by WorldTribune Staff, July 9, 2025 Real World News
The Left’s political persecution of a conservative meme-maker apparently is over.
The U.S. Second Circuit appeals court on Tuesday tossed out the conviction of Douglass Mackey, who was sentenced in October 2023 to 7 months in prison for what Biden-era Justice Department prosecutors aid was “his role in a conspiracy to interfere with potential voters’ right to vote” in the 2016 presidential election.
A meme Mackey posted on Twitter in 2016, that struck most as satire, urged supporters of Hillary Clinton to vote by text.
The DOJ charged that Mackey’s meme constituted election interference but no evidence was presented at trial showing any voters were deceived by the meme.
Mackey said Clinton supporters had posted similar memes encouraging Trump supporters to vote by text without consequence.
The Second Circuit wrote that “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. The government was obligated to show that Mackey knowingly entered into an agreement with other people to pursue that objective.”
The court continued: “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. Yet the government failed to offer sufficient evidence that Mackey even viewed—let alone participated in—any of these exchanges. And in the absence of such evidence, the government’s remaining circumstantial evidence cannot alone establish Mackey’s knowing agreement. Accordingly, the jury’s verdict and the resulting judgement conviction must be set aside.”
The ruling states: “Mackey was convicted of conspiring to injure citizens in the exercise of their right to vote in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241 based on three memes he posted or reposted on Twitter shortly before the 2016 presidential election. These memes falsely suggested that supporters of then-candidate Hillary Clinton could vote by text message. On appeal, Mackey argues, inter alia, that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he knowingly agreed to join the charged conspiracy. We agree.”
The court stated that “At various times throughout 2016, Mackey was a member of several direct message groups, three of which are particularly relevant here: the ‘War Room,’ ‘Micro Chat,’ and ‘Madman #2.’ In these groups, members shared pro-Trump and anti-Clinton messages and memes and discussed strategies to make their posts trend and go viral on Twitter. … Like most of Mackey’s tweets, the exchanges in these groups generally fell within the scope of lawful—albeit sometimes ‘outrageous’ or ‘silly’—political speech.”
In a post to X, Mackey wrote: “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.”
HE POSTED IT AGAIN https://t.co/fmqUjNosN3
— Jack Poso 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) July 9, 2025
Court tosses Biden-era conviction of meme-maker who mocked Hillary added by Editor Two on
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