Marjorie Taylor Greene demands Biden's AG resign over prosecution of 2016 election meme creator

Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote a letter on Wednesday calling for criminal charges against a man for posting a meme to be dropped and for US Attorney General Merrick Garland to resign.

Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, is facing criminal charges for posting a meme instructing voters casting ballots for the 2016 election to vote via text, which is not actually possible.



Greene said to Garland in the letter, "I write to you expressing my profound dismay at the Department of Justice's (DOJ) case against Douglas Mackey over his posting of memes on Twitter in 2016. Shockingly, Mr. Mackey is being charged with… a subset of the enforcement act of 1870 also known as the Ku Klux Klan Act."

"The charge that Mr. Mackey was ‘conspiring with others in advance of the 2016 US Presidential Election to use various social media platforms to disseminate information designed to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote’ is not only laughable but also a clear indication that the DOJ does not have a sound grasp on how to interpret the law," Greene continued.

Greene added, "First of all, it is an affront to African Americans lynched and murdered by the Ku Klux Klan that the DOJ is equating their treatment at the hands of racist terrorists to a Florida man posting memes on Twitter. That the DOJ thinks these two things are commensurate should be concerning to anyone."

"The law Mr. Mackey is accused of violating is clearly intended to criminalize physical violence and intimidation used to prevent people from exercising their rights as outlined in the Constitution, not for the sharing of memes on social media," Greene noted. "Mr. Mackey caused no one physical harm, did not threaten or intimidate anyone and certainly did not kill anyone."

Greene speculated, "The question then is whether the DOJ is deliberately contorting this statute to apply to the free speech exercise by individuals with dissenting political views. All the evidence points to this being the case."

The Georgia firebrand then slammed Garland writing, "Unfortunately, these tactics are nothing new for the DOJ since your appointment as Attorney General."

"It seems the DOJ is intent on criminalizing ‘disinformation,’ a legally undefined term, in order to squash freedom of speech. These Soviet-style methods of enforcing the law seem better suited for the governments of China or Iran, not the United States of America."

"There is no evidence that Mr. Mackey's meme posting prevented anyone from voting in the 2016 US Presidential Election and there are no individuals claiming that it did. This case is simply the DOJ on behalf of its puppeteers in the White House versus Douglas McKay AKA @theRickyVaughn. This flagrant assault on free speech and political participation is utterly un-American undemocratic and incredibly dangerous."

Greene then called on Garland to order the DOJ to drop its charges against Douglas Mackey and "to immediately thereafter resign as Attorney General of the United States before your gross incompetence and twisted sense of justice further deteriorates the rights enumerated in and protected by the Constitution and destroys the lives of more Americans."

Greene added on Twitter, "We’ve seen individuals charged with felonies for obstructing legal proceedings on January 6th, 2021, despite many cases being nonviolent protestors exercising their constitutional right to freedom of assembly, but this may be a new low. Mr. Mackey was not involved in any sort of riot or protest, but rather he simply posted funny images on social media that the DOJ did not like."

"Mr. Mackey was not involved in any sort of riot or protest, but rather he simply posted funny images on social media that the DOJ did not like."

Mackey’s trial was scheduled to begin this week in New York, but his attorneys have requested a two-week adjournment after the Southern Poverty Law Center reportedly intimidated a witness into withdrawing his testimony.