A right-wing social media influencer was sentenced to seven months in prison by a federal judge Wednesday for - and I can’t believe I’m actually writing this - making memes telling gullible liberal voters that they could vote by text.
Douglass Mackey, a 34-year-old man from West Palm Beach, Florida, was given more than half a year in prison after being found guilty last spring of “conspiracy to interfere with potential voters’ right to vote” in the 2016 presidential election, a press briefing from Biden’s Department of Justice confirmed.
Prosecutors said Mackey “conspired” with other unnamed right-wing groups online to create memes aimed at minorities telling them they could vote for Hillary Clinton, who was running against former President Donald Trump at the time, by texting “Hillary” to 59925 to "avoid the line" at the ballot box. A similar meme was later rolled out in Spanish. The graphics were created to mimic Clinton’s own campaign ads, including using similar font and the campaign’s hashtag “#ImWithHer," like so:
Mackey reportedly posted the graphics to his own then-Twitter account, which boasted some 58,000 followers, under the name “Ricky Vaughn.” (Meanwhile, the entirety of the leftist, America-hating media was openly doing their damndest to shill for Clinton, with no threat or fear of consequences. But I digress.)
And according to the DOJ, a whole host of gullible rubes bought Mackey's gimmick.
Related: Media, 'Squad' Rush to Blame Israel Following Gaza Hospital Explosion
“On or about and before Election Day 2016, thousands of unique telephone numbers texted ‘Hillary’ or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which had been used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and his co-conspirators,” the DOJ explained.
At the time of Mackey's conviction back in April, the Department of Justice claimed, "Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote."
Appalled that someone would play such a dirty trick on poor hapless idiots, Judge Ann Donnelly accused Mackey of being “one of the leading members” in “nothing short of an assault on our democracy" before sentencing him to seven months in the clink.
Now, I’m not saying Mackey’s actions here were entirely on the up-and-up. Having never met the guy, and based solely on his own internal messages on group chats dug up during the investigation, he seems like a regular crapbag. Maybe I'm wrong. I don't know, and don't much care.
But while trying to convince people they could vote via text might be next-level asshattery, the whole thing could be (and has been) seen by some as a joke played on naive morons stupid enough to actually think they could just text a word to a random phone number and that it’d count as a legitimate vote in a presidential election.
Because, let’s admit: if you’re dumb enough to buy that without at least checking on the old Google first, that’s really on you.
Follow MRCTV on Twitter/X!
Every leftist "journalist" who sided with terrorists on the hospital strike should be required to issue a correction and apologize.
— Media Research Center (@theMRC) October 18, 2023
Shoutout to @CurtisHouck for saving these receipts 👇https://t.co/xjug4qOU0E