Douglass Mackey, the man sentenced to seven months in federal prison for reposting some Hillary Clinton-themed memes in 2016, told The Federalist it “feels incredible” to learn his conviction has been vacated and he will be acquitted. He was on vacation with his wife and baby and had no idea a decision was coming on Wednesday in his appeal case, which has been languishing in the United States Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit since late 2023.
It is a victory for free speech, and yet another sickening reminder of how, under former President Joe “Autopen” Biden, the Department of Justice (DOJ) spent much of its time going after average citizens for political speech, such as Catholics, Trump supporters, parents at school board meetings, and pro-lifers, as my colleague Brianna Lyman previously reported.
Image CreditCourtesy of Douglass Mackey
The DOJ charged Mackey in 2021 — five years after he posted the memes — with a post-Civil War era law, Conspiracy Against Rights (18 U.S. Code § 241), which can lead up to 10 years in prison.
The law delineates a felony offense that “makes it unlawful for two or more persons to agree to injure, threaten, or intimidate a person in the United States in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured by the Constitution or laws of the United States or because of his or her having exercised such a right.”
In 2016, using the Twitter handle “Ricky Vaughn,” Mackey tweeted (and retweeted) joke advertisement memes telling voters they could vote for Hillary Clinton for president via text message. A ridiculous claim, especially when coupled with the hashtag #MAGA.
Mackey’s retweet (see screenshot above) purportedly showed two people working together, “trying to trick people out of voting,” the DOJ said in court papers.
Mackey also copied and posted a similar meme from the internet. It had been making the rounds in a chat room called the War Room. The DOJ “contended at trial that Mackey’s two tweets and his retweet evidenced his knowing participation in a conspiracy hatched in the War Room,” according to the 2nd Circuit’s ruling.
“But the government did not contend at trial that Mackey ever communicated with members of the War Room offline, or that he participated in any online discussions with them outside of the War Room related to the conspiracy,” the decision reads. “And the government effectively conceded at oral argument that it had offered no direct evidence that Mackey was aware of the dozen War Room postings that the government relied on at trial to tie him to a conspiratorial agreement.”
More than a wasteful, vindictive show trial, this case was intended to be a warning for Americans to think twice before freely discussing politics during the Biden era.
Mackey said he stopped posting until after the conviction in 2023, when he went back online and tried to raise money for his legal fees. Much of his defense has come out of his own pockets. He has had to raise more than $1 million to stay out of prison for the memes. That money has been spent, he still owes more legal fees for the appeal, and the well is dry, so going to the Supreme Court would have meant more fundraising.
After Trump was shot in Butler, Pennsylvania, Mackey decided to publicly post his full-throated support for Trump again.
Before Trump was reelected, the threat of losing the court case and going to prison always loomed over his head.
Mackey, now 38, calls the decision “a tremendous blow to the government weaponization of justice and complete and total vindication to the argument I made all along: I never joined any conspiracy to steal votes, and I never intended for anyone’s vote to be stolen. Memes are not crimes.”
The DOJ, or perhaps the Biden and Clinton families, should repay Mackey for the legal fees and years of stress his family endured while waiting for a resolution to this unnecessary case.
If the Biden administration was concerned about election integrity, silly memes are not the problem. Instead of charging Mackey, the DOJ should have investigated the alleged Chinese Communist Party interference in the 2020 election that it suppressed, along with a host of other serious election issues.
Beth Brelje is an elections correspondent for The Federalist. She is an award-winning investigative journalist with decades of media experience.
