Trump Internet Troll and meme creator Douglass Mackey Charged With Election Interference For Fake Hillary clinton Ads Sentenced To Seven Months Prison

Douglass Mackey, the man behind a right-wing meme account that shared images encouraging Hillary Clinton voters to text their vote or post to social media instead of showing up to polling booths during the 2016 election, was sentenced to seven months in prison yesterday.

The highly publicized sentencing comes seven years after Mackey, now 34, gathered a large Twitter following under the moniker "Ricky Vaughn."

Mackey's First Amendment defense was struck down by Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Ann Donnelly, who said that he wasn't being sent to prison for sharing memes or expressing his political beliefs, but rather for conspiring to take away people's right to vote.

On or around Election Day in 2016, Mackey posted a series of stylized graphics made to look like they were created by the Hillary Campaign. The messages on the images ranged from instructions on how to text in a vote, to instructions on how to vote online using a particular hashtag.

Jurors overlooking the case were also presented with other aspects of Mackey's posting history, including statements in which he called women "children with the right to vote," and accused Black people of being gullible by saying they will, "believe anything they read ok[sic] twitter, and we let them vote why?"

Judge Ann Donnelly called Mackey's posts "insidious," "an attack on democracy" and added that by sharing the posts Mackey "decided that certain voters didn’t deserve" the right to vote. Donnelly also denied his request to be free on bond pending his appeal, despite Mackey's wife having given birth just the day before the sentencing.

According to U.S. Attorney Erik Paulsen, the prison sentence was "essential" in order to deter others from attempting similar forms of election fraud.

One juror, however, wrote to the judge personally in an effort to minimize Mackey's sentence, saying that he "acted with no planning other than the act of clicking upon seeing the memes," and maintained a stellar civic record before and since the incident.

While Mackey himself declined to comment, his lawyer Andrew Frisch said that they were looking forward to being vindicated on appeal.

Frisch also seconded the sympathetic juror in saying that Mackey's actions were not representative of his character, noting that his client voluntarily entered an inpatient psychotherapy program and turned his life around after his identity was revealed to the public in 2018.

Mackey is set to surrender to the authorities on January 18th, 2024.