Pro-Trump Internet Twitter troll is acquitted of conspiracy to suppress the Hillary vote

The Court of Appeals rarely vacates a federal criminal conviction. Many of the judges worked for the U.S. Attorney's Office before ascending to the bench, and they know the feds are meticulous and rarely lose their cases. This prosecution is different, and the Court vacates the conviction, which said the defendant had conspired to prevent people from voting in the 2016 election by tweeting false advice to Hillary Clinton voters about voting by text message, a tactic intended to suppress voter turnout so the defendant's preferring candidate, Donald Trump, could win the election.

The case is United States v. Mackey, issued on July 9. You know that you can't vote by text message, right? Some people don't know that. The decision illustrates defendant's tactics, portraying this guy, a 24-year-old whose avatar draws from Charlie Sheen's character in the movie Major League, as a self-described Internet troll and "shitposter" who tweeted hundreds of times a day with memes, some of which disparaged women, minorities, or immigrants. The jury found him guilty after a difficult deliberation process, telling the judge at one point that it could not make up its mind.

Promoting bad and even false politics may not be illegal. But if you conspire with others to suppress the vote, you may violate federal law. The problem with this prosecution is that defendant was not actively affiliating with other organizations online for this purpose. He engaged in a few such posts, but nothing extensive. The evidence that he conspired with these other voter-suppression organizations is not enough to sustain the conviction. He had nothing to do with the conspiracy's formation, and any evidence of his involvement in the conspiracy is thinner than the slice of baloney at a cheap deli. The Court of Appeals (Livingston, Robinson and Raggi) is simply not comfortable with this verdict.

If you want to know more about the Internet trolling culture that promotes MAGA policies, this decision is an interesting read. If you want to decry the debased nature of American politics these days, where anyone online can say anything about anyone, whether true of false, and even affect an close presidential election, this is also an interesting read. I see that this case attracted a bunch of amicus briefs on both sides, a rarity in the Second Circuit. That tells us how important this case is and why the legal system is careful not to prosecute people on the basis of their political views alone.