Ricky Vaughn Election Meme Acquitted

Wikipedia reports:

After his conviction and sentencing, Mackey was interviewed by Tucker Carlson[19] and Donald Trump Jr.[20]

Carlson falsely claimed that Mackey was being jailed for "mocking Hillary Clinton on the internet", rather than for a voter suppression scheme.[21][22] In a 2021 show, Carlson had described Mackey as a victim of political persecution and did not bring up Mackey's racist tweets, stating that "we have no idea what Doug Mackey’s views are".[23] Donald Trump Jr. encouraged viewers to donate to Mackey's legal fund and said that Ricky Vaughn "may be my favorite Twitter account of all time".[20]

Claims that Mackey had been jailed for merely criticizing Hillary Clinton were spread by Dinesh D'Souza and the online magazine The Post Millennial. The claims were rated "False" by USA Today.[22]

If those claims were false, then why was he sentenced to 7 months in prison?

Yesterday, the appeals court unanimously ordered him acquitted on all counts:

On November 1 and 2, 2016, Defendant-Appellant Douglass Mackey … posted or reposted three "memes" on Twitter falsely suggesting that supporters of then-candidate Hillary Clinton could vote in the 2016 presidential election by text message. Based on these posts, a jury … convicted him of conspiring to injure citizens in the exercise of their right to vote in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241.Mackey argues on appeal that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he knowingly agreed to join the charged conspiracy. We agree….

To begin, the government presented no evidence that Mackey participated in the conspiracy's formation.

So he was charged with conspiracy, and a jury agreed, but there was no actual evidence of conspiracy.

Here we are, in 2025, and he is just now getting vindicated for a 2016 tweet. He avoid jail, but he had to waste years of his life fighting this. I think it is fair to say that he was persecuted for the political content of his tweet.