FL Right-Wing Influencer Guilty Of Suppressing Clinton Voters: DOJ

BROOKLYN, NY — A right-wing social media influencer from South Florida was convicted Friday by a federal jury in Brooklyn of a 2016 presidential election voter suppression scheme, according to a U.S. Department of Justice news release.

Douglass Mackey, 33, of West Palm Beach was found guilty of conspiracy against rights, which stemmed from “his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote,” the DOJ said.

Mackey, who is also known as “Ricky Vaughn,” faces up to 10 years in federal prison.

In 2016, he had about 58,000 Twitter followers and was ranked by the MIT Media Lab as the 107th most important influencer in the then-upcoming presidential election.

Between September 2016 and November 2016, Mackey conspired with other influential Twitter users, as well as members of private online groups, to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to share fake messages that encouraged supporters of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to “vote” by text message or social media, which, in reality, was legally invalid, the department said.

One image Mackey tweeted showed a Black woman standing in front of a sign that read “African Americans for Hillary.” The tweet with that image read, “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home,” “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925,” and “Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”

The fine print at the bottom of the image read, “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by Hillary For President 2016,” the DOJ said.

The tweet also included the typed hashtag #ImWithHer, a slogan frequently used by Clinton.

By Election Day that year, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “Hillary” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which was used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by Mackey and others, the department said.

Several hours after tweeting the first image, Mackey tweeted an image of a woman seated at a conference room typing a message on her cell phone. This image, written in Spanish, mimicked a font used by the Clinton campaign in authentic ads. It also included a copy of the Clinton campaign’s logo and the #ImWithHer hashtag.

“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” U.S. attorney Breon Peace said. “Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his 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.”