A more salient Trump-tied case plays out in Brooklyn
Former President Donald J. Trump on March 18, 2023 in Tulsa, Okla. Credit: AP/Sue Ogrocki
Chalk it up if you wish as yet another inaccurate claim from Donald Trump, the former president. He told the world he would be arrested on Tuesday and then wasn’t. It turned out the grand jury in Manhattan looking at his payoff to porn actress Stormy Daniels had not finished its work, so the suspense and speculation continue for now.
But across the East River in Brooklyn federal court, another case is well underway, also related to the 2016 Trump campaign, that may ultimately actually carry more political meaning for the nation as a whole. It involves the issues of free expression, dirty election tricks, and accountability for what people say online.
Douglass Mackey, 33, tweeted fake Hillary Clinton campaign ads, aimed at minority voters, with a text-message number urging her backers to avoid long lines at the polls and to vote by text. This is a digital version of the old tactic of making fake phone calls aimed at getting people to believe that the party to which they belong votes the day after Election Day.
Mackey, a graduate of Middlebury College in Vermont, has lived in West Palm Beach, Florida and on Manhattan’s Upper East Side. Prosecutors say he was one of a group of conspirators looking to deprive others of their right to vote, and that some 5,000 people did text the number displayed. Needless to say, Mackey has an out-of-court following from a MAGA audience that is ever eager to embrace extreme claims of persecution.
In public, Mackey projects an image of educated privilege and political sophistication. Upon his indictment by the Justice Department two years ago, he was officially outed as the man behind the web alias Ricky Vaughn, whose vile white nationalist rants and alliances with fellow far-right figures got viral attention.
Now Mackey’s lawyers are arguing that his “allegedly deceptive memes” are protected by the First Amendment, purportedly as satire or political commentary. The prosecution calls it a plot to spread false information with the very calculated goal of misleading voters.
As tabloid fare, it’s a more cutting-edge case culturally than the one expected to be brought by Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg against Trump.
The Manhattan case involves a now-76-year-old real estate heir’s encounter with a now-44-year-old adult film performer nicknamed Stormy. By contrast, the Mackey trial is due to feature “alt-right” tech players and a presumably youthful confidential witness known as Microchip.
Beyond generational differences, there is a far deeper political context to the allegations in the Brooklyn case.
Trump and his innermost circle have exercised the nastiest and most vicious electoral tactics. Roger Stone, the convicted adviser Trump pardoned, has for decades proudly called himself a “dirty trickster.” Fake conspiracy stories were peddled. Election officials and voting-machine companies were baselessly defamed. Members of Congress were intimidated in the lethal rioting of Jan. 6, 2021 which was an attempt to steal a national election. There was even a plan to put fake electors into the Electoral College.
“Text-us-your-vote” may stack up like a children’s game compared to these other stunts.
Still, compared to Bragg’s probe, the Brooklyn case promises to prove more significant because of the legal precedents it may eventually set regarding internet deceit. And that’s part of a MAGA-fueled problem wider than the alleged cover-up of a tawdry tryst.
COLUMNIST DAN JANISON’S opinions are his own.
Dan Janison is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
