A man who posted memes about the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 presidential election was found guilty of one charge of conspiring against the right to vote on Friday.
“Douglass Mackey, also known as ‘Ricky Vaughn,’ was convicted today by a federal jury in Brooklyn of the charge of Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” reads a statement released by the Eastern District of New York on Friday.
Members of the jury reached the unanimous verdict after a little less than a week of deliberation starting Monday afternoon after a weeklong period of arguments.
Mackey’s online persona, “Ricky Vaughn”—a reference to the sports comedy film “Major League”—had an online following of over 50,000 during the 2016 presidential election that frequently amplified his pro-Republican voice during the 2016 elections.
Mackey was on trial for a charge of allegedly conspiring against people’s right to vote with memes—or generally satirical online images—including one depicting an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign. The meme instructed people to vote by text during the 2016 presidential election.
While the DOJ has prosecuted many other forms of election interference—such as violence, for example—Mackey’s case is a historical first, in that alleged falsehoods are being argued as a form of election interference, Eugene Volokh, a professor at UCLA School of Law specializing in First Amendment Law, told The Epoch Times in an interview earlier in March.
Mackey will be sentenced on Aug. 16, 2023, and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.
Conspiracy or Satire?
The Department of Justice (DOJ), based on that meme and records of online discussions between Mackey and his peers, charged Mackey with conspiring against the right to vote.
Authorities arrested Mackey in January 2021 on that allegation, and a grand jury indicted him within two weeks of his arrest.
According to the prosecutors’ evidence presented in court, Mackey’s Twitter posts included one that suggested limiting “black turnout,” a statement that prosecutors said supports the charge that Mackey intended to conspire to interfere with the election. On the witness stand, Mackey described it as an “exaggeration.”
By Gary Bai
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