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      in Elections

      Ron DeSantis to Announce 2024 Presidential Run With Elon Musk on Twitter

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      Adding a twist to the beginning of his presidential campaign, the Florida governor is expected to appear on a live audio conversation with Mr. Musk, the social platform’s owner, on Wednesday evening.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida is planning to announce the start of his 2024 presidential campaign on Wednesday in a live audio conversation on Twitter with Elon Musk, the platform’s polarizing owner, according to people with knowledge of his plans.Mr. DeSantis’s entry into the Republican primary race against former President Donald J. Trump has been widely expected, but the decision to do so with Mr. Musk adds a surprising element and gives Mr. DeSantis access to a large audience online. NBC News first reported the plans.The event on Twitter Spaces, which is planned for 6 p.m. Eastern, injects a level of risk into a rollout that is expected to be carefully scripted and ensures that Mr. DeSantis’s first impression as a presidential candidate will be aligning himself with Mr. Musk, an eccentric businessman who has ranked at times as the world’s richest man.One challenge for Mr. DeSantis as he enters the 2024 race will be competing for attention with Mr. Trump, who for decades has shown a knack for commandeering the limelight. Mr. Trump’s aides have signaled for months that he plans to return to Twitter sooner rather than later. Mr. Musk already lifted the ban on the former president that was imposed when Twitter was a public company.In addition to his Twitter event, Mr. DeSantis is expected to appear on Wednesday evening on Fox News in an interview with Trey Gowdy, a former congressman from South Carolina, according to the network. The governor has also gathered donors on Wednesday at the Four Seasons in Miami to began raising money for his campaign.A super PAC backing Mr. Trump mocked the plans.“This is one of the most out-of-touch campaign launches in modern history,” said Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for Make America Great Again, the pro-Trump group. “The only thing less relatable than a niche campaign launch on Twitter, is DeSantis’s after party at the uber-elite Four Seasons resort in Miami.”Mr. Musk said at an event with The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday that he was not formally throwing his support behind Mr. DeSantis, or any other Republican. On Monday, he retweeted a video of the presidential kickoff event for Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, another Republican contender.Under Mr. Musk, Twitter has cultivated a more Republican audience. This month, Tucker Carlson, the fired former Fox News star, announced he would host his popular show on Twitter.The DeSantis event with Mr. Musk will be moderated by David Sacks, a Republican donor who is a supporter of the governor and is close to Mr. Musk. Mr. Sacks, a technology entrepreneur and investor, donated $50,000 to Mr. DeSantis’s state political committee ahead of his re-election, campaign finance records show. He has spoken positively of the governor’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic in Florida. “He was the first governor to stop these insane lockdowns,” Mr. Sacks said on Bloomberg TV in 2021. “I respect that.”In choosing Spaces, Mr. DeSantis is relying on an audio-only streaming tool with a history of bugs and failures. Mr. Musk has used the feature regularly in the six months since he bought Twitter for $44 billion in October, appearing on Spaces to talk about the state of his various businesses and give interviews, which draw tens of thousands of listeners.Mr. Musk has said he voted for President Biden in the 2020 election, but has since been critical of him and his administration, which has a frosty relationship with Tesla, his electric car company. The billionaire has said it is difficult for Mr. Biden to stay in touch with voters at the age of 80.When asked about Mr. Biden in an interview on CNBC last week, Mr. Musk said he just wanted “a normal human being” to lead the country.“It’s not simply a matter of, do they share your beliefs?” he said. “But are they good at getting things done?”While Mr. Musk has called himself a moderate, donating relatively small amounts to both Republicans and Democrats in the past, he has shifted his support in recent years toward the right. On Twitter he has engaged with and shared right-wing conspiracy theories, including one about the October attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Mr. Musk has voiced his support for Mr. DeSantis, including last July, when he tweeted that the Florida governor would “easily win” if matched up against Mr. Biden in 2024. And in November he responded in the affirmative when asked by a Twitter user if he would support Mr. DeSantis in that year’s election.Last summer, when Mr. DeSantis was asked about Mr. Musk’s potential support, the Florida governor cracked: “I welcome support from African Americans. What can I say?” (Mr. Musk is white and from South Africa.)In Florida, Mr. DeSantis has supported legislation intended, in his words, to protect people against “Silicon Valley elites.” He has also criticized tech companies for their efforts to remove misinformation from their platforms, which he has likened to an assault on free speech and truth undertaken in concert with government officials.“You’ve seen the administrative state collude with Big Tech to censor truthful information, whether it’s people attacking Covid lockdowns, whether it’s them questioning the efficacy of masks or school closures,” Mr. DeSantis said in an April speech to the conservative Heritage Foundation. “There was a concerted effort for Big Tech companies to do what government is never permitted to do directly.”On Tuesday evening, the governor’s wife, Casey DeSantis, tweeted a video of Mr. DeSantis preparing to walk onto a stage — a clear foreshadowing of his pending announcement. “They call it faith because in the face of darkness you can see that brighter future,” a narrator intones. The video asks supporters to text a phone number for more information.“Thank you for subscribing to receive texts from Ron DeSantis for President,” the automatic reply reads. “Pre-launch status: PENDING.” More

