The D.C. Swamp has a long memory.
Anyone who threatens the regime becomes a target.
Now a Donald Trump supporter facing ten years for an insane reason is about to start the trial of his life.
Douglass Mackey, who goes by the online name Ricky Vaughn, could get ten years in prison for posting an online joke.
Mackey was charged with conspiracy “to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States, to wit: the right to vote.”
The DOJ’s case is based on an obscure 1870 law that was meant to prevent white supremacist mobs from disenfranchising black voters during reconstruction.
Mackey is being charged for posting a joke meme in 2016 telling voters that they could vote simply by sending in a text message.
This is a common joke deployed by both Democrats and Republicans.
Super Wednesday?
The same year, comedian and actress Kristina Wong put out a video encouraging Trump supporters to vote the day after the election.
Hey 🇺🇸Trump Supporters🇺🇸! Skip poll lines at #Election2016 and TEXT in your vote! Text votes are legit. Or vote tomorrow on Super Wednesday! pic.twitter.com/ES34HV0yad
— Kristina Wong ❄️ (@mskristinawong) November 8, 2016
Mackey appears to hold some repugnant views, but that is beside the point.
If the federal government can throw people in jail for ten years over memes and jokes, then no one is safe.
The DOJ claims that Mackey tricked 4,900 people into not voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016.
If the state gets away with this, censorship will only get worse.
SPLC strikes again
Mackey’s trial was set to start March 13th, but it was postponed after a defense witness was contacted by a reporter for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC).
Supposedly, reporter Luke O’Brien was set to release a hit piece on expert witness George Hawley in an SPLC article.
Hawley, an associate professor of political science at the University of Alabama, withdrew his name as a witness in advance of the SPLC article dropping.
Andrew Frisch, Mackey’s attorney, claims that the not-yet-released SPLC article “unfairly disparages” Hawley and is based on Hawley’s “private emails.”
Frisch added, “Mr. O’Brien waited until the start of trial to submit written questions to Professor Hawley in an apparent attempt to paint him as an extremist, including questions based on private emails which Mr. O’Brien obtained, simultaneously asking Professor Hawley if his employer, the University of Alabama, is aware of his proffered testimony at Mr. Mackey’s trial.”
This is a common intimidation tactic used by leftist journalists.
They send accusatory questions to their target and say they need a timely response because they’re publishing soon.
The maneuver seemed to have worked on Hawley, which now has Frisch looking for another witness in the case.
James Lawrence, another attorney for Mackey, told Breitbart, “Our nation’s most venerable civil liberties organization — the ACLU — has not been in the trenches with us shoulder-to-shoulder.”
Free speech is on trial, but the ACLU evidently looks content to sit this one out.
Stay tuned to Unmuzzled News for any updates to this ongoing story.
