Committed to the First Amendment and OUR Freedom of Speech since 2008
Trump Supporter Douglass Mackey Sentenced To 7 Months In Prison Over Voting Memes
Publisher's Note: This post appears here courtesy of the The Daily Wire. The author of this post is Leif Le Mahieu.
Douglass Mackey, the creator of a popular pro-Trump Twitter account, has been sentenced to seven months in prison after he was convicted of election interference over social media posts.
Mackey was accused of a "scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote," after a Twitter account he ran under the handle "Ricky Vaughn" posted memes in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. One image showed a black woman standing in front of an "African Americans for Hillary" sign and said "Avoid the Line. Vote from Home," "Text 'Hillary' to 59925."
U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly, an Obama appointee, sentenced Mackey, claiming that his actions were "nothing short of an assault on our democracy," according to Courthouse News Service.
"Voting is the right that secures all other rights we hold dear," Department of Justice Attorney Erik David Paulsen said Wednesday. "They were committing fraud, one that was aimed at one of our most sacred rights in our democracy."
Mackey was charged one week after President Joe Biden assumed office and roughly four years after the 2016 election. The Justice Department claimed that Mackey had conspired to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate" people from exercising their right to vote. Prosecutors said that he and others had "intended variously to provoke, mislead, and, in some cases, deceive voters in the 2016 presidential election" with their posts.
The Justice Department said that Mackey had worked with other influential Twitter users between September 2016 and November 2016 to "disseminate fraudulent messages" which persuaded voters for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to cast their ballots via phone or social media. According to the government, some 4,900 people texted the number, but it's unclear how many people, if anyone, fell for the meme and did not cast the vote they intended to cast; or were merely participating in the joke.
James Lawrence, an attorney for Mackey, previously said in an interview with The Daily Wire that his memes were satirical and were therefore not relevant to the law he purportedly violated. Mackey faced as many as 10 years in prison.
Mackey lawyer Andrew Frisch said that prison time was unnecessary, while Paulesen said it was needed to "send a message to the general public."
Prosecutors also took aim at Mackey for derogatory posts he had made toward black people and women, but Donnely said her sentence did not have to do with his political beliefs. "You are not being sentenced for your political beliefs or for expressing those beliefs," she said.
As Mackey was prosecuted, some conservatives have pointed to a video made by comedian Kristina Wong urging Trump supporters to vote by text or on Wednesday, the day after the 2016 election. Wong, who was wearing a MAGA hat and had Trump signs in the back of the video, never faced any consequences for her video.
In an opinion piece for National Review, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy contended that Mackey's right to free speech had been violated in a politically motivated case by the Biden administration. "It's a three-fer: the prosecutorial creation of a crime Congress has not prescribed, the trivialization of civil-rights law, and the intrusion of government as a monitor of political speech."
Go Back
Douglass Mackey, the creator of a popular pro-Trump Twitter account, has been sentenced to seven months in prison after he was convicted of election interference over social media posts.
Mackey was accused of a "scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote," after a Twitter account he ran under the handle "Ricky Vaughn" posted memes in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. One image showed a black woman standing in front of an "African Americans for Hillary" sign and said "Avoid the Line. Vote from Home," "Text 'Hillary' to 59925."
U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly, an Obama appointee, sentenced Mackey, claiming that his actions were "nothing short of an assault on our democracy," according to Courthouse News Service.
"Voting is the right that secures all other rights we hold dear," Department of Justice Attorney Erik David Paulsen said Wednesday. "They were committing fraud, one that was aimed at one of our most sacred rights in our democracy."
Mackey was charged one week after President Joe Biden assumed office and roughly four years after the 2016 election. The Justice Department claimed that Mackey had conspired to "injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate" people from exercising their right to vote. Prosecutors said that he and others had "intended variously to provoke, mislead, and, in some cases, deceive voters in the 2016 presidential election" with their posts.
The Justice Department said that Mackey had worked with other influential Twitter users between September 2016 and November 2016 to "disseminate fraudulent messages" which persuaded voters for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to cast their ballots via phone or social media. According to the government, some 4,900 people texted the number, but it's unclear how many people, if anyone, fell for the meme and did not cast the vote they intended to cast; or were merely participating in the joke.
James Lawrence, an attorney for Mackey, previously said in an interview with The Daily Wire that his memes were satirical and were therefore not relevant to the law he purportedly violated. Mackey faced as many as 10 years in prison.
Mackey lawyer Andrew Frisch said that prison time was unnecessary, while Paulesen said it was needed to "send a message to the general public."
Prosecutors also took aim at Mackey for derogatory posts he had made toward black people and women, but Donnely said her sentence did not have to do with his political beliefs. "You are not being sentenced for your political beliefs or for expressing those beliefs," she said.
As Mackey was prosecuted, some conservatives have pointed to a video made by comedian Kristina Wong urging Trump supporters to vote by text or on Wednesday, the day after the 2016 election. Wong, who was wearing a MAGA hat and had Trump signs in the back of the video, never faced any consequences for her video.
In an opinion piece for National Review, former federal prosecutor Andy McCarthy contended that Mackey's right to free speech had been violated in a politically motivated case by the Biden administration. "It's a three-fer: the prosecutorial creation of a crime Congress has not prescribed, the trivialization of civil-rights law, and the intrusion of government as a monitor of political speech."
Comments
|
Conservative Voter said:
( November 4th, 2023 @ 11:00 am )
The left has opened a dangerous attack on American democracy by weaponizing the courts to go after political opponents on trumped up charges. They have to be "hoist on their own pettard" to reverse this dangerous course. Willis and Smith do need to be prosecuted and convicted for election interference. The judges? It might be better to remove them from office and disbar them for failure to recuse themselves instead of prosceuting them criminally. Also, take away their pensions. The conflict of interest of those in DC and Manhattan are particularly egregious, while the one in Florida seems to be an honest judge. The Georgia judge is somewhere in between.
|
|
I hate the idea of stooping to profound level of of the thoughtless and the petty, which is where the Democratic Socialists operate, but I agree, the Non Patriot Left will need to be taught real lessons, or the Republic might not ever recover, and we must recover quickly at this point ... I pray we are not past the point of no return.
|
|
|
Wait until the shoe is on the other foot and we can send some of these rabid partisan prosecutors like Fani Willis and Jack-boot Switn to prison for the rest of their lives for their massive election interference and abuse of office in the Stalin Show Trial political proseuctions of President Trump. The partisan hack judges in DC and New York, and probably Georgia, also need to go to prison for electoin interference.
|
|
|
I thought this was a joke; maybe I got my Daily Wire mixed up with my daily Babylon Bee, but it is true, the Non Patriot Leftist DO(in)J prosecuted a Trump supporter for "disinformation," which it was, but when did "disinformation" become a crime.
If disinformation was a crime, applied equally, the prisons would be full of Democratic Socialist politicians and Democratic Socialist fake journalists. In fact, if disinformation was a crime, Democratic Socialist Idiot President Biden would have already been Impeached, and in jail himself on his many counts for Lying, which is another form of "Disinformation." |
Home
Contact
About
Service Rates
Privacy Policy
Follow on Facebook
Subscribe to Newsletters
Rss Feed
Keywords
Eastern NC Now & ENC NOW © Copyright 1998-2024 All Rights Reserved.
