Is political speech and making fun a criminal offense? Pro-Trump advocates face 10 years in prison

U.S. media outlet the Gateway Pundit reported Wednesday (Jan. 27) that pro-Trump Douglas Mackey was arrested in West Palm Beach, Florida, the same day. The District Attorney for the Eastern District of New York charged Mackey with “spreading election disinformation” to pro-Hillary voters by using Twitter to post images in 2016, allegedly disenfranchising voters and facing a possible maximum of 10 years in prison.

McGee, a West Palm Beach, Florida, resident and son of a lobbyist, is 31 years old. He goes by the Twitter handle “Ricky Vaughn” and his Twitter account was canceled in November 2016. The Huffington Post (HuffPost) said, “McKee’s talent for tweeting, blending right-wing propaganda with conservative messaging, has made him a leading purveyor of Republican voter views and a central figure in the far-right white supremacist movement.”

The unsealed indictment alleges that McGee conspired with others on Twitter to encourage blacks and Latinos to vote by text message. Prosecutors in the Eastern District of New York said in the indictment that the week before the 2016 election, McGee posted an image of black women placed in front of the “Black Americans Vote Hillary for President” sign, which read, “No lines, vote from Home. Text Hillary to 59925 to vote for her. Vote for Hillary and be a part of history.”

As a result of the image, the lawsuit alleges, more than 4,900 people “voted via text message. U.S. media outlet Buzzfeed News said they also sent a text message to the 59925 number, and Hillary’s campaign did respond and redirected people to the correct channel.

Most creepily, the indictment criminalizes normal political speech and poking fun, saying, “Beginning at least in 2015, McGee participated in numerous direct message groups (Group DMs) communicating how to most effectively influence the campaign, in which McGee and members of these groups created, refined and shared images, videos and subject tags. Members of the groups then post and distribute the images, videos and subject tags.”

The Gateway Pundit commented that political speech is being criminalized in order to lock up Trump supporters. Worse, the same people who used the power of the U.S. government to illegally spy on Trump supporters are still getting away with it.