© @RapinBill via TwitterThe former profile photo of Douglass Mackey, who operated under the Twitter handle @TheRickyVaughn. Mackey was arrested on Wednesday and charged with using his social media accounts to attempt to influence the 2016 election. The image used for his account is actually actor Charlie Sheen playing his role as pitcher Ricky Vaughn in the 1989 movie "Major League."
Douglass Mackey, 31, conspired with others to use Twitter and Facebook accounts operating under the alias "Ricky Vaughn" to spread disinformation in the form of memes, messages and hashtags that he developed for the goal of influencing voters, according to the complaint. One of the images he shared included a claim that people could vote for Hillary Clinton in a text message.
Mackey is accused of violating a U.S. statute that makes it illegal for people to threaten or intimidate others from exercising any right secured to them by the Constitution, such as the right to vote.
Gerald Greenberg, a former Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Southern District of Florida, said speech that threatens or seeks to halt those rights is not protected by the First Amendment.
"You're allowed to lie to convince someone not to vote for Hillary Clinton," he said. "But you're not allowed to lie to block someone from voting for Hillary Clinton."
Mackey's charges stem from New York, where he previously lived before moving to Delray Beach in 2018, according to public records. Mackey was arrested in his home on Wednesday and later released on $50,000 bond.
His Twitter handle and alias is a reference to the character Ricky Vaughn played by Charlie Sheen in the 1989 film "Major League." One of Mackey's popular Twitter profile pictures featured a modified image of Sheen wearing a Make America Great Again hat.
Mackey's arrest comes on the heels of a federal crackdown against supporters of former President Trump who participated in the breach of the U.S. Capitol Building on Jan. 6. However, the bulk of Mackey's actions laid out in the complaint occurred in 2016.
Prosecutors in New York and Florida did not respond to a request for comment regarding the four-year delay in charges.
"According to the allegations in the indictment, the defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the 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, in a statement. "This indictment underscores the department's commitment to investigating and prosecuting those who would undermine citizens' voting rights."
Greenberg said he was struck by how soon after the Capitol riot the charges against Mackey were brought — especially considering that his actions had been known for years.
He said it is possible that the Capitol riot brought new attention to Mackey and his conduct online, or perhaps even new information gleaned from interviews with those arrested for trespassing in the Capitol. But he also said it is possible that within the Department of Justice it was decided that there would be a more receptive audience for the charges now that the Trump administration is out.
"The timing is a little too coincidental to me to think it was just your standard, 'They finally got around to it,'" he said. "The timing of this seems somewhat deliberate."
As the 2016 election approached, the complaint says Mackey and others, "spread disinformation about the manner by which citizens could and should cast their votes" by creating and sharing information that said supporters of Hillary Clinton could vote for her by posting a specific hashtag on Twitter or Facebook, or by texting her name to a specific telephone code.
The complaint says Mackey designed and sent out these messages, "with the intent that supporters of [Clinton] would believe the fraudulent information" and "attempt to cast their votes via social media or text message."
In a statement, the United States Department of Justice shared more examples, including an image Mackey allegedly tweeted on Nov. 1, 2016, featuring an African American woman standing in front of an "African Americans for [Hillary]" sign. The image included the following text: "Avoid the Line. Vote from Home." The image then advised voters to text Clinton's name to a number.
According to the DOJ, before Election Day 2016, at least 4,900 unique telephone numbers texted to the number.
According to the complaint, Mackey used four different Twitter accounts between January 2014 and April 2018. The most popular account had more than 50,000 followers before it was shutdown in the days leading up to the 2016 election.
However, Mackey's true identity was unknown until he was exposed in April 2018.
According to the New York Daily News, infighting among pro-Trump internet influencers led to Mackey being outed on Gab, a conservative-leaning social media site, as a Middlebury College grad who lived in Manhattan at the time. Paul Nehlen, a Wisconsin congressional candidate at the time, revealed Mackey's identity.
According to voter registration records, Mackey registered his address in Delray Beach in June 2018.
According to the complaint, Nehlen told FBI agents in October that Mackey had previously offered his services to the then-candidate and that they frequently corresponded on the phone and through email.
Mackey frequently worked with four unnamed co-conspirators on Twitter, according to the complaint. The complaint does not specify whether the four co-conspirators have been charged or will face charges.
Since 2015, the complaint says Mackey also was part of multiple private group chats on Twitter that included dozens of individuals.
The chats "served as forums for the participants to share, among other things, their views concerning how best to influence the Election," the complaint says. Mackey and others, used the chats to "create, refine and share memes and hashtags that members of the group would subsequently post and distribute."
In the group chats, Mackey described his love of memes and how effective they were. "I'm starting to believe in Meme Magic," he said, according to the complaint. He stated that memes were his preferred use of messaging. "I aggregate content, troll, meme and comment," he wrote. "Images work better than words."
According to the complaint, the group chats discussed using Mackey's social media network to get disinformation hashtags and memes trending. He had an outsized influence, according to the complaint, because of his substantial base of followers.
Michael Edison Hayden, a spokesman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, said he was intimately familiar with Mackey's posting under the guise of Ricky Vaughn during the run-up to the 2016 election.
Hayden, a former reporter who covered the far-right at the time, said Mackey was known for inflammatory posts that advocated white nationalist and fascist views alongside explicit support for then-candidate Donald Trump.
"It was impossible to not see this avatar with Ricky Vaughn on Twitter," he said. "It was ubiquitous." Hayden said Mackey was skilled at using Twitter and manipulating the platform's algorithm to get people to pay attention to his posts and engage with them.
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).
However, Hayden said he was shocked to find out Wednesday that Mackey had actually been charged with a crime. He said he wonders if his arrest is a sign that more crackdowns on the far-right movement are coming. "It really does open up a lot of possibilities."
The charges against Mackey were filed in New York, where he will likely stand trial. If convicted, Mackey faces up to 10 years in prison. Mackey did not respond to a request for comment.
Andrew Boryga is a general assignment reporter at the Sun Sentinel. Previously he freelanced for The New Yorker, The Atlantic, The New York Times and other outlets. He has taught writing to college students at the University of Miami and inmates at Everglades Correctional Institution. He is a Bronx, New York, native and current Miami resident.
RC