Pro-Trump Memester Found Guilty Of Election Interference

Douglass Mackey, who was known as Ricky Vaughn on social media, has been found guilty of conspiring against individuals’ right to vote by a federal jury, according to a statement from the Justice Department.

Mackey was charged after President Joe Biden assumed office, nearly four years after the alleged offenses. The Justice Department claimed that Mackey had conspired to “oppress, threaten, or intimidate” voters.

United States Attorney Breon Peace stated: “Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.”

Mackey’s attorney, James Lawrence, previously claimed in an interview with The Daily Wire that his memes were satirical and, therefore, not relevant to the law he allegedly violated. Mackey could face up to ten years in prison after sentencing.

The Justice Department said that between September 2016 and November 2016, Mackey worked with influential Twitter users to disseminate fraudulent messages to persuade voters to cast their ballots for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton via phone or social media. One message depicted a black woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign and said “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925.”

The hotline received text messages from around 4,900 unique telephone numbers, according to the Justice Department. It is unclear how many were partaking in the joke versus attempting to cast their ballots. Mackey was suspended from Twitter by former CEO Jack Dorsey.

Opinions differ on whether this case is politically motivated. Former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy wrote in an opinion piece for National Review that “It’s a three-fer: the prosecutorial creation of a crime Congress has not prescribed, the trivialization of civil-rights law, and the intrusion of government as a monitor of political speech.”

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The conviction of Mackey comes one day after Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg indicted former President Donald Trump and called on him to surrender in New York for an arraignment on Tuesday amid legal proceedings over his alleged hush money payments to porn actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election cycle. The case has been similarly characterized as politically motivated since Bragg has earned a reputation for his soft-on-crime approach with respect to violent offenses in New York City.