Posted on 10/18/2023 11:26:15 AM PDT by nickcarraway
Douglass Mackey, who ran a Twitter account with over 58,000 followers, was sentenced to seven months in prison Wednesday for a meme he shared on social media during the 2016 election.
Mackey was convicted by a jury in March of conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote, which carried a potential sentence of up to 10 years. The meme that led to his conviction was a fake flier encouraging Clinton supporters to vote from home via text message.
“Avoid the line. Vote from home,” it stated. “Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”
Small text at the bottom of the flier notes that voting by text is “not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii.” (RELATED: Anti-Hillary Election ‘Meme’ Case Could Open The Floodgates To More Gov’t Censorship, Legal Experts Warn)
Prosecutors said that Mackey also belonged to private Twitter direct-message groups where he “coordinated” dissemination of misinformation “intended variously to provoke, mislead, and, in some cases, deceive voters in the 2016 presidential election” with others, according to the sentencing memo.
“Mackey has been found guilty by a jury of his peers of attempting to deprive individuals from exercising their sacred right to vote for the candidate of their choice in the 2016 Presidential Election,” United States Attorney for the Eastern District of New York Breon Peace said after Mackey’s conviction in March. “Today’s verdict proves that the defendant’s fraudulent actions crossed a line into criminality and flatly rejects his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.”
First Amendment experts raised concerns earlier this year that the law used to convict Mackey could also be used to target any allegedly false statements about political or election related issues.
“It criminalizes conspiring to ‘injure’ or ‘oppress’ someone in the exercise of any constitutional right,” Aaron Terr, director of Public Advocacy for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, told the Daily Caller News Foundation in April. “If that vague language covers speech that deceives people into voting improperly, it raises the troubling possibility of the government also applying it to allegedly false statements about political issues or candidates that discourage people from voting, not just misrepresentations about the logistics of exercising the franchise.”
I have done this thing before. Millions of others have too.
CBS Radio broadcasting a dramatization of H.G.Wells’ “War Of The Worlds” as if it were live, breaking news induced a few people to suicide.
Somehow I don’t recall anyone at CBS doing time over it.
There are no stiffs in this case, so...”no blood; no foul”?
Per my prior.
NO lawsuit.
NO investigation.
NO indictments.
NO trials.
No nothing.
And those jokes about elections - Vote Turnbull, Vote Twice! (That’s an Australian example, any politician’s name can be put in - it’s an old joke. I suppose now one could go to prison for it.)
In order to convict him, are they not admitting they think Democrats are stupid?
They’re used to be.
It is only a crime because Donald Trump won that election. Anyone who was in any way supporting Trump has to pay dearly.
False legal charges intended to cause citizens to avoid voting for a certain candidate is not OK then, right?
Right?
Haven’t given up at all... Just one listening to people like you who apparently been paying attention to the last 30 years worth of US politics.
Answer this: Did prayer alone resolve the issue with Goliath? Or did David need to pick up a rock, screw his courage to the sticking point, and take Goliath out of the equation?
That’s what I get for typing without an editor...
Haven’t given up at all... Just done listening to people like you who apparently haven’t been paying attention to the last 30 years worth of US politics.
Man, you go from one extreme to the other.
Who said anything about “prayer alone?”
Did we win the Revolutionary War by prayer alone???
No, but there was a LOT of prayer.
This is a waste of time with you.
The media reports misleading news stories all the time. I don’t see any of them being sent to prison.
Sedition Act
The Sedition Act made it illegal to make false or malicious statements about the federal government.[17] The act was used to suppress speech critical of the Adams administration, including the prosecution and conviction of many Jeffersonian newspaper owners who disagreed with the Federalist Party.[18] The Sedition Act did not extend enforcement to speech about the Vice President, as then-incumbent Thomas Jefferson was a political opponent of the Federalist-controlled Congress. The Sedition Act was allowed to expire in 1800....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts
No swinging extremes here... just extreme.
“Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice...” - Barry G
Sure but those would be misdemeanor violators of the stupidity laws. The jails would already be full with the felony violators from the deep state and the shadow government.
You know the lib dems thought of trying this but couldnt come close to do it legally. This story illustrates how imbecilic so many people are.
I would say that this will be overturned “asap”. Or, I would have said that ten or fifteen years ago. Now, I suspect the sentence will stand and then the “meme posting” convictions will start adding up as anything that mocks the left will be declared illegal.
In truth, this is a conviction that should have been repealed the day after it was issued. We have reached the sentencing phase and not a word from a politician against the outrageous conviction. And more importantly, not a word from a higher court.
How many millions of fraudulent mail-in ballots did SleepyJ receive?
54,000 mules documented, not 2,000. And probably that got 1/3 to 2/3 of the mules. Each mule averaging 8-10 votes. So mule votes 81,000 * 8 = 648,000 up to 162,000 * 10 = 1,620,000. Mules provided only 3% to 8% of the 22 million falsified votes.
Wow what a headline
Man Who Spread Misinformation on Trump’s Behalf Sentenced to 7 Months
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/18/nyregion/douglass-mackey-trump-sentencing.html
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