NYC Jury Finds Douglass Mackey Guilty in Insane “Voter Suppression” Case for Sharing Anti-Hillary Clinton Meme

A jury in the Eastern District of New York found Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn on Twitter, guilty of election interference charges. The charges were due to a meme Mackey posted on Twitter in 2016, which joked about supporters of Hillary Clinton voting by text.

The Department of Justice claimed that the post constituted election interference, although they could not provideevidence that anyone was misled by the meme. Mackey argued that he was merely trying to create a viral meme; others had created memes encouraging Trump supporters to vote by text without consequences.

Federal prosecutors argued that Mackey worked with fellow meme creators to make the posts seem legitimate. “This wasn’t about changing votes. This was about vaporizing votes, making them disappear,” said Assistant US Attorney Turner Buford.

Mackey posted the memes on November 1, just a week before the election. The meme’s message was “ludicrous to anyone with a basic knowledge of how presidential elections work,” according to Frisch, one witness.

An expert witness for the defense withdrew from the trial after being contacted by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).