This past Wednesday evening, Congressman Thomas Massie (R-KY) officially admitted that he previously asked former President Donald Trump for two pardons and a commutation. He went on to state that he made the exact same request of President Joe Biden as well once he took office.
Massie’s statement was unveiled against the backdrop of the currently happening January 6 Committee hearings and the claims from Congresswoman Liz Cheney that a number of Republicans had, seemingly preemptively, requested pardons from Trump, seemingly specifically due to their actions in relation to the Capitol riots.
“I have an admission to make,” stated Massie via social media. “I asked Trump for TWO pardons and a commutation, and I ask the same of Biden. Pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht.”
I have an admission to make. I asked Trump for TWO pardons and a commutation, and I ask the same of Biden.
Pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, and commute the sentence of Ross Ulbricht.
— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) June 30, 2022
Currently looking down the barrel of possible extradition from the United Kingdom to the United States, Assange released military secrets through WikiLeaks and has spent the last few years locked up in a U.K> prison. He was previously forcefully removed from Ecuador’s embassy in London back in 2019. The Justice Department of the United States has officially filed charges against Assange by utilizing the Espionage Act, alleging that the documents were highly classified.
Reportedly, President Trump considered giving a pardon for Snowden, a plan that was extremely against the advisement of then-Attorney General William Barr, who was previously a National Security Agency contractor was charged with the leaking of heavily classified information. Snowden leaked a select bit of information to journalists back in 2013 that seemed to indicate that an NSA terrorist-tracking program has also managed to gather info about the phone calls of millions of Americans. He made the claim that he gave out this info because the data collection was an obvious violation of civil rights and after he gave away the information he ran and left the U.S., first to Hong Kong and later to Russia.
Ross Ulbricht is currently carrying out a double life sentence plus 40 years with no chance for parole for his part in making and operating the dark-net market site A.K.A Silk Road. The anonymous website, which is known to use bitcoin in order to make all sales entirely untraceable, made possible the illegal sales of large amounts of narcotics among other things. Ulbricht worked on the site from 2011-2013 until he was officially captured, and in 2015 he was finally convicted of conspiracy to commit money laundering, conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to traffic fraudulent identity documents, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics by means of the internet.
Along with his quite serious request for Ulbricht’s commutation and a pair of pardons for both Assange and Snowden, Massie seemed to try and poke fun at the January 6 Committee and the claims that Republicans had asked for pardons from Trump for just themselves.