(Ken Silva, Headline USA) An appeals court has overturned the conviction against Douglas Mackey, who was charged with election interference under the Biden administration for posting a meme in 2016 about voting for then-presidential candidate Hillary Clinton via text message.
Mackey had been operating the popular “Ricky Vaughn” Twitter account that had some 58,000 followers. He didn’t dispute that he posted memes, but has maintained that they were clearly satire. The U.S. government, for its part claimed that Mackey conspired with others to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote.
Vindicated pic.twitter.com/bnvYWK3Y4p
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 9, 2025
The charges appeared constitutionally dubious at first glance, but that’s not why the U.S. Second Circuit Appeals Court overturned the conviction on Wednesday. Rather, the conviction didn’t stand because the Justice Department never proved that Mackey was part of a larger conspiracy, the Second Circuit ruled.
“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. This the government failed to do,” the appeals court ruled.
One of the government’s testifying witnesses was an FBI informant who still actively operates anonymous right-wing Twitter accounts. According to prosecutors, the informant operates accounts similar to the Ricky Vaughn account. They claimed that the two worked in tandem to spread “misinformation.”
The informant pled guilty to the same charge that Mackey was convicted for. His identity has been suppressed because he is allegedly still working with the FBI in respect to other Twitter users.
In any event, the Second Circuit ruled that Mackey and Microchip never actually conspired with each other.
“While Microchip testified at length regarding the conspiracy’s formation and operation, moreover, his testimony was of little probative value with respect to Mackey’s role. Microchip had never met Mackey—nor, so far as the record discloses, had any other member of the War Room or the other message groups,” the appeals court ruled.
“Microchip’s relationship with Mackey, such as it was, was exclusively online. As a result, only online interactions could prove that Mackey participated with Microchip in planning the conspiracy. And the record contains no evidence of such interactions.”
Mackey said Wednesday that he’s planning to sue the DOJ over what prosecutors put him through.
Now we sue
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 9, 2025
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
