A meme-maker who was prosecuted by the Biden administration for satirical memes he posted online during the 2016 presidential election has had his conviction overturned.
During the election, pro-Trump meme-maker Douglass Mackey posted satirical memes urging supporters of then-Democrat presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to vote for her through text messages.
Here’s one example:
Douglass Mackey posted this meme in 2016 and now he’s going to jail pic.twitter.com/IKox6USZgO
— Spinachbrah (@basedspinach) March 31, 2023
Years later, during the Biden administration, federal prosecutors decided to pursue charges against Mackey over his having allegedly conspired to interfere with potential voters’ right to vote in the 2016 election.
During the trial, Mackey’s attorney, Andrew Frisch, argued that nobody in their right mind ever took the memes seriously.
“Frisch said that Mackey posted the memes on Nov. 1, a full week before Election Day, and that their message was ludicrous to anyone with a basic knowledge of how presidential elections work,” the New York Daily News reported at the time.
“He was posting stuff — a lot of it was online trash-talking,” Frisch said in court. “Juvenile, sure, and some of it was vulgar. Whatever your reaction when you hear his views … whether he was a great thinker or a neanderthal caveman, you will see that none of it is proof of a criminal conspiracy.”
The court ultimately disagreed, and Mackey was convicted in 2023 and sentenced to seven months behind bars.
Social Media Influencer Douglass Mackey Convicted of Election Interference in 2016 Presidential Race
Announced with @NewYorkFBI https://t.co/nRM60v2Jz1
— US Attorney EDNY (@EDNYnews) March 31, 2023
Flash forward to this Wednesday, when a three-judge panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled to overturn Mackey’s conviction on the grounds that prosecutors had never proven the conspiracy true.
“The mere fact that Mackey posted the memes, even assuming that he did so with the intent to injure other citizens in the exercise of their right to vote, is not enough, standing alone, to prove a violation of Section 241,” the panel’s ruling read.
“The government was obligated to show that Mackey knowingly entered into an agreement with other people to pursue that objective. This the government failed to do,” the ruling continued.
Section 241 of the U.S. Code pertains to “conspiracy against rights.”
It had been the prosecutors’ thesis that Mackey had conspired with other people online to deceive Clinton supporters.
But the Second Circuit Court panel noted in its ruling that there was no evidence of Mackey ever doing so.
“To begin, the government presented no evidence that Mackey participated in the conspiracy’s formation,” the panel wrote. “Notably absent from this evidence was a single message from Mackey in any of these direct message groups related to the scheme.”
Vindicated pic.twitter.com/bnvYWK3Y4p
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 9, 2025
The panel further dismissed claims from another right-wing meme-maker known as Microchip that he’d directly conspired with Mackey to purposefully and maliciously trick Clinton supporters.
“While Microchip testified at length regarding the conspiracy’s formation and operation, moreover, his testimony was of little probative value with respect to Mackey’s role,” the panel ruled. “Microchip had never met Mackey—nor, so far as the record discloses, had any other member of the War Room or the other message groups.”
“Microchip’s relationship with Mackey, such as it was, was exclusively online. As a result, only online interactions could prove that Mackey participated with Microchip in planning the conspiracy. And the record contains no evidence of such interactions,” the ruling continued.
Mackey and Frisch were pleased by the ruling.
“We are overjoyed that the second circuit saw the insufficiency of the case and validated the defense that we advanced at trial,” Frisch said Wednesday, according to the Daily News.
Mackey, meanwhile, has vowed to sue:
BREAKING: THE SECOND CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEALS HAS THROWN OUT MY CONVICTION FOR LACK OF EVIDENCE
THE CASE HAS BEEN REMANDED TO THE DISTRICT COURT WITH ORDERS TO IMMEDIATELY DISMISS
HALLELUJAH!
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 9, 2025
God is good
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 9, 2025
Now we sue
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 9, 2025
The ruling has also attracted praise from others.
“BREAKING: MEMES ARE NOW LEGAL AGAIN,” conservative commentator Jack Posobiec tweeted.
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Author: Vivek Saxena
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