A Trump supporter who was targeted by the Biden Justice Department for posting satirical memes mocking Hillary Clinton supporters during the 2016 election was recently vindicated in court. Now, he plans to fight back by suing the feds.
Douglass Mackey, who was charged by the Biden DOJ for election interference some four years after posting the memes in question, faced a stunning 10 years behind bars. After the Justice Department secured a conviction in New York City, Mackey was sentenced to seven months behind bars in 2023, but the sentence was delayed by an appeals court. On Wednesday, a three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit reversed Mackey’s conviction and directed a lower court to enter a judgment of acquittal.
A meme posted by Mackey the Biden DOJ zeroed-in on
Speaking to The Daily Wire on Thursday, Mackey said he plans to file a civil lawsuit against the Department of Justice for political weaponization and misconduct, and suggested he’ll be seeking damages totaling at least a million dollars.
“As the Circuit Court ruled, this case was brought without sufficient evidence,” Mackey said. “They didn’t have any evidence of an actual conspiracy, and that’s just the first problem with the case — there are multiple that the court didn’t even bother ruling on because they just looked and said there’s no evidence. Based on that, we have to assume that they brought this case for political reasons, because why else would you bring this case?”
“I think it’s egregious,” Mackey continued. “I think that it’s politicized weaponization and I think it’s misconduct.”
“The damages are a lot,” he said. “I mean, if we’re talking about just purely legal fees, we’re talking 1 million to $1.5 million that I had to raise. And a lot of [that] I spent a lot of my own money.”
Though Mackey was ultimately acquitted, the legal saga consumed more than four years of his life, which he said took a toll on him, his family, and friends.
“It was a very lonely battle, because this was kind of a low point for President Trump and his supporters,” he said. “We were being persecuted, chased around, hounded. President Trump was actually indicted for the first time during the trial. And especially the trial being in Brooklyn, there’s not a lot of love for Trump supporters. It was a very lonely fight.”
Courtesy of James Lawrence
As for his family, Mackey told The Daily Wire his wife was pregnant during the trial and actually had an emergency c-section while he was in New York City being sentenced.
“It’s very difficult, especially for my wife,” he said. “We got married during the case and had a child because she said, ‘Look, we can’t wait forever, who knows how long this thing’s gonna go on for?’ That was a blessing, but very, very difficult as you can imagine. … My wife had to do an emergency c-section while I was in New York getting sentenced for this case in 2023.”
“My family and friends, a lot of them stuck around and really were very strong supporters,” he continued. “But as you can imagine, a lot of people when you get arrested and this is all over the news, they’re thinking, well, there must be some great crime here. But once everybody actually looked at the facts of the case — it didn’t matter if they liked Donald Trump or not — they realized that this case was complete nonsense. So it sort of was lonely at first, then everybody rallied around — we had a good fighting spirit.”
Mackey expressed tremendous gratitude for his supporters and noted that they were able to raise over seven figures for legal fees, but added, “we owe a lot of money still, too.”
Mackey also explained that every penny of the fundraised money was spent on legal fees, since he was fortunately self-employed and able to support his family during the legal battle. That reality is not always the case for individuals who’ve been demonized in the media.
The prospects of a good outcome with the lawsuit seem likely. President Donald Trump has cited Mackey’s case as an example of political persecution, and a White House policy adviser referenced the prosecution when discussing Trump’s executive order to end the weaponization of the federal government. Moreover, the appeals court roundly rejected the government’s arguments.
“I didn’t expect that it would be such a resounding victory,” Mackey said of the court’s ruling. “It’s extremely rare for a case, number one, to be overturned on appeal. Number two, it’s extremely rare for the appeals court to actually overrule the jury and say, ‘No, the verdict was wrong, you have to enter a judgment of acquittal.’ That’s extremely rare, and just goes to show how weak and non-existent the government’s case against me was.”
Mackey ended his interview with The Daily Wire by thanking his supporters, family, and friends. If supporters would like to chip in toward his lawsuit against the government, they can visit MemeDefenseFund.com, he said.
Mackey also called attention to other victims of government weaponization and specifically highlighted the work of Cynthia Hughes at Patriot Freedom Project for helping such victims.
