Conservative influencer Ricky Vaughn, whose real name is Douglass Mackey, was sentenced to seven months in jail Wednesday for conspiring with others to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
Mackey, who was convicted in March, organized a plot in a Twitter DM to suppress voter turnout by spreading messages on the platform to “provoke, mislead, and in some cases, deceive voters in the 2016 presidential election,” prosecutors said in a sentencing memo, reported Courthouse News.
Mackey, whose Ricky Vaughn character featured a profile picture of Charlie Sheen as Ricky “Wild Thing” Vaughn from the “Major League” movies wearing a MAGA hat, was specifically sentenced for his role in distributing false information about how to vote with the intent to deceive.
Mackey spread memes including a fake flier with an image of a Black woman holding an “African Americans for Hillary” sign that tells voters to “avoid the line” and “vote from home” by texting ‘Hillary’ to a phone number, and a Spanish language version of the meme aping Clinton’s graphic design with a similar message.
Conservative influencers, who have made Mackey a cause célèbre for the idea that conservative speech is being persecuted by the government, posted various messages of dismay and support on X as news of the sentencing rolled out.
“Pray for Douglass Mackey, aka the incredible Ricky Vaughn, for being persecuted by the regime,” wrote one user.
“You remember Ricky Vaughn from the 2016 presidential campaign?” asked @baronitaigas, whose profile picture is a portrait of Pavel Bermondt-Avalol, a Russian anticommunist who moved to Germany and strongly supported the Nazi party. “Now facing 10 years in prison for posting memes.”
“The free world,” he added mockingly.
“I retweeted Ricky Vaughn all the time,” said @ChatByCC. “It was a great anon spoof account. There was nothing malicious about it.”
According to the government’s prosecution memo, Mackey’s plot was motivated by a desire to suppress non-white voter turnout to elect former President Donald Trump.
“Trump should write off the black vote and just focus on depressing their turnout, and go all in on winning Whites/Hisp./Azn/Indians,” Vaughn wrote in one tweet related by prosecutors. Black people, Vaughn said, “literally believe everything they see on CNN.”
Vaughn also wrote that “Decent people are fed up with black people because they are lying and they will believe anything,” and that “Black people will believe anything they read ok twitter, and we let them vote why?”
“The defendant genuinely believed at the time he participated in the conspiracy that black people, women, immigrants and various other political opponents should be prevented from voting,” the government wrote in their memo. “This context makes clear why the defendant chose to spread memes that targeted women, black people and foreign-language speakers.”
According to a Southern Poverty Law Center Hatewatch report, Mackey averaged around 100 tweets and retweets a day between 2014 and 2016. Those tweets consisted of a mix of standard normie conservative news links and links to the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer and other racist and antisemitic memes.
Some posters on X took Mackey’s sentencing to highlight that side of him.
“We must #NeverForget what THEY did to Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn,” wrote @Fredo_2023 in response to a compilation of screenshots of antisemitic memes Vaughn posted.
“pray for ricky vaughn/douglass mackey,” wrote @ameriikanerr, who compiled the screenshots.
Mackey, who went into the sentencing facing between up to 12 months of prison, will also serve two years of probation, according to Courthouse News.
In a sentencing memorandum filed on behalf of Mackey, his lawyers claimed that he’d gone through an “intensive inpatient course of psychotherapy followed by outpatient psychotherapy” in Florida three years before he was arrested.
“As part of Mr. Mackey’s self-examination, he rededicated himself to family and friends, faith, and values of selflessness and love,” the memo claims. “The Douglass Mackey who stands before the Court for sentencing is not Ricky Vaughn of seven years ago.”
