Douglass Mackey, a white nationalist troll who ran a Trump-boosting Twitter account as “Ricky Vaughn,” is accused of using memes to spread misinformation and disenfranchise voters during the 2016 election.
A photoshopped image that Douglass Mackey tweeted to spread misinformation during the 2016 presidential campaign.
“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,” Seth D. DuCharme, acting US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, said in a statement. At the time, MIT Media Lab listed the anonymous personality as one of the top 150 influencers of the 2016 presidential election, placing him ahead of NBC News, Stephen Colbert, and Newt Gingrich.
On Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey allegedly tweeted an image of a Black woman standing in front of a sign that said “African Americans for Hillary Clinton.” The image falsely claimed that voters could “avoid the line" and"vote from home" via text. The image was made to appear as if it had been created by the Clinton campaign, even displaying a fine print at the bottom which said,"Paid for by Hillary for President 2016.
For instance, in December 2015, Mackey allegedly discussed making a meme to suggest that certain voters were hiding their desire to vote for their preferred presidential candidate. Mackey and others also allegedly contributed memes to #DraftOurDaughters, a fake online ad campaign created by pro-Trump and alt-right groups to falsely suggest that Clinton would draft American women into the military as part of her platform.