[00:00:08] If anyone asks, we're a nice, normal talk show. The Kate Dalley Show starts now! Back in 2016, we put out a call for nominations, trying to capture the diversity of background, of experience of the American electorate, the people that aren't currently represented. We got over 10,000 nominations. Out of those 10,000 nominations, we found Alexandria.
[00:00:36] My brother told me that he had sent my nomination in the summer, but I was like, literally working out of a restaurant. I always love to remind people that that was a clip that Alexandra loved to put out there, Congresswoman AOC, that she was a product of a casting call and won the casting call. She was the best and brightest they had out of 10,000, because she literally was like working at a restaurant, like literally.
[00:01:04] So I just remind people, because we are so overtaken by these kinds of groups now, even picking a congresswoman, congressman for you. So I always remind people of that, because it always cracked me up that they put it out there so visibly. Okay, so welcome back. Second hour of the show. Really appreciate you tuning in. And I've got a special guest, and that is Carla Garrick. How are you, Carla, from the Free State Project? How are you? Hey, I'm great. Thank you so much for having me.
[00:01:34] Excellent. So glad to have you. In fact, you know, Ross's pardon, a lot of people have been asking me because there's so much info on that. And I know that you could probably speak to this a little bit, but Ross, would you want to talk about Ross and the story behind him? And then, of course, there's this side over here talking. There's this side over here. What's the truth about Ross's and Ross's pardon? Sure. So you're talking about Ross Ulbricht, who was the founder of Silk Road.
[00:02:03] So when people hear the bad stories, they think about that and the dark web and all these scary kind of things. Right. So that's and that, of course, is the narrative that the state, the government put out from the start. The big lie. Oh, murder for hire drugs. This cryptocurrency Bitcoin stuff. Right. And so that is what a lot of people initially heard.
[00:02:30] On the other hand, is actually a guy who was 26 years old at the time. He was a nerd in San Francisco. He saw the harm of the drug war. He was an innovator. He was a pioneer.
[00:02:44] He saw the opportunity of Bitcoin and of crypto to become a peer to peer payment system so that we can get away from the Federal Reserve and then, you know, destroying the value of the dollar and inflating everything so that eggs are too expensive to egg someone. Yeah, we know how we're living it right now. Currently. Yes, yes, yes.
[00:03:10] And and, you know, so he built Silk Road actually as a tool to to try and remedy problems of the drug war. And so the idea was drugs are dangerous, but they would be safer if we actually knew what we were ingesting. So there was a rating system to make the product safer. You got the really dangerous people out of the mix.
[00:03:34] And so he was really approaching it from a pure principled libertarian perspective. And so he built this website and it was popular. And I think what the government realized is, oh, no, someone hacked the system. They actually figured out how to fix this problem.
[00:03:55] And then as the government often does in those scenarios, they went totally crazy, totally overreacted, went after this guy. Like, I mean, not even through the book at him. You know, we saw what happened to President Trump.
[00:04:11] But they did that lawfare to Ross way earlier and in a way more dangerous way because, of course, he got convicted and ended up with a double life sentence without the chance of parole plus 40 years. Now, you have to ask yourself, like, you know, what did he do? Like, oh, did he murder as many people as the ATF did at Waco?
[00:04:41] You know, did he blow up an entire city? I don't know. Did he burn down a few neighborhoods in Philadelphia? No, he didn't do any of those things. He built a website. So from the start, many of us recognized the story for what it was.
[00:05:01] It was incredibly eye opening to me to really see the whole propaganda narrative arc from start to finish. Right. Because this was someone, you know, I followed the case from the start. I am a lawyer by training. I was working on criminal justice reform at the time. You know, we already knew there were problems. But then you saw and I was an early crypto. Yeah. Right. I wish I was. Go ahead.
[00:05:31] And so, well, I got my first one for $6, but I also sold it. Wow. Lucky you. I'm a tragic tale. Lucky you. Oh, my gosh. But to watch really what they did to Ross and then to realize that this is a pattern that the government does, starting with the big lie, whether it's weapons of mass destruction or Kuwaiti children and incubators, you know, whatever the example is.
[00:06:00] We have so many now. So they did it to Ross. We had worked as activists over the 12 years he was in prison to really keep the story alive because, and I will say this, his mother, honestly, his mother was the reason I never gave up. Wow. I met her early on. And if you ever go to prison, you want Lynn Ulbricht in your corner.
[00:06:29] She did not give up. And based on how I interacted with her, I was like, these are people of integrity. These are people worth helping. This is a story where there is a great wrong because he did not do anything to justify those kinds of sentences. And that, of course, is how they do it, right? Like they throw the book at you plus 40 years. Right. And then they force you slash blackmail you to take the plea.
