There is no doubt that Douglass Mackey, the man behind the 2016 election-era alt-right “Ricky Vaughn” Twitter troll account, is a miscreant. He spewed anti-Semitic and otherwise abhorrent bile from his pseudonymous perch, contributing to a hostile Twittersphere climate.
Nevertheless, the Biden Department of Justice (DOJ) is legally wrong—and engaging in petty harassment of a political enemy—to expend limited prosecutorial resources to target Mackey, whose Twitter account has long been suspended, for alleged conspiracy to deprive others of their constitutional rights.
DOJ’s press release summarizes Mackey’s legally relevant underlying conduct: “As alleged in the complaint, between September 2016 and November 2016, in the lead up to the November 8, 2016, U.S. presidential election, Mackey conspired with others to use social media platforms, including Twitter, to disseminate fraudulent messages designed to encourage supporters of one of the presidential candidates…to ‘vote’ via text message or social media, a legally invalid method of voting.” The DOJ complaint specifies that the law Mackey is charged with violating is 18 U.S.C. § 241, which covers, in relevant part: “two or more persons conspir[ing] to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States.”
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