He Went to Prison for Sharing Anti-Hillary Clinton Memes - Now He Has Been Vindicated
By: Jeff Charles
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
A man who was convicted for sharing memes during the 2016 election is about to be set free after being sentenced to seven months in prison.
Douglass Mackey was found guilty of conspiracy for disseminating memes suggesting that Democrats could vote for then-candidate Hillary Clinton through text messages, social media, and other invalid methods. Prosecutors argued that Mackey conspired with others to post the fraudulent messages on X between September and November 2016.
One of the memes featured an "African Americans for Hillary" sign and suggested that voters text "Hillary" to 59925 to "Avoid the Line. Vote from Home." Another meme was in Spanish, asking Hispanic voters to do the same. About 4,900 people texted the provided number before November 5, 2016.
Now, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals has reversed Mackey's conviction. "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's ruling read.
BREAKING: THE SECOND CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HAS THROWN OUT MY CONVICTION FOR LACK OF EVIDENCE
THE CASE HAS BEEN REMANDED TO THE DISTRICT COURT WITH ORDERS TO IMMEDIATELY DISMISS
HALLELUJAH!
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 9, 2025
The court not only reversed Mackey's conviction but also remanded the case to the district court to acquit him.
The court's ruling held that the government failed to prove Mackey knowingly joined a conspiracy to suppress votes for Clinton. He did admit to posting the memes. However, the judges argued that this alone is not a crime under the statute for which he was convicted, which requires an actual agreement between "two or more persons" with the express purpose of violating voting rights.
The court also found that the government did not present direct evidence proving Mackey saw or responded to private group chats in a forum titled the "War Room." Users in this group chat discussed similar memes.
Instead, Mackey told the court he had downloaded the memes from 4chan without collaborating with any group. "The government did not contend at trial that Mackey ever communicated with members of the War Room offline, or that he participated in any online discussions with them outside of the War Room related to the conspiracy," the judges highlighted.
2nd Circuit has overturned the conviction of Douglass Mackey in the fake "conspiracy" to defraud voters by posting MEMES about voting-by-text. The Feds prosecuted him in NYC because the Twitter *servers* were there.
A victory for free speech and a loss for bogus prosecutions. pic.twitter.com/iB8dlUr2Dl
— Maxwell Meyer (@mualphaxi) July 9, 2025
Even further, the judges pointed out that when Mackey posted the memes, he used the #MAGA hashtag, which contradicts the notion that he was trying to trick Democrats into voting from home. "Including that hashtag alongside a text-to-vote meme is fundamentally at odds with a purpose of deceiving Clinton supporters into believing they could vote by text," the ruling read.
The fact that Mackey had to spend any time in prison for sharing memes is absurd and a clear miscarriage of justice. But it is not surprising given what we now know about the FBI and Justice Department's actions after Trump won the election. It was clear that many officials abused their positions to target those with opposing political views.
It's good that Mackey has been vindicated. But he can't get those months back when he was incarcerated. Hopefully, a lawsuit is coming next.
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Sent to prison on false charges. For memes. That's a new low for democrats.
Hopefully that lawsuit does appear.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA...............As if being Hillary voters didn't already say, "I'm an Idiot" we have 4900 Hillary supporters telling them to "hold my beer".
Good thing for the scumbag that he didnt post any memes about Trump. Poor thing would have been deported by now.
How is this 'scheme' any more serious than 'Due to expected over-crowding, Republicans vote on Tuesday and Democrats vote on Wednesday'?
Since you want to go off topic, prove he would have been deported.
What's really hilarious is that if this was a Democrat who had posted misleading election process information for MAGA voters in 2020 they would have claimed this was the voter fraud they were looking for proving Trump really won.
I see you're trying to gloss over the gullibility of democrat voters.
Nope, just pointing out the hypocrisy of Republican voters.
Yet it were Democrat voters that fell for this.