Jury convicts alt-right influencer for posting false 2016 presidential campaign advertisements

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An alt-right influencer was convicted in federal court of conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote after he engaged in posting false election advertisements that mimicked the Hillary Clinton 2016 presidential campaign.

Key Player

Douglass Mackey, a far-right influencer who lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, worked as an economist at John Dunham & Associates in New York City until he was fired in July 2016. On social media, Mackey went by the alias “Ricky Vaughn.” Known for posting conspiracy theories, as well as racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic content, he openly supported hate groups and appeared on white nationalist podcasts. Mackey also promoted “racial separatism,” which he deemed necessary “in order to maintain our unique culture and racial heritage,” per the Huffington Post. 

Further Details

In 2016, Mackey had approximately 58,000 Twitter followers. MIT Media Lab, a media and science research lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, named him the 107th-most important influencer of the 2016 election, ranking ahead of NBC News, The Onion, Jimmy Fallon, and Stephen Colbert. That year, Mackey was banned from Twitter for “targeted harassment,” after which he created several new Twitter accounts under pseudonyms.

In late 2016, as the race for president between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton was coming to an end, Mackey and a group of colleagues turned to Twitter to spread campaign misinformation, hatching their plans in private chat groups with names including “War Room,” “Fed Free Hatechat,” and “Infowars Madman,” The New York Times reported. 

One who joined in his mischief was alt-right troll Microchip, a popular pro-Trump, anti-Clinton propagandist on Twitter during the 2016 election. In the past, Microchip had expressed admiration for Adolf Hitler, and was involved in the early spread of the conspiracy cult QAnon. He repeatedly told a reporter at the Huffington Post that his goal was to “destroy the United States.”

Another, Anthime “Baked Alaska” Gionet, a pro-Trump white nationalist, was arrested for storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. He had also participated in the August 2017 white supremacist “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, during which another participant drove his car into a crowd of peaceful counterprotesters.

Mackey’s posts depicted pro-Clinton advertisements, with statements like “vote for Hillary.” They encouraged voters to “avoid the line” and “vote from home,” falsely claiming that voters could cast their ballot for Clinton by texting “Hillary” to a certain phone number.

One image featured a Black woman holding a sign that read “African Americans for Hillary,” and another showed a woman holding a sign in Spanish. Seemingly designed to dupe minority voters, both posts included the hashtag #ImWithHer, a popular motto of the Clinton campaign. Additionally, both mimicked the Clinton 2016 logo and included fine print that claimed they were paid for by the Clinton campaign.

“The key is to drive up turnout with non-college whites, and limit black turnout,” Mackey tweeted from one of his several accounts, less than a week before the 2016 election. He also wrote that “Trump should write off the Black vote. And just focus on depressing their turnout,” The Times reported. 

Other disinformation schemes led by Mackey included “Draft our Daughters” memes, which claimed that Clinton would start a war and make women eligible for military conscription if she were elected president.

In January 2021, federal prosecutors charged Mackey under a civil rights statute for conspiring to disseminate disinformation in order to deprive individuals of their right to vote, the Huffington Post reported. 

Fans of Mackey referred to him as a “meme martyr,” spreading the hashtag #FreeRicky on Twitter, calling his trial a “witch hunt.” 

On March 13, Joe Lonsdale, a founder of Palantir Technologies, a data analytics company co-founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, retweeted a post that claimed Mackey was being “persecuted by the Biden DOJ for posting memes,” adding that this “sounds concerning.” Twitter owner and tech billionaire Elon Musk replied, “Yeah.”

Outcome

Mackey testifies during his trial

The Times reported on March 31, 2023, that Mackey testified in court that he had posted the photos without a premeditated intention to trick people, claiming he only wanted to “see what happens.” 

“Maybe even the media will pick it up, the Clinton campaign,” he said, adding that the photos might “rile them up, get under their skin, get them off their message that they wanted to push.”

Mackey’s attorneys called Twitter a “no-holds-barred-free-for-all,” labeled his posts as satirical speech protected by the First Amendment, and urged that the case be dismissed. They argued that it was “highly unlikely” Mackey’s posts had fooled any voters, and that the possibility of voter suppression was “far outweighed by the chilling of the marketplace of ideas where consumers can assess the value of political expression as provocation, satire, commentary, or otherwise,” The Times reported. 

Prosecutors rebutted the claim that the posts were ineffective, noting that at least 4,900 people had fallen for his trap, believing they had voted for Clinton by sending a text to a phone number. They also asserted that Mackey’s posts were not protected by the First Amendment, simply because they intended to spread disinformation to “mislead and misinform” voters.

“There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote,” Seth DuCharme, acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, stated. 

Mackey’s defense attorney, Andrew J. Frisch, asserted that Mackey’s Twitter posts were part of an online discourse that “regulates itself,” telling jurors, “These memes were a bad idea and the marketplace of ideas killed them almost immediately.”

Mackey found guilty of conspiracy 

Prosecutors stated that Mackey’s posts were a “cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.” On March 31, 2023, the jury found him guilty of conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote.

Mackey’s sentencing is set for August 2023. He reportedly faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. 

Frisch said that Mackey plans to appeal. “This case presents an unusual array of appellate issues that are exceptionally strong,” he wrote. “We are optimistic about our chances on appeal,” he said, according to The Associated Press. 

Mackey’s supporters angry over verdict

In March 2021, supporters of Mackey had raised more than $63,400 in legal defense funds. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, several donors were associated with neo-Nazi groups and have donated to other alt-right funds.

On March 31, then-Fox News host Tucker Carlson claimed that Mackey’s posts “did not alter a single vote in the election and no one has proved otherwise.” He called Mackey’s trial “the most shocking attack on freedom of speech in this country in our lifetimes,” and Mackey’s arrest an example of “martial law.”