BROOKLYN (CN) — Douglass Mackey, the man “on trial for memes,” was sentenced to seven months in prison Wednesday for his efforts to trick Hillary Clinton voters into staying home on Election Day in 2016.
Mackey was convicted on a single count of conspiring with others to interfere in the 2016 presidential election after he shared from his far-right Twitter account phony advertisements that encouraged Clinton supporters to vote via text message.
“Avoid the line. Vote from home,” one meme says. “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925.”
U.S. District Judge Ann M. Donnelly handed down the sentence, calling the conspiracy “nothing short of an assault on our democracy.”
Mackey was also a member of private direct-message groups on X, formerly Twitter, where he discussed and agreed with others on how to disseminate messages “intended variously to provoke, mislead, and, in some cases, deceive voters in the 2016 presidential election,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memo.
“Voting is the right that secures all other rights we hold dear,” Erik David Paulsen, representing the U.S. government, said Wednesday. “They were committing fraud, one that was aimed at one of our most sacred rights in our democracy.”
In these plans, the group specifically agreed on a plan to distribute a series of images intended to look like official announcements from the Hillary Clinton campaign advising supporters they could cast a valid vote by including a particular hashtag on a social media post or sending an SMS text message to a number provided on the images.
Prosecutors also said Clinton’s campaign, after observing the fraudulent advertisements spread online, warned the company that owned the provided text code about the scheme.
“As a result, the company put in place an automatic response that would be sent to anyone attempting to cast a vote by text, advising the texter that the code was not in fact associated with the Clinton campaign,” prosecutors said.
Prosecutors also pointed to how Mackey targeted specific groups in the memes on his Twitter account, which operated under the pseudonym “Ricky Vaughn,” after Charlie Sheen’s character in the 1989 movie “Major League.”
Mackey's attorney Andrew James Frisch argued against a prison sentence, saying it is “not necessary for this type of conduct.”
He said Mackey has self-corrected since these posts surfaced in 2016, pointing to the disappearance of his “Ricky Vaughn” handle on X. While Mackey is still on the platform, he’s now under his true name with the handle @DougMackeyCase.
“’Ricky Vaughn’ disappeared years ago, years before Mackey’s arrest,” Frisch said.
Paulsen disagreed, saying a prison sentence was necessary to “send a message to the general public.”
The “Text Hillary” memes also target specific groups, with one written in Spanish and another that featured a woman holding a sign that says “African Americans for President Hillary.”
Prosecutors also pointed to Mackey’s tweets where he’s prejudicial against Black people, women and immigrants.
In one tweet, he described Black people as “gullible” and wrote, “Black people will believe anything they read, okay Twitter. And we let them vote why?”
In other tweets, he said immigrants “cannot be trusted to vote” and said, “women are children with the right to vote.” He also implied his disapproval of women voting, tweeting the hashtag “#Repealthe19th.”
Donnelly emphasized that Mackey’s sentence has nothing to do with his political views or his stance on women or people of color, even if his beliefs are “repellent," she said.
“You are not being sentenced for your political beliefs or for expressing those beliefs,” Donnelly said.
His account was also ranked on a 2016 list of election influencers published by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. As No. 107 on the list, he came in just behind Senator Elizabeth Warren.
He also received public support from powerful conservative figures including U.S. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene and Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who called his prosecution a political move and First Amendment threat.
Mackey will also serve two years of supervised probation once he's released from prison.
Follow @NikaSchoonover
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