Social media influencer charged by feds for spreading disinformation in 2016 election

In a case likely to explore the limits of free speech and the policing of disinformation, a social media influencer from West Palm Beach was arrested Wednesday and accused of attempting to dupe New Yorkers into skipping the 2016 election.

Douglass Mackey, known online as Ricky Vaughn, was taken into custody Wednesday morning in West Palm Beach, according to federal prosecutors in New York. Authorities say Mackey, 31, exploited his substantial social media following by encouraging people to vote in the 2016 presidential election by social media and text — both invalid methods.

Mackey could not be reached for comment. It was not immediately clear if he had hired an attorney.

Prosecutors say that in 2016, when MIT’s Media Lab listed Mackey’s Ricky Vaughn persona among the 150 most influential online figures in the presidential election, Mackey and others conspired to target the supporters of a particular presidential candidate with memes designed to create confusion. Prosecutors did not name the candidate, but previous media reports about Vaughn’s activities online state that he was a prominent supporter of former President Donald Trump and frequently attacked his 2016 opponent, Hillary Clinton.

One example of Mackey’s activity outlined in the criminal complaint included a tweet several days before the 2016 election in which Mackey allegedly shared an image that encouraged Black voters to skip lines on Election Day by texting their preferred candidate to the number 59925. Prosecutors say the image included a fake claim that it had been created by the unidentified candidate.

Twitter suspended Mackey’s accounts and removed images he posted prior to Election Day in 2016. But prosecutors say iVisionMobile, the company that owned the listed text code, reported receiving at least 4,900 texts with the candidate’s first name or a derivative of the name — indicating that thousands of voters, many of them in New York, may have been duped into not voting.

“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,” William F. Sweeney Jr., assistant director in charge of the FBI’s New York field office, said in a prepared statement. “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.”

In recent years, publications have written about Mackey’s social media activity during the 2016 election. HuffPost outed Mackey in 2018, describing him as “Trump’s most influential white nationalist troll.” At the time, the story said Mackey lived in Manhattan, where he is now being charged and prosecuted.

Mackey’s arrest — coming amid growing concerns over domestic online disinformation — is only the latest in a string of prosecutions over disinformation in the 2016 election. In 2018, prosecutors working under Special Counsel Robert Mueller indicted several Russian nationals in connection with an online disinformation scheme that targeted Floridians, among other voters, in the 2016 election.

But Mackey’s prosecution, brought on the grounds that he conspired to oppress voters’ civil rights, is uncommon, said Thomas R. Julin, a Miami attorney who specializes in First Amendment issues. Julin said the statute cited by prosecutors is typically reserved for going after government authorities who conspire to limit citizens’ First Amendment rights.

“It’s unusual to see it asserted against an individual based on posting of information online,” Julin said of the charge. “And for that reason, as a First Amendment lawyer, it’s troubling that the government sees a need to use a criminal statute to prosecute someone for trying to influence voters. However, it’s understandable that’s taking place here because, if the allegations of the complaint are true, this gentleman was clearly trying to prevent voters from exercising their voting rights by deceiving them to think they could vote by text.”