Who is Douglass Mackey? Trump's 'influential white nationalist Twitter troll' arrested for election interference
Douglass Mackey, an alt-right operative exposed by HuffPost in 2018 was arrested in West Palm Beach, Florida on Wednesday. Dubbed by the site as former President Donald Trump's "most influential white nationalist Twitter troll," Mackey was apprehended on federal election interference charges related to a disinformation campaign back in 2016.
Mackey reportedly conspired with four Twitter users (unnamed) to create and disseminate memes that were designed to fool people, especially the Black and Latinx voters. They were tricked into casting invalid votes by posting on social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter, or by sending a text to a specified code.
In a statement, "According to the allegations in the indictment, the defendant exploited a social media platform to infringe one of the most basic and sacred rights guaranteed by the Constitution: the right to vote," said Nicholas L. McQuaid, the acting assistant attorney general of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division.
Who is Douglass Mackey?
According to HuffPost's Luke O'Brien, Mackey hails from Vermont and is the son of Scott Mackey, a lobbyist focussing on tax policies that affect wireless communication and the digital economy. Scott served as the former legislative aide to the late U.S. Sen. Jim Jeffords. When his identity was exposed in 2018, his parents couldn't believe what their son had done. "we were devastated to learn this week of Doug’s beliefs and on-line activities as reported in the Huffington Post," they said.
"They are antithetical to the values we hold and with which he was raised. We are still trying to understand how he could have done something like this and hope he will find some way to make amends for the harm he has caused." Mackey went to Harwood Union High School and was also an athlete competing on the track and field team for a season.
He graduated in 2011 with an economics degree. After his college, he shifted base to Brooklyn working as an economist for John Dunham & Associates—an economic consulting firm that used data to help clients "respond to threats and opportunities in the policy arena," the site added. He was terminated from his job in July 2016. As per the New York voter registration information, he lived in a two-bedroom apartment on Lexington Avenue.
Mackey was the Twitter troll who borrowed his name, Ricky Vaughn, and avatar from Charlie Sheen’s character in 'Major League' and was all over social media circulating memes and what O'Brien describes as "rah-rah Donald Trump boosterism." He was named in MIT Media Labs list of 150 influencers on the 2016 elections and Vaugn finished ahead of even Stephen Colbert and NBC News.
Talking about his arrest, "There is no place in public discourse for lies and misinformation to defraud citizens of their right to vote," D. DuCharme, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York said. "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."
Although much of Mackey's actions were during the 2016 elections, his arrest comes in the aftermath of the devastating Capitol riots on January 6. Law enforcement agencies have been regularly arresting rioters who participated in the breach of the Capitol.