people wake up and realize that these people in Washington and that these court systems are completely out of control. These agencies, the DOJ, that we’re starting to see now, they’re completely out of control, run by somebody that’s doing their own thing. It’s not for the people at all. It’s not helping the people.

When you have an issue with somebody, let’s say telecommunication. You’re being harassed by a telemarketer, so you contact the agency. When you contact the agency, you file a complaint. Do you ever get any money out of that? No, that agency gets the money. The agency goes after the people, prosecutes the people, and gets all their money, whatever that would be. There’s a lot that needs to change in our judicial system. It may start with the executive branch and the legislative branch, to get all the attorneys out of there because they’re never supposed to be there. We really need to begin to push that particular narrative.

The National Security, Snowden ripped the lid off that one. WikiLeaks ripped some things and have exposed some things. What’s the next step? In America, there’s two different types of revolutions that could be fought. One we don’t want to go back to. It has to be the other revolution of the people saying, “We need to vote with our feet and we need to hold the public servants accountable for what they’ve done.”

I have some of that redacted. It’s not available. It’s sealed and redacted. Some of the things about the pen traps. It’s the things in the evidence, the 3,500 material and the discovery, that we can’t see. That’s another issue. I’d like to hope, and the Bundy case is a good example, there’s something in American spirit that still has this resistance to being told what to do, being oppressed by the government who chafes under this. I meet people all the time. They don’t know who I am or anything. Things come up in conversation and I’m like, “Interesting. You’re feeling it, too.”I like to hope, and I hope there is something in Americans that will make us a little less easy to rollover than other places. That’s where we’re at this crossroads. We’re going to see, aren’t we?

Absolutely. The attorneys that represented Ross, did you say are also covering his appeal?

They did cover his appeal, but we have new counsel for the Supreme Court.

Has anybody sued the original attorney in the trial for not objecting?

No. That’s part of the system. It’s a last ditch effort to get a new trial, to present a case of ineffective counsel. That’s down the road potentially. I haven’t looked into it enough. You don’t sue them. If that’s true, that you’ve had ineffective counsel, you bring it to the judge. Of course, it’s the same judge, so she gets to say if you have a new trial. Even if you get a resentencing, it’s before the same judge who gave you life before.

Have any of the attorneys talked to you about jurisdiction?

Initially, venue was an issue because Ross was from Texas. He was arrested in California, yet somehow the southern district of New York got him over there. It was based on testimony of a heroin dealer who was basically getting a better sentence for cooperating. Our lawyer caught him lying at least twice, it might have been three times, in trial. Perjury, but their argument was, “He bought heroin on Silk Road and sold it in New York so that gives us venue.”The southern district of New York and one defense attorney, Scott Greenfield, called them the other New York Mafia. I know this for a fact because Ross has met these people in prison. They will take non-Americans who have never been to the United States. They would go to another country and seize them, bring them back to the southern district, convict them, and put them in prison at our expense. They do it all the time. I’m like, “How do they get away with this? Are we policemen to the world now?” I’m not talking about violent people. I’m not even just talking about drugs. There was a case called Liberty Reserve case where it was about money laundering. That’s one of the things I have learned that the southern district under the auspices of the United States Federal Government goes around the world seizing people from other countries who aren’t even Americans, and we pay for it.

For instance, unlike the southern district of New York that you we’re just talking about, England could not come over here and grab me and drag me back to England because they never had jurisdiction.

They’re trying to do it. It’s a corporation. People fight extradition from the United States. No one wants to come here. They’re terrified of the United States, which is so sad to me. I know people who aren’t criminals.. They’re just somewhat political. They are afraid to come to the United States. They won’t come here. Is that a sad statement or what?

Yeah, absolutely. Are you saying that this started out of the southern district of New York?

There were three different agencies involved. One was in Chicago, one was in New York, and one was in Maryland. They all cooperated, they all interacted. The southern district denied this, but they’ve told journalists and it’s on the record. The corrupt agents were operating out of Maryland.

JFS 03 | Silk Road
Silk Road: One of the things the government is quite intent on controlling is the internet.

All three of those are known for their good jurisdictions. That has got to be the top three corrupt places in the world.

It’s so sad to me because now I’m so skeptical of our government. I’m so skeptical of things I read. The other thing is the media. If I read something in the media, I’m like, “Maybe, maybe not.” I have absolute skepticism. They have lied, they have twisted about Ross, they have echoed each other. Not all of them, but most of them are very shallow and lazy, as far as just repeating not digging. Sometimes, flat out fake news and misstatements that are just jaw dropping. Now, I don’t believe anything pretty much.

The people are starting to see that the criminals that are in the different agencies put together a story, they deliver it to the fake news to have them send it out, and then they have echo chambers. They say, “I heard it here. I saw it on TV. I read it on the internet. I saw it in the paper.” Everybody is saying the same thing, so it must be true. That is the biggest fraud. The globalists figured out that they could not take over America from without, so they took over America from within. We’re at a very strong crossroads in America to say, “Either we’re going to get our country back or we’re going to lose it.” It’s going to be in the next few years. What has the crypto currency community said about this?

