A social media influencer who was sentenced to seven months behind bars two years ago for posting anti-Hillary Clinton memes that federal prosecutors deemed “election interference” had his conviction overturned Wednesday by a New York-based appeals court.
In 2016, Douglass Mackey, now 36, posted a fake ad that falsely announced voters could stay home and text “Hillary” to a phone number instead of showing up at the polls.
A three-judge panel on the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit concluded that prosecutors failed to prove Mackey was knowingly partaking in a broader conspiracy to hoodwink voters.
Many of the memes bore Clinton campaign logos and fine print at the bottom to look authentic. @DougMackeyCase/X“The case has been remanded to the district court with orders to immediately dismiss. Hallelujah!” Mackey cheered on X.
The influencer had initially been sentenced in October 2023, but his surrender was stayed while his appeal was heard.
At the time, Mackey made the post via an alias, “Ricky Vaughn,” a reference to Charlie Sheen’s character from the film “Major League.”
Prosecutors claimed some 4,900 unique phone numbers texted the number in the meme.
Twitter, as it was then called, eventually shut down the Vaughn account, and he garnered a spot on MIT’s top 150 influencers of the 2016 election cycle.
Mackey also posted multiple memes that Brooklyn federal prosecutors cited in the case, accusing him of attempting to suppress votes. Some of the memes included bogus claims that the messages had been paid for by the Clinton campaign.
Federal prosecutors had been cheered by some Democrats for their “groundbreaking prosecution.” Getty Images
The 2016 election marked the beginning of the Trump era of American politics. Bloomberg via Getty ImagesSome of the posts deployed the “Vote from home” line but targeted specific blocs of voters, such as Latinos and African Americans.
Mackey was accused of conspiring with other social media users in various chat rooms to chart ways to push Clinton opponent Donald Trump’s message, prosecutors said.
However, the appeals panel was unconvinced the evidence showed Mackey was part of a “conspiracy against rights,” the offense for which he was convicted.
“The mere fact that Mackey posted the memes, even assuming that he did so with the intent to injure other citizens in the exercise of their right to vote, is not enough, standing alone, to prove a violation of [federal law],” Chief Judge Debra Ann Livingston wrote in the court’s opinion.
Douglass Mackey praised the appeals court’s decision. @DougMackeyCase/X“The government was obligated to show that Mackey knowingly entered into an agreement with other people to pursue that objective,” she added. “This, the government failed to do.”
“Its primary evidence of agreement, apart from the memes themselves, consisted of exchanges among the participants in several private Twitter message groups — exchanges the government argued showed the intent of the participants to interfere with others’ exercise of their right to vote,” Livingston noted.






