Douglass Mackey, the owner of a well-known pro-Trump Twitter account, was found guilty of interfering with an election and received a seven-month prison sentence.
One week after President Joe Biden took office and around four years after the 2016 election, Mackey was charged.
A conspiracy to “injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate” people from exercising their right to vote, according to the Justice Department, was allegedly carried out by Mackey.
He and other defendants, according to prosecutors, “intended variously to provoke, mislead, and, in some cases, deceive voters in the 2016 presidential election” with their posts.
According to the Justice Department, Mackey collaborated with other prominent Twitter users between September 2016 and November 2016 to “disseminate fraudulent messages” that encouraged supporters of Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president, to vote via phone or social media.
The government estimates that 4,900 individuals texted the number, but it’s not known if any of them were duped by the meme and didn’t cast the ballot they intended to or were just playing along.
In a recent interview, James Lawrence, a lawyer for Mackey, claimed that his memes were satirical and hence unrelated to the legislation he allegedly broke. Mackey could have spent up to 10 years behind bars.
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