It has been noted that Meme-maker Douglass Mackey was sentenced in the Eastern District Court of New York on criminal charges on Wednesday following a March conviction for conspiracy against rights, ie election interference, over memes he created during the 2016 presidential election that disparaged Hillary Clinton.
Mackey was sentenced to 7 months in prison for the crime of making memes the DOJ didn’t think were funny. Notably, a fundraiser has been launched for his ongoing legal defense.
The case was heard in the US Court of the Eastern District of New York. Mackey, who was known as Ricky Vaughn on Twitter, was found guilty of the federal charge after making memes that jokingly encouraged Hillary Clinton supporters to cast their votes via text mesage.
This is not actually a viable form of voting, which Mackey, and everyone else, knew. There was no evidence to suggest that any voter attempted to cast their ballot via text in response to Mackey’s meme.
“Tomorrow at 11:30am,” said one supporter, “Doug Mackey will be sentenced in an NYC courtroom on a sham “conspiracy” conviction for sharing an anti-Hillary meme, all thanks to a bunch of lies and half-truths spewed by a morbidly obese fed informant who goes by the name Microchip.”
The meme that Mackey was convicted of disseminating was directed at Hillary Clinton voters, but other memes, also instructing people to vote for president via text, were distributed by social media users telling people to cast their vote for Trump via text. Mackey was convicted while no one else was even charged.
The DOJ claimed that the meme from Mackey constituted election interference, and the court agreed, despite their being no evidence to support the notion that anyone who saw the meme was deceived by it. Mackey argued that he was simply trying to create a viral meme, and that other Clinton supporters had posted similar memes encouraging Trump supporters to vote by text without consequence.
“The complaint,” the DOJ said in 2021, “alleges that in 2016, Mackey established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers.”
The DOJ alleged that “Mackey was sending tweets suggesting the importance of limiting ‘black turnout,’ the defendant tweeted an image depicting an African American woman standing in front of an ‘African Americans for Hillary’ sign. The ad stated: ‘Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,’ ‘Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,’ and ‘Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.'”
