NEW YORK (LifeSiteNews) — A former pro-Trump social media influencer has been sentenced to seven months in prison after he posted memes joking about voting by text message.
United States District Judge Ann M. Donnelly sentenced Douglass Mackey, who used the Twitter (X) name “Ricky Vaughn,” to prison on the charge of “conspiracy to interfere with potential voters’ right to vote in the 2016 election for the Office of the President of the United States.”
Mackey would post joke photos online, or memes, that told people to text a number to vote for Hillary Clinton.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) stated Mackey “weaponized disinformation in a dangerous scheme to stop targeted groups, including black and brown people and women, from participating in our democracy.”
The DOJ praised itself for a “groundbreaking prosecution.”
Judge Donnelly, an Obama appointee, also sentenced Mackey to “two years of supervised release after his jail sentence as well as a $15,000 fine,” The Epoch Times reported.
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He plans to appeal. “We are very much looking forward to and optimistic about his appeal,” attorney Andrew Frisch told The Epoch Times. Mackey’s attorneys “said [he] spent time at an inpatient rehabilitation center, has worked on his Catholic faith, has been married, and is expecting his first child,” the news outlet reported.
The sentencing of Mackey has raised further concerns about a two-tiered system of justice, where right-leaning individuals are treated differently by the DOJ than left-leaning individuals. Notably, the Trump DOJ did not find it fit to prosecute Mackey.
At the same time, a liberal comedian who made the exact same joke about voting by text, but directed at Trump voters, did not face any prosecution. In fact, Kristina Wong’s tweet remains up today, nearly seven full years after she joked about Trump supporters voting by text.
Attorney General Merrick Garland’s DOJ has been plagued by accusations of bias against conservatives.
The same DOJ sought a sweetheart deal with Hunter Biden, the president’s son. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), under Garland’s leadership, has also conducted armed raids on the homes of pro-life Catholic dads Mark Houck and Paul Vaughn.
An official report from the Committee on the Judiciary and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government determined there was “no legitimate law-enforcement basis” for Garland’s decision to order law enforcement to closely surveil parents and other activists who spoke out against COVID restrictions in schools as well as pornographic books in school libraries and racialized content in the classroom.