What would the FBI do without Trump and the level of looney leftism spawned by him? Based on how much time it wasted digging into the Russia nonsense, the Bubba Wallace garage pulley, and all the other cases of things either not being problems at all or being problems that were blown all out of proportion, it maybe would even have time to deal with actual crimes if it weren’t for the Donald and the leftists that hate him.
Alas, the bad orange man ran for office and the culture war escalated, with the blue-windbreaker clad FBI, or at least the agents within it that had enough time to get involved in political matters, coming down largely on the side of the left.
And so, in 2021, Twitter personality” Ricky Vaughn over a meme he shared about voting by text. As The Star reported in January of 2021:
Federal agents arrested a pro-Trump social media influencer on Wednesday alleging his Twitter and social media posts tried to intimidate voters in the 2016 presidential race.
Federal agents are charging Douglass Mackay, 31, over memes and social media posts regarding voting and the 2016 election. Mackay, who lives in Florida, has also gone by the name Ricky Vaughn. Social media accounts under the Vaughn name voiced support for former President Donald Trump.
Now the language there, particularly the use of “intimidation”, is meant to make it sound like “Ricky Vaughn” was up to some seriously bad posting, somehow electronically intimidating Hillary supporters into not voting.
Similarly, the Justice Department’s statement on the matter makes it sound like Vaughn was some mastermind behind a devious plot to keep people from voting, saying:
“According to the allegations in the complaint, the defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one the of most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote,” said Nicholas L. McQuaid, Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division. “This complaint underscores the department’s commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who would undermine citizens’ voting rights.”
“There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote,” said Seth D. DuCharme, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York. “With Mackey’s arrest, we serve notice that those who would subvert the democratic process in this manner cannot rely on the cloak of Internet anonymity to evade responsibility for their crimes. They will be investigated, caught and prosecuted to the full extent of the law.”
“Protecting every American citizen’s right to cast a legitimate vote is a key to the success of our republic,” said William F. Sweeney Jr., Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI’s New York Field Office. “What Mackey allegedly did to interfere with this process – by soliciting voters to cast their ballots via text – amounted to nothing short of vote theft. It is illegal behavior and contributes to the erosion of the public’s trust in our electoral processes. He may have been a powerful social media influencer at the time, but a quick Internet search of his name today will reveal an entirely different story.”
The complaint alleges that in 2016, Mackey established an audience on Twitter with approximately 58,000 followers. A February 2016 analysis by the MIT Media Lab ranked Mackey as the 107th most important influencer of the then-upcoming Election, ranking his account above outlets and individuals such as NBC News (#114), Stephen Colbert (#119) and Newt Gingrich (#141).
That’s not what happened. What really happened is what comes next in the Justice Department message on the arrest of Vaughn. According to the DOJ itself, all Mackey did was:
disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of one of the presidential candidates (the “Candidate”) to “vote” via text message or social media, a legally invalid method of voting.
For example, on Nov. 1, 2016, Mackey allegedly tweeted an image that featured an African American woman standing in front of an “African Americans for [the Candidate]” sign. The image included the following text: “Avoid the Line. Vote from Home. Text ‘[Candidate’s first name]’ to 59925[.] Vote for [the Candidate] and be a part of history.” The fine print at the bottom of the image stated: “Must be 18 or older to vote. One vote per person. Must be a legal citizen of the United States. Voting by text not available in Guam, Puerto Rico, Alaska or Hawaii. Paid for by [Candidate] for President 2016.”
The tweet included the typed hashtags “#Go [Candidate]” and another slogan frequently used by the Candidate. On or about and before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted “[Candidate’s first name]” or some derivative to the 59925 text number, which was used in multiple deceptive campaign images tweeted by the defendant and his co-conspirators.
In other words, he posted a meme about voting and the DOJ went ballistic five years later(the share happened in 2016 and the FBI arrested him in 2021), arresting him for doing so.
How is that not an attack on free speech? Can we really not share memes anymore? Apparently we have to be more careful than ever with satire. Stay frosty out there and remember that the FBI isn’t on your side.
By: Gen Z Conservative, editor of GenZConservative.com. Follow me on Parler and Gettr.
This story syndicated with permission from Gen Z Conservative