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Douglass Mackey’s posts in 2016 falsely advertised text voting for Hillary Clinton. Appeals court judges said prosecutors had not shown that his actions were part of a conspiracy.
July 9, 2025, 5:25 p.m. ET
A federal appeals court on Wednesday overturned the election interference conviction of a far-right activist who had posted fake ads that told voters to use text messages to vote for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election.
The activist, Douglass Mackey, was convicted of conspiracy against rights in March 2023, after federal prosecutors in Brooklyn said that he and other social media users had spread memes on Twitter that falsely claimed that Mrs. Clinton’s supporters could vote by texting “Hillary” to a given phone number in the days before the election.
On Wednesday, a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit determined that prosecutors had not proved that Mr. Mackey knowingly agreed to join a conspiracy to fool voters.
Mr. Mackey, a Vermont native who graduated from Middlebury College, was sentenced to seven months in prison in October 2023. He had been released on bail as he awaited the outcome of his appeal, and he celebrated the news Wednesday afternoon.
“HALLELUJAH,” Mr. Mackey, 36, posted to his 56,000 followers on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.
Andrew Frisch, a lawyer for Mr. Mackey, said in a statement on Wednesday that “we are overjoyed that the Second Circuit has vindicated Mr. Mackey and validated the arguments in his defense that we made at trial.”