[00:06:59] And then those people who are brave enough not to take the plea, if you get the wrong jury, and Ross was in New York City with a judge who got promoted right afterwards, the whole story, right? Right. So for your listeners, what they really should know is what Donald Trump did is he righted a wrong.
[00:07:21] He did a principled thing, which he actually promised to the libertarians who all switched their votes to support Trump in this past election because he came to the libertarian convention. And he said he would pardon Ross on day one if we voted for him. And we voted for him.
[00:07:42] We could show the numbers and at least 3% that was going to LP went, you know, into the GOP vote tally, not the vote tallies mean anything anymore. Yeah. It's a whole nother show. But yeah, so the books that are talking about murder for hire, which is a lot embellished by the feds because the feds embellish most everything they do. So was that a lot of embellishment in these books to try to paint a story that's evil about him?
[00:08:10] I mean, so he was never even charged with that. So that is what they do. And if I may, I'll mention Roger Ver as well. You know, he's known as Bitcoin Jesus. He's now facing 109 years in prison. They're trying to extradite him from Spain. He is now, he got out on bail and he's actually with like an ankle bracelet on Mallorca on the island.
[00:08:36] And sort of, you know, if you think historically, it's almost like exile, right? He used to send you to some island, you know, and I'm like, it's winter in New Hampshire. So frankly, Spanish Island sounds kind of good to me right now. But if you can't leave. Sans the ankle bracelet. Yeah, I would imagine. So that case, what do you think will happen there? So he's facing 109 years for tax evasion.
[00:09:03] 90 of those years are for three charges of mail fraud. Get this. They are charging him with mail fraud for mailing in his IRS papers. The IRS said, I'm sorry, we didn't receive it. He mailed them in again and then followed up with one last one. They are counting those as three incidences of mail fraud with a 90 year sentence. I swear to you, mail fraud is used when they're desperate and don't have anything.
[00:09:32] It's either that or they had something against America. I mean, whatever, you know, fill in the blank whenever they're desperate and they have to charge somebody, but they don't have anything. Right. It's always mail fraud. Yeah. Mail fraud or the one we are seeing a lot with these crypto pioneers.
[00:09:47] And Ian Freeman here from the free state of New Hampshire is sort of the third guy I would lump in into this story here today with these crypto pioneers who all brought an element of truly trying to bring sound money, fix problems. You know, we have such a hard time reforming the federal government. You know, I'm cautiously optimistic, but honestly, it's hard. Right. Yeah.
[00:10:13] So sometimes the innovators, they used to do cool things and then we would all just buy their products. But now if you do a cool thing and it's too much close to your competitor who is in a monopoly, which is the government, you know. Yeah. They don't like competing with you. Yeah. They don't want to compete with you. And so they love to also work through private entities to shut people down and then also just overtly put them through these types of trials.
[00:10:42] I mean, that are totally bogus. People can see right through them, but they've got to do it. It's kind of like J6, you know, same kind of thing. So exactly. And so with Ian Freeman, he's in prison. He actually got convicted. His appeal is coming up early February. But in that case, as well as actually in Ross's case originally, the charge they used was conspiracy to commit money laundering.
[00:11:11] So first of all, conspiracy is, you know, so large. Not actually doing it. And now we're in a conspiracy together. Right. Not actually doing it, but conspiracy to do it at some point. I want you to know your thoughts are impure and therefore I'm going to judge your actions. No, no, I'm going to judge your intentions. I can read your mind. Oh, my gosh. Thought crime. So conspiracy to commit money laundering. But the cherry picking is where they have the problem.
[00:11:40] Because I'm like, how do you convict Ian? In Ian's case, it's one of those ridiculous ones where you're literally like, no, I must be missing something. He must have done something worse or more wrong. But it isn't. He was the the Bitcoin ATM. We call them kiosks because there are some laws around if it's an actual ATM or not. But think about it as a Bitcoin ATM and ATM like we know it.
[00:12:05] So they charged him as the middleman between old ladies who lost their money in romance scams and the guy who received the Bitcoin. He was just the guy in the middle and he had control mechanisms in place.
[00:12:21] And I'm like, look, even if they say you should have known or could have known or something, every single ATM in America has been in the world, frankly, has definitely been used for money laundering per definition under the law as well. The government is the biggest money launderer in the world. We'll be right back. I'll be right back more with Carla Garrick from the Free State Project.
[00:12:51] Be right back. You're going to want to stay with me on today's show. Be right back.