(New York) A pro-Trump “influencer” was arrested Wednesday on charges of spreading false information on Twitter in 2016 to suppress thousands of votes for Hillary Clinton in the presidential election against the New Yorker mogul.
According to the indictment released on Wednesday, Douglas Mackie, 31, better known by the pen name Ricky Vaughn, posted a series of messages on Twitter in the weeks leading up to the presidential election on November 8, 2016, encouraging thousands of voters for Hillary Clinton to post the vote in simple text. Thus he made them believe that their votes would count and that they would not need to vote for them.
The complaint did not directly name Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump. But the letters from Macy and his friends, which he cited in the complaint, left little doubt that voters were intending to deceive them, including the use of the liquidations that were insulting to Democrats.
The idea apparently came from the British campaign for the Brexit referendum in June 2016: a supporter of Donald Trump picked up a misleading message calling for supporters of keeping the UK in the European Union to send a text rather than vote in person in a referendum.
The complaint does not specifically mention the number of people who missed the opportunity to vote for Hillary Clinton.
But the telecom company that had the number provided by Mr. Mackie to send the texts, iVisionMobile, identified “at least 4,900 single-digit messages” regarding the wrong voting instructions, pointing to the complaint.
Although twice banned from Twitter, Douglass Mackey managed to come back with a new account each time, as the legal document indicates.
At the beginning of 2016, the number of subscribers reached about 58,000, and their number reached 107e Ranking of “influencers” in the election, in front of NBC News or program host Stephen Colbert, MIT Media Office quoted the FBI as saying.
Arrested in Florida on Wednesday and faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
