January 28, 2021, 2:46 pm
Remember back in 2016 when we were all concerned that Russian intelligence and other bad actors were interfering in the election for the benefit of Donald Trump, and then he ended up winning? It’s hard, we know, but you might be please to know that at least one individual has been officially arrested for election interference, and he’s a white nationalist Trump supporter.
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This man’s name is Douglass Mackey, though he went by “Ricky Vaughn” on Twitter while he was spread misinformation designed to trick Hillary Clinton voters into not voting.
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Mackey was arrested in Florida on Wednesday on charges that he conspired to use social media and memes “designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote” ahead of the 2016 election. One of the most notorious examples is a graphic falsely claiming to be from the Clinton campaign and saying you can text “Hillary” to a number in order to “vote from home,” which was of course a lie.
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Many Hillary supporters and general fans of democracy put out warnings alerting people that this graphic contained extremely false information and that voting via text was not an option, but were unable to find the origins of the image. However, it appears that the feds finally figured it out.
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“With Mackey’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot rely on the cloak of Internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes,” said U.S. attorney Seth D. DuCharme.
Mackey spread this misinformation via multiple now-banned Twitter accounts that amassed hundreds of thousands of followers with racist and antisemitic memes. According to BuzzFeed News, he was so popular that MIT Media Lab ranked him as one of the top 150 influencers of the 2016 election, “placing him ahead of NBC News, Stephen Colbert, and Newt Gingrich.”
He was caught after investigators obtained the contents of group DMs in which he and others discussed using “psyops” to influence the election in their favor. The complaint describes plans to spread rumors that there were many secret Trump voters who were just too afraid to admit they supported him and create fake headlines claiming that celebrities had “joined the Trump train.”
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They also contributed to the false claim that Hillary had intended to pass legislation that would require women to sign up for the draft in addition to men under #DraftOurDaughters, which was found to be created by “alt-right” groups.
“WE ARE THE MEMES WE’VE BEEN WAITING FOR,” said Mackey in a group chat.
Mackey now faces up to 10 years in prison for the election interference charges.
*First Published: January 28, 2021, 2:46 pm
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