Feds Charge Ricky Vaughn MEME Maker with 2016 Joke - Faces 10 Years

“Ricky Vaughn” a pro-Trump meme maker and Twitter troll was indicted Wednesday by the feds for using the social media platform to ‘spread election disinformation’ to Hillary Clinton voters in 2016.

“Ricky Vaughn” AKA, Douglass Mackey, used Twitter to post memes and troll Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential election cycle.

31-year-old Mackey was arrested in West Palm Beach on one charge of conspiracy against rights and faces up to 10 years in prison.

According to the unsealed indictment, Mackey conspired with others on Twitter to encourage black people to cast their votes via text message.

The Eastern District of New York said in its indictment that one week before the 2016 election, Mackey tweeted an image of a black woman in front of an “African Americans for President Hillary” sign.

Emblazoned on the picture was the message: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘Hillary’ to 59925. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history”

According to the complaint, more than 4,900 people ‘cast their vote via text message.’

Douglass Mackey, 31, whose Twitter handle was Ricky Vaughn, was arrested Wednesday in West Palm Beach and made an initial court appearance on charges of conspiring to deprive people of their voting rights, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

Starting in at least 2015, MACKEY participated in numerous Group DMs. These groups, which at times included dozens of individuals, and at times had overlapping membership, served as forums for the participants to share, among other things, their views concerning how best to influence the Election. Among other things, MACKEY and the members of these groups used the Group DMs to create, refine and share memes and hashtags that members of the groups would subsequently post and distribute.”

An example of the criminal behavior describes Mackey and his friends on Twitter joking around in private groups about trolling “shitlibs” with memes:

“For example, on or about December 22, 2015, MACKEY and his associates exchanged messaged in the Fed Free Hatechat relating to memes suggesting that certain voters were hiding their desire to vote for a Presidential candidate from on of the two main political parties (“Candidate 2”). MACKEY stated, using MACKEY Account 1, “It’s actually a great meme to spread, make all these shitlibs think they’re (sic) friends are secretly voting for (Candidate2)”. A participant in the group conversations, a Twitter user, described it as “perfect psyops” to which MACKEY later replied, “We’ve hit upon meme magic motherlode.” The next day, MACKEY used MACKEY Account 1 to retweet a tweet that contained one of the discussed memes with the following text: “If you need support, I am here for you #(Candidate 2)Closet.”

The feds are criminalizing political speech in order to lock up Trump supporters.

The Ricky Vaughn account was banned by Twitter in 2016 for alleged harassment, but Mackey reportedly opened other accounts in different names.

Music video producer Robby Starbuck argued that Mackey is being charged for a meme that was sent as a joke. "The only people who should be charged in this situation is the people who were dumb enough to try to vote by text message," he tweeted.