A man whom the Biden administration prosecuted over a satirical meme online just won a victory in court, as his outrageous and anti-constitutional conviction was thrown out.
Douglass Mackey announced on X on July 9, “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!” This is not only a victory for Mackey personally but for the First Amendment and all those who believe in the right to free speech.
God is good
— Douglass Mackey (@DougMackeyCase) July 9, 2025
Mackey followed up his initial announcement by thanking God and triumphantly announcing his intent to sue the Justice Department. “UNANIMOUS DECISION by both Republican and Democrat judges,” he reported ecstatically. “I would like to thank God, thank my family, thank my beautiful wife, attorney Andrew Frisch, the incredible attorneys at Jones Day, and YOU—the friends who prayed and donated and spread the word since day one.”
Furthermore, Mackey is already excited to exercise his Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms once again, and he asked for help raising money to pay off his legal debts.
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Mackey also linked to the court’s official decision, which states:
Defendant-Appellant Douglass Mackey (“Mackey”) appeals from a judgment of conviction entered on October 25, 2023 after a jury trial in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Donnelly, J.). Mackey was convicted of conspiring to injure citizens in the exercise of their right to vote in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 241 based on three memes he posted or reposted on Twitter shortly before the 2016 presidential election. These memes falsely suggested that supporters of then-candidate Hillary Clinton could vote by text message. On appeal, Mackey argues, inter alia, that the evidence was insufficient to prove that he knowingly agreed to join the charged conspiracy. We agree.
The conviction is therefore reversed.
Mackey was convicted in 2023 of election interference in the 2016 election because he shared a satirical meme to his nearly 60,000 followers, saying “Avoid the line. Vote from home. Text ‘Hillary’ to …” with a fake number. It is important to emphasize that the Biden DOJ did not have any evidence that anyone actually took Mackey’s meme seriously and tried to vote from home. So the entire case was based on the unproven argument that someone, somewhere, could just possibly have misunderstood a funny meme and tried to vote from home instead of at a polling place, which supposedly made Mackey a dangerous criminal.
Douglass Mackey was just found guilty of a federal crime he was charged with by the DOJ for tweeting the meme on the left during the 2016 election.
— Greg Price (@greg_price11) March 31, 2023
The lady on the right has never been arrested for her tweet that also came during the 2016 election. pic.twitter.com/pkCz6h669U
Since his conviction left him facing up to 10 years in prison, it’s no wonder Mackey is so relieved at the new decision. But what is incredibly disturbing is that anyone in America was convicted of a crime and faced a decade of jail time over a satirical post on a social media platform (Twitter). The previous decision attacked the First Amendment and set an extremely dangerous precedent.
Fortunately, God is good, as Mackey wrote, and justice has finally prevailed. Our right to free speech is no longer at the sole mercy of petty tyrants in the federal government and judiciary.
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