As the Biden administration seeks to jail former President Donald Trump, one of Trump’s biggest fans is already on his way to a federal prison — for making a meme.
Last week a federal judge in New York sentenced West Palm Beach resident Douglass Mackey to seven months in prison for a meme he posted on X (formerly Twitter) that encouraged Hillary Clinton supporters to vote by social media or text in 2016.
As the Tampa Free Press reported earlier this year, Mackey was charged with using social media platforms in order to deprive others of their right to vote.
He issued to his 58,000 X followers memes with phrases like “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925.”
Mackey’s meme, posted on X under the name RickyVaughn99, reportedly prompted roughly 4,900 gullible liberals to submit votes by text or social media.
As reported by The Daily Mail, U.S. District Judge Ann Donnelly, appointed by former President Barack Obama, insisted Mackey’s politics had nothing to do with the outcome of his case.
“You are not being sentenced for your political beliefs or for expressing those beliefs,” Donnelly said in court. “Each one of us has the right to hold opinions and express those opinions.”
The judge instead claimed Mackey launched an “insidious” attempt to prevent people from voting and thus had committed “nothing short of an assault on our democracy.”
No word yet on whether the Biden administration will round up everyone, including Clinton herself, who sought to influence the 2020 election by claiming Trump was a Kremlin agent or collaborator.
Nor does there seem to be any effort to pursue the 51 former members of the U.S. intelligence community who lied about the contents of Hunter Biden’s infamous laptop by claiming it was Russian disinformation.
Meanwhile, conservative commentator Matt Walsh noted last week that a liberal named Christina Wong posted a video in which she claimed to be a Trump supporter and told “Chinese Americans for Trump (and) people of color for Trump to vote, (and) vote for Trump on Wednesday, November 9th” — which was the day after Election Day 2016.
“Really important day,” Wong said in the video. “We’re gonna show this country whose boss, and that’s our man, Donald Trump. So don’t forget to vote Donald Trump on November 9th.”
Yet Biden’s Justice Department indicated Mackey’s case is a warning shot for other Trump followers.
“It’s going to send a message to the people who celebrated what this defendant did. And it’s going to send a message to those who want to follow in his footsteps,” Assistant US Attorney Erik Paulsen said while calling Mackey’s prison sentence “essential,” the Daily Mail reported.
As the Tampa Free Press reported in March, Georgia GOP Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called Attorney General Merrick Garland to resign or face impeachment for the Mackey case.
“The law Mr. Mackey is accused of violating is clearly intended to criminalize physical violence and intimidation used to prevent people from exercising their rights as outlined in the Constitution, not for the sharing of memes on social media. Mr. Mackey caused no one physical harm, did not threaten or intimidate anyone and certainly did not kill anyone,” Greene wrote in a letter to Garland at the time.
The question then is whether the DOJ is deliberately contorting this statute to apply to the free speech exercise by individuals with dissenting political views. All the evidence points to this being the case,” Greene added.
“Unfortunately, these tactics are nothing new for the DOJ since your appointment as Attorney General,” Greene continued. “It seems the DOJ is intent on criminalizing ‘disinformation,’ a legally undefined term, in order to squash freedom of speech. These Soviet-style methods of enforcing the law seem better suited for the governments of China or Iran, not the United States of America.”
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