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      in US Politics

      US surgeon general issues advisory on ‘profound’ risks of child social media use

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      Social media use by children and teenagers can pose a “profound risk of harm” to their mental health and wellbeing, the US surgeon general is warning.In a new advisory released on Tuesday, Dr Vivek Murthy calls on tech companies, policymakers and parents to take “immediate action to protect kids now”. He says that in the absence of robust independent research it is impossible to know whether social media is safe for children and adolescents.“The bottom line is we do not have enough evidence to conclude that social media is, in fact, sufficiently safe for our kids. And that’s really important for parents to know,” Murthy told the Associated Press.The 25-page advisory, produced as part of the surgeon general’s ongoing investigation into what he sees as a full-blown youth mental health crisis, points to the ubiquitous use of social media by young people. Up to 95% of 13- to 17-year-old Americans use a social media platform, and more than a third say they do so “almost constantly”.The report shows how current controls on access by children are not working. While most sites apply a minimum age requirement of 13, almost 40% of eight- to 12-year-olds are regular users.The surgeon general’s warning came as the White House put out its own notice on Tuesday about what it called the “unprecedented youth mental health crisis” in the US. The number of children and adolescents dealing with depression and anxiety had risen almost 30% in recent years, with social media a clear factor.The White House is forming a new taskforce on kids and online health and safety. Its job would be to identify the potential harms posed by online platforms and to come up with a tool kit designed to combat the problems for tech companies developing new products.Concern over the effects of popular online apps on children has been building in recent years. In 2021 a whistleblower, Frances Haugen, exposed that Facebook and Instagram knew they were directing young users towards harmful content including material that promoted anorexia – and that they were expressly targeting children under 13.One internal study from Facebook’s parent company, Meta, reported 14% of teenage girls said that when they used Instagram their suicidal thoughts intensified, while 17% of teen girls said it exacerbated eating disorders.In the wake of Haugen’s revelations, Meta sidelined plans to launch a kids’ version of Instagram.Murthy told AP: “I recognize technology companies have taken steps to try to make their platforms healthier and safer, but it’s simply not enough.”His advisory underlines the critical nature of adolescence in the development of the human brain, which leaves kids aged 10 to 19 highly vulnerable to peer pressure. It is within these years that an individual’s sense of self-worth is formed, and it is when mental health challenges such as depression often emerge.The report says that social media use is predictive of a decline in satisfaction with life, especially for girls aged 11 to 13 and boys aged 14 and 15.Accessing apps does have positive benefits, Murthy says, including providing community and connection with others who share similar interests or identity. That can be particularly valuable for LGBTQ+ youth who can easily find each other.Seven out of 10 adolescent girls of colour said they found positive and affirming content this way. Across all user groups, most American adolescents report that social media helps them feel more accepted and supported through tough times.But such positive indicators are currently overshadowed by risk factors, the surgeon general warns. A long-term study of 12- to 15-year-olds found that adolescents who spend more than three hours each day on social media have twice the risk of mental health challenges including depression and anxiety.Figures from 2021 suggest that the current average in that age group is 3.5 hours a day.Excessive social media use, which can result in compulsive or uncontrollable behaviour, can lead to sleep problems which in turn can alter the neurological development of the adolescent brain. Depressive symptoms and suicidal thoughts can ensue, the advisory says.Murthy is calling on tech companies to be more open with the public and to put the health and safety of their young users first when creating new products. He also has words for parents.“For every family, it may not be feasible to stop your child from using social media or there may be benefit,” he told the AP. “But drawing boundaries around the use of social media in your child’s life so there are times and spaces that are protected, that are tech-free, that can be really helpful.” More

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      in US Politics

      TikTok must divest itself of Chinese ownership or face ban, FCC commissioner tells Australian inquiry

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      TikTok will either need to divest itself from Chinese ownership or face a ban in the United States, according to the commissioner of the US federal communications commission, Brendan Carr, who accused the company of “gaslighting” the public on surveillance concerns.