Conviction of a Right-Wing Provocateur, Douglass Mackey, Jailed for Posting Anti-Clinton Memes in 2016, Overturned on Appeal

The Trump-supporting internet provocateur jailed for posting a negative meme about Secretary Clinton during the 2016 election, Douglass Mackey, will soon see the Biden-era case against him dismissed following a ruling from an appellate court Wednesday.The decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit cited a lack of evidence and reversed a conviction from March of one count of conspiracy against rights. Mr. MacKey is accused of posting a pair of misleading memes in the weeks leading up to Election Day that encouraged Clinton supporters to vote by text message.“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 Section 241 [conspiracy],” the ruling states. “The government was obligated to show that Mackey knowingly entered into an agreement with other people to pursue that objective.”“This the government failed to do,” the court said.The appellate court remanded the case to the district court for an immediate dismissal.In a post on social media, Mr. Mackey expressed his gratitude upon the release of the court’s decision.“I would like to thank God, thank my family, thank my beautiful wife, attorney Andrew Frisch, the incredible attorneys at Jones Day, and YOU — the friends who prayed and donated and spread the word since day one,” Mr. Mackey said in a post on X. In a subsequent post, he wrote, “Now we sue.”Officials with the Department of Justice have not indicated whether they would file an appeal to Wednesday’s ruling, but given the change in administration, further action is unlikely.The federal prosecutors’ office in Brooklyn that originally brought forth the case against Mr. Mackey declined to comment, according to the Associated Press.Republican lawmakers and others in the MAGA-sphere celebrated the ruling on social media.“The Biden DOJ’s prosecution of Douglass Mackey over a meme was an outrageous abuse of power. Unfortunately, it was the norm for Biden’s DOJ. They let violent criminals go free while targeting conservatives for posting memes,” Senator Cotton of Arkansas said in a post on X. “I’m glad this prosecution has been thrown out.”In October 2023, Mr. Mackey was sentenced to seven months in prison and was out on bond pending the outcome of his appeal. In March of the following year, he told The New York Sun that he was optimistic about his appeal case. “This meme was clearly a parody,” he said. “It’s clearly satire.”More than 4,000 people texted the number listed on the memes, one of which pictured a Black woman with an “African Americans for Hillary” sign with the text, “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home.” Mr. Mackey says he found the memes on 4chan and copied and pasted them to his feed. The image included a phone number and the Clinton campaign hashtags #ImWithHer and #GoHillary.“If you’re going to drag people into court over stuff that’s satirical or even borderline satirical, or borderline parody, and charge them with conspiracy, where you don’t even have to prove that anyone was actually harmed, then it definitely cuts both ways,” Mr. Mackey said during his 2024 interview with the Sun.“You don’t know what kind of regime will come into power and who they’re going to target.”

Conviction of a Right-Wing Provocateur, Douglass Mackey, Jailed for Posting Anti-Clinton Memes in 2016, Overturned on Appeal

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