Former President Donald Trump promised Saturday to commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht, the founder of the online drug website, Silk Road.
“If you vote for me on day one, I will commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht to a sentence of time served,” Trump told the crowd while speaking at the Libertarian Party’s National Convention.
In May 2015, 31-year-old Ulbricht was sentenced to life in prison for drug trafficking and money laundering.
Ulbricht’s case has been seen as government overreach by Libertarians.
During the trial, prosecutors said the Silk Road website had brought drug sellers and buyers together through anonymous transactions paid with Bitcoin.
The website was launched in 2011 and Ulbricht used the name, Dread Pirate Roberts to run the website until it was shut down in October 2013.
Drugs that were reportedly “distributed” through the Silk Road website were linked to the deaths of at least six people, according to a press release from the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Many attendees in the crowd at the convention could be seen holding up signs that read, “Free Ross.”
“It’s one of the things we wanted from his first term,” Katherine Yeniscavich, a member of the Libertarian Party National Committee told Politico.