Dan Loeb Reveals DOJ Threat To Trump Over Ross Ulbricht Commutation In Final Hours Of First Term
What they're not telling you: DOJ Officials Threatened Trump With Criminal Prosecution If He Commuted Silk Road Creator's Sentence, Hedge Fund Manager Claims Hedge fund manager Dan Loeb publicly stated that Department of Justice officials threatened to prosecute President Donald Trump if he commuted Ross Ulbricht's sentence in January 2021, a claim that, if accurate, documents an extraordinary assertion of prosecutorial leverage over executive clemency authority. Loeb, founder and CEO of Third Point LLC, made the allegation during an appearance on the All-In Podcast while discussing his involvement in Ulbricht's criminal justice reform advocacy. According to Loeb's account, in the final hours of Trump's first term, the Justice Department warned the president: "If you commute his sentence, we're going to go after you." Following this reported threat, Trump withdrew the commutation Loeb claims was imminent.
What the Documents Show
Ulbricht remained imprisoned for four additional years until receiving a full pardon in January 2025 during Trump's second term. The claim implicates the DOJ's Office of the Pardon Attorney and its chain of command at that moment. Rosen served as Acting Attorney General following William Barr's resignation in late December 2020. Richard Donoghue held the position of Acting Deputy Attorney General. The Office of the Pardon Attorney, a DOJ unit responsible for reviewing clemency petitions and issuing formal recommendations to the president, operated under their direct oversight.
Follow the Money
No specific DOJ official has been publicly named as delivering the alleged threat, and Loeb has not provided contemporaneous documentation of the warning. The account represents the first public disclosure of such a direct threat allegedly made by DOJ leadership to the president regarding a specific clemency decision. To date, no independent corroboration from other sources has emerged. The claim originated through an advocacy chain that included cryptocurrency figures Riva Tez and Charlie Kirk, as well as David Warrington, who served as White House counsel during Trump's first term. Loeb's recollection raises procedural questions about the bounds of DOJ advisory authority. Presidents routinely bypass standard Pardon Attorney review processes for politically sensitive cases—a practice not unique to Trump.
What Else We Know
The distinction in Loeb's allegation is the nature of the institutional pushback: rather than issuing an advisory recommendation against clemency, Loeb claims DOJ officials threatened direct criminal consequences to the president himself as a condition of exercising constitutional clemency power. The factual basis for such a threat—what alleged criminal exposure the DOJ believed it could pursue—remains entirely undisclosed in available sources. The Office of the Pardon Attorney has not issued a statement addressing Loeb's claim. --- THE TAKE What strikes me most about this claim is not the political outcome but the institutional confession embedded in it: the DOJ, in January 2021, apparently believed it possessed leverage sufficient to condition a presidential exercise of constitutional authority on the threat of prosecution. The pattern here is one of prosecutorial overreach normalized through silence. Whether or not Loeb's account is factually accurate—and I want to emphasize it remains uncorroborated—the claim itself documents something the institutional press consistently underplays: the degree to which DOJ offices, staffed by career prosecutors and administrators with their own institutional interests, treat presidential clemency as something to be negotiated or threatened into compliance rather than exercised.
Primary Sources
- Source: ZeroHedge
- Category: Surveillance State
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