WASHINGTON (Pakistan Point News / Sputnik - 28th January, 2021) A Florida-based social media activist faces charges that he tried to convince people not to vote and interfered in the 2016 US presidential election by spreading disinformation, the Department of Justice said in a press release on Wednesday.
"A criminal complaint was unsealed today in Federal court in Brooklyn charging Douglass Mackey, also known as 'Ricky Vaughn,' with conspiring with others in advance of the 2016 US presidential election to use various social media platforms to disseminate misinformation designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote," the release said.
Mackey was arrested on Wednesday in West Palm Beach, Florida, and was scheduled to appear via video conference later in the day before US Magistrate Judge Bruce Reinhart at the federal courthouse in West Palm Beach, the Justice Department said.
"There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote. 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," Acting US Attorney Seth DuCharme said.
In 2016, Mackey established an audience on Twitter with 58,000 followers.� A February 2016 analysis by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab ranked him as the 107th most important influencer of the upcoming election, ranking him above NBC news and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, the release said.
"[B]etween September 2016 and November 2016 ... 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 and thus to fail to cast their ballots in a legally valid manner," the release said.
According to the allegations in the indictment, Mackey exploited a social media platform to infringe one the of most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution - the right to vote, Acting US Assistant Attorney General Nicholas McQuaid said in the release.
