During the 2016 presidential campaign, a Donald Trump supporter decided to post a joke on his social media feed in “support” of Hillary Clinton. That man’s name was Douglass Mackey, who went by the name Ricky Vaughan online.
The meme Mackey posted depicted a black woman standing in front of an “African Americans for Hillary” sign with the following message: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home, Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”
Mackey shared his meme on Twitter with his approximately 58,000 followers at the time.
It was clearly a joke in the vein of those ubiquitous gas station restroom messages scrawled on stall walls, stating ridiculous messages such as, “For a good time call…” Indeed, anyone foolish enough to believe they could actually cast a vote for a presidential candidate by simply texting “Hillary” to an unknown number should probably not be voting in the first place.
Indeed, no one would likely have ever heard of Mackey had Clinton won the 2016 election. But with Trump’s surprise victory, Democrats looked for anything and everything to blame, highlighted by the whole vacuous Russian collusion hoax.
Mackey became one in a litany of examples Democrats trotted out as “evidence” of supposed election interference. It was laughable on its face, but Leftmedia outlets touted the “election interference” and “threat to democracy” claims as if they were indisputable facts.
Thus, when Joe Biden entered the White House in 2021 — and significantly, just weeks after the January 6 Capitol riot — Mackey found himself arrested by the FBI and charged with conspiracy to interfere in an election by distributing false information intended to suppress people’s voting rights.
Mackey was then prosecuted by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of New York. He found himself one of the early victims of the Biden administration’s lawfare campaign against conservatives and Trump supporters.
All Mackey was guilty of was making a political joke, one that apparently almost everyone got, as the prosecutors were unable to produce any actual evidence that Mackey’s meme prevented anyone from casting a legitimate vote for their preferred candidate.
However, this wasn’t about an actual crime, despite U.S. District Attorney Breon Peace’s assertion after securing a jury conviction against Mackey: “This groundbreaking prosecution demonstrates our commitment to prosecuting those who commit crimes that threaten our democracy and seek to deprive people of their constitutional right to vote.”
In 2023, Mackey was handed a seven-month sentence in a federal prison for his “crime.” He immediately appealed, claiming his First Amendment right to freedom of speech was violated.
This week, Mackey won his appeal after a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously ordered that he be fully acquitted and his conviction thrown out. In their decision, the judges wrote, “The government failed to offer sufficient evidence that Mackey even viewed — let alone participated in any of these exchanges. And in the absence of such evidence, the government’s remaining circumstantial evidence cannot alone establish Mackey’s knowing agreement.”
Senator Tom Cotton (R-AR) responded to the ruling, stating, “Unfortunately, it was the norm for Biden’s DOJ. They let violent criminals go free while targeting conservatives for posting memes. I’m glad this prosecution has been thrown out.”
Notably, one of the judges who ruled against the Biden administration was a Biden appointee, underscoring the bad and purely political motivation of this prosecution.
Mackey, who had requested that Trump not give him a pardon because he wanted to be fully exonerated from this baseless prosecution, welcomed the ruling, posting on X, “Praise God. God is good. Now we sue.” Indeed.
