A Florida far-right propagandist was convicted Friday of charges alleging he conspired to deprive people of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election.
Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach, Florida, was convicted on a one-week trial in Brooklyn federal court after a trial by Judge Ann M. Donnelly. He was known as Ricky Vaughn on the internet. In 2016, Mackey had more than 58,000 followers on Twitter and was ranked as the 107th most influential influencer of the upcoming presidential election, according to the MIT Media Lab. He had described himself as an American nationalist who regularly retweeted Trump and promoted conspiracy theories about voter fraud by Democrats.
Mackey, who was arrested in January 2021, could face up to 10 years in prison. His lawyer, Andrew Frisch, said in an email that the 2nd U.S. The Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan will have multiple reasons to change their decision on whether to vacate the conviction.
Frisch said that we are optimistic about our chances of appeal.
U.S. Attorney Breon Peace said in a release that the jury rejected Mackey's attempt to use the First Amendment free speech protections to shield himself from criminal liability for a voter suppression scheme.
He said that the defendants'fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality.
The government alleged that from September 2016 to November 2016 Mackey conspired with several other internet influencers to spread fraudulent messages to Clinton supporters.
Prosecutors told jurors that Mackey urged supporters of then-Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to vote via text message or social media, knowing that those endorsements were not legally valid votes.
At the same time, prosecutors said he was sending tweets suggesting that it was important to limit black turnout at voting booths. A picture of a Black woman with a Clinton campaign sign encouraged people to leave the line and vote from home, court papers said.
The Clinton campaign used a font similar to the one used in fake ads, using social media pitches to promote phony votes, prosecutors said. They added that others tried to mimic Clinton's ads in other ways.
By Election Day in 2016, more than 4,900 unique phone numbers texted Hillary or something similar to a text number that was spread by multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and co-conspirators, prosecutors said.
Twitter has said it worked closely with the appropriate authorities on the issue.