I don’t know if I can speak for a whole community. There have certainly been people from that community who’ve stepped up to help. Roger Ver, a huge supporter, made it possible for us to go to the Supreme Court., Also with the help of many, many others, not just him, but he had the means to be a huge help. It’s been very positive from a lot of people. We couldn’t have gotten to this point without the help of so many people in the libertarian community, crypto, and there’s a lot of overlap, anarchists, voluntarists, all kinds of people, drug war people, who are against the drug war, and see the ramifications of that. We’ve had a great deal of support, which has made it possible. It’s very expensive to fight the government. That’s another weapon they have, to crush you and ruin you.

The court systems have been designed to be able to use their trolls that they call attorneys to be able to get in there. They’re going to do this by the hour. It’s so expensive that unless you’re very wealthy and you have your funds someplace else to where they can’t seize them, you have almost no shot in the American court system. That is horrible. As far as other outreaches that you’ve been working on, can you tell us a little bit about the site that you currently have here?

All our help is volunteer. Everything that’s contributed goes right to Ross’ defense effort. I work more than full time and take nothing for it. I just want my son and justice and helping others, but it’s not like I get anything monetarily, which is fine. I have a lot of volunteer help. With the help of a few people, we’ve revamped the website, which is no small task. It’s looking better. It’s looking good. It’s had many iterations of the website. It just got launched. I wrote the content. We pulled together photos. We have an FAQ page, which will be helpful. We have a summary, which will be helpful and just present the facts.

It’s definitely an advocacy website, but nothing on it is untrue. It’s all the facts. People can draw their own conclusions. It’s a work in progress. As you can tell from having started digging into the transcripts, there’s a lot of other material that we will be integrating into this site for people who do want to go deeper. Not everyone does, but for people who do, we’re going to have a lot of things up and it’ll all be footnoted and attributed to sources. Ross’s case crosses so many places. It’s cryptocurrency, it’s the drug war, it’s basic due process rights that are being trampled. It’s the mass incarceration in this country. It’s so many things that all congeal on Ross. It’s an opportunity to call attention to it. It all does work together because it’s all part of the same government encroachment that’s going on. I won’t deny, it has been extremely rough and hard to keep at this and to survive this and keep going. If it shines a light on what’s going on and can even, in a small, way help push back against what you’ve been talking about, then it’s worth it.

I do want my son out of a cage. I can’t say it’s been worth it for me to have him in there. Ross has so much to contribute. He has so much to give. I’d like to see him be able to do that again. Recidivism is one of the things the appellate court kept bringing up, that he’s a bad candidate, and that he’ll go and do it again. It’s really hard to believe they can put that in there. If they think Ross is stupid enough to get back on there and create another Silk Road, he’s not that stupid. The other thing is he hasn’t even been on the internet in four years. He has no email privileges. After twenty years, which is the mandatory minimum, the judge knows that he’s not going to come out and do this again. I’m not saying anything about the judges per se, but the case itself is very political. If they were wanting to prevent another Silk Road, they wouldn’t have let the guy who did Silk Road 2out with no jail time, if they really thought that was a danger, besides the fact that there are multiple “dark websites” all over the place now. They don’t have the same ethical restrictions that Silk Road had, of no child porn. I think they’re open whatever anything goes. Some of them may not be. In any case, the idea that he would come out in twenty years and do this again, it’s absurd. It’s all about punishment and making him an example.

President Trump has been the victim of fake news over and over. He has been the victim of fake prosecution. He realizes that. He’s had the pleasure of sitting in the position he is in. If you had a chance to appeal to President Trump, what would you want for President Trump to be able to do and to help you with?

I would be thrilled if he would commute Ross’ sentence and understand that one of the things that enhanced this sentence, and this is part of the petition of the Supreme Court, was not things that were found by a jury to be true. It’s things the judge decided were true, that were unproven in court. The essentially murder for hire plot, which even the supposed victim of it says he doesn’t believe it’s true, the judge used this to justify this sentence, which is an unheard of sentence of someone who is not a threat to anyone. This is the kind of unjust sentence that puts us all in peril. We have a right to a jury trial. That is in our constitution. This judge decided, “Who cares if the jury heard this accusation? Who cares if the prosecution didn’t bring it to trial? I’ve decided it’s true. I’ve decided I’m going to use it.” This is judiciary run wild and it happens all the time. It’s been a problem and it’s been addressed by the Supreme Court before but turned down.

We’re hoping that this can help a lot of people who have been put into prison by what’s called judge-found facts, as opposed to jury-found facts, which is our right. That’s a big part of it. Anytime an American in this country is denied their due process rights and is railroaded into a life sentence, which is basically unheard of for someone like Ross with no victims, no priors, no violence, we’re all in danger. This is setting a precedent here. That’s an argument for commuting or pardoning him. He’s served time, but certainly commuting it. Life is just over the top. Life sentences have quintupled in this country since the 80s.When I was growing up, to get a life sentence you had to be a mass murderer who was going to be a real threat to people in society. There’s a guy in there who Ross is friends with in prison, non-violent. He’s in there for life for selling marijuana fifteen years ago. The prison happens to be in Colorado where it’s legal as a state. Fifteen years is enough. His life? I’m not scared of that guy. It’s marijuana. I’m not advocating drug use. It’s part of all money-making power-grabbing machine. The mass incarceration, the prison system, is out of control.

I could talk to President Trump for a long time about a lot of things. It is true about the fake news. I don’t remember talking to media and saying things. Later, I read a report of it by the Wall Street Journal. I’m like, “I didn’t say that. I’m sure I didn’t say that.”I went back and listened to the video and I said one part of it in one context. I said the other part in another context. They took it together, so essentially you could say I did say it, but not really. This is the Wall Street Journal. This isn’t even tabloid. I’m like, “This is what the media will do to serve for whatever reason.” That’s another whole issue.

Having corporate media owned by six different corporations that are owned by two different families, you’re probably not going to get the truth. They’re going to spin things the way that they want to spin it. Today is a new day in America to where the independent journalists can get out there, get the facts, dig for the facts, and uncover what the old dinosaur media has covered up and have tried to spin that story in their particular direction.

That’s the internet. One of the things the government is quite intent on controlling is the internet. It’s a whole other very important issue, the freedom of the internet.

[Tweet “It’s very expensive to fight the government. . That’s another weapon they have, to crush you and ruin you.”]

If you can control the narrative, then you can begin to put the people into boxes. Americans, part of our problem has been that we really haven’t understood for the past several decades that we’ve been captured. We got captured back in 1933, but it’s just taken all the way to this time in history before Americans have really started to wake up over the past couple of decades to have said, “We’ve been captured. This is not the America we were sold. Where’s the apple pie and baseball and hot dogs and things like that?”

Where’s the freedom? Where are the rights of the individual?

They’re just not there, unless you have been around it.

We have some left. It’s not North Korea, but it’s a slippery slope. I don’t think it’s out of the question. We’ve seen other governments do it and governments are doing it now, putting people in concentration camps and gulags. That might sound alarmist, but I visited Auschwitz a couple of years ago as part of a speaking tour and it really struck me. One of the tour guides was saying to his group. “The lesson here is watch your politicians.” This wasn’t that long ago. This happened. There are people who remember it. That’s why our founders were very skeptical of government. That’s why we had all the checks and balances. It’s our duty to be skeptical of the government, not look to the government for our safety, our security, our convenience, or provider. We’re supposed to be skeptical. There are a lot of Americans who are, but a lot of people are very trusting where they shouldn’t be.

This is just an amazing book. It’s Hitler’s Cross. It basically tells the story about what the Jews did in Germany. They didn’t want to rock the boat. They didn’t want to protest, but once they had the crystal night, once they had the other events that took place, once they got to the gas chambers and said, “I object,” It’s a little bit too late at that time. That’s a sad day in history but something that we should learn from. That’s where we’re moving in our country if things don’t begin to change.

Just look at the militarization of the police and have them go in with tanks to towns. There’s so many alarming things and it seems to be accelerating. A lot of people say to me, “I want to support you publicly or I want to give to you,” but they’ll slip me cash or something because, “I don’t want to be associated. I’m afraid of getting on a list, I’m afraid of the government.” I thought, “That is so sad and frightening.” If people won’t speak out because they’re afraid of the government, that’s almost a surrender right there.

The only place that you could hide is in full view. You better get out there on the end of the diving board and get after it. Tell us about some of your speaking engagements.

I’m going to be speaking at the Liberty Forum Conference in New Hampshire, which is part of the Free State Project, and they’re great friends. I’ve spoken at PorcFest many times and at Liberty Forum. It’s always great to go there because everyone is so liberty-minded and such wonderful people. I’m going to the Bitcoin Super Conference, which you are part of. I am going to be speaking at Reason Foundations Conference in Florida in March, which I’m very honored to be part of. Reason Magazine and Reason Foundation are such a voice for liberty. I’m looking forward to that as well.

You’re also doing some writing. Are you writing on Ross’s particular case or are you writing with regards to just the government in general?

I wish I could write about the government in general. I don’t have any time to do anything hardly except write. I’ve been writing the website. I do want to write more of my blog, which is woefully outdated. It’s mostly me doing all this stuff. I pretty much work constantly and both my kids are like, “You got to take a break.”I really do in terms of even a little time. I’m not doing as much writing as I want. I’m also very involved with the legal team that’s petitioned to the Supreme Court. There’s a lot going on. I want to start writing my blog more about how Ross’ case really intersects with the bigger picture that we’ve been discussing. It’s a good springboard for me because there are so many issues that are part of it.

As we go forward throughout 2018, there’s going to be a lot of documents that are all going to intertwine back to Ross. I really hope people that are not afraid of their government would get involved in this because this involves everybody. It’s not just Ross, it’s not just Ross’s mom, and that’s them and this is us over here. It’s all of us. We’re all subject to this type of treatment. If you’re not willing to stand up for somebody, then why should anybody ever stand up for you? Lynn, I’d really like for you to come back on again.

That’d be great.

Thank you very much. We’ll be in touch soon..

Thank you.

 

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