- Messages
- 15,795
- Reaction score
- 10,096
- Points
- 288
guy tweets a meme and the left goes after him... two-tiered justUS system
BY ANDREA MARKS
MARCH 31, 2023
A JURY HAS found former internet troll Douglass Mackey guilty of violating people’s constitutional right to vote by disseminating memes encouraging Democrats to vote via text in the 2016 election. The decision comes after more than four days of deliberations.
During the two-week trial, the prosecution presented testimony by MicroChip, a co-conspirator-turned-cooperating witness, who was identified by only his social media handle. On the stand, MicroChip spoke of his mission to sow chaos ahead of the election, driven by his hatred of Clinton, according to reporting by the New York Times. His account was a major pro-Trump engine of disinformation leading up to the 2016 election. The man behind MicroChip has claimed to be a software developer from Utah, and in 2017 told Buzzfeed News that he took Adderall to work 12 hour shifts running an army of bots that generated 35,000 retweets daily.
Mackey, 33, testified in his own defense, saying he’d never intended to trick anyone, the Times reported. As a Trump supporter, he claimed he’d only hoped to catch media attention and get under the skin of his political opponents to potentially “rile them up, get under their skin, get them off their message that they wanted to push.”
Once known to his 58,000 Twitter followers as “Ricky Vaughn,” Mackey was arrested and charged in Jan. 2021. According to a criminal complaint against Mackey, in the months and weeks ahead of the 2016 election, he and unnamed co-conspirators created several phony campaigns encouraging people to vote via hashtags on Twitter and Facebook, while they joked in group chats that the “dopey shitlibs” would fall for it.
“Vote early text Hilary to 59925 today,” said the text on one meme Mackey distributed. It included fine print to make it appear more legitimate, prosecutors say: “Paid for by Hillary Clinton for president. Must be 18 years or older to vote. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Vote by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii.” According to federal authorities, nearly 5,000 voters fell for the text ruse.
more
Douglass Mackey Found Guilty of Violating Rights With 2016 Memes Telling Hillary Fans to Vote By Text
Mackey could face a decade behind bars at his sentencing in AugustBY ANDREA MARKS
MARCH 31, 2023
A JURY HAS found former internet troll Douglass Mackey guilty of violating people’s constitutional right to vote by disseminating memes encouraging Democrats to vote via text in the 2016 election. The decision comes after more than four days of deliberations.
During the two-week trial, the prosecution presented testimony by MicroChip, a co-conspirator-turned-cooperating witness, who was identified by only his social media handle. On the stand, MicroChip spoke of his mission to sow chaos ahead of the election, driven by his hatred of Clinton, according to reporting by the New York Times. His account was a major pro-Trump engine of disinformation leading up to the 2016 election. The man behind MicroChip has claimed to be a software developer from Utah, and in 2017 told Buzzfeed News that he took Adderall to work 12 hour shifts running an army of bots that generated 35,000 retweets daily.
Mackey, 33, testified in his own defense, saying he’d never intended to trick anyone, the Times reported. As a Trump supporter, he claimed he’d only hoped to catch media attention and get under the skin of his political opponents to potentially “rile them up, get under their skin, get them off their message that they wanted to push.”
Once known to his 58,000 Twitter followers as “Ricky Vaughn,” Mackey was arrested and charged in Jan. 2021. According to a criminal complaint against Mackey, in the months and weeks ahead of the 2016 election, he and unnamed co-conspirators created several phony campaigns encouraging people to vote via hashtags on Twitter and Facebook, while they joked in group chats that the “dopey shitlibs” would fall for it.
“Vote early text Hilary to 59925 today,” said the text on one meme Mackey distributed. It included fine print to make it appear more legitimate, prosecutors say: “Paid for by Hillary Clinton for president. Must be 18 years or older to vote. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Vote by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii.” According to federal authorities, nearly 5,000 voters fell for the text ruse.
more
Douglass Mackey Found Guilty of Violating Rights With 2016 Memes Telling Hillary Fans to Vote By Text
Douglass Mackey faces up to ten years in prison for Tweeting out racially targeted memes telling Hillary Clinton supporters to vote by text in 2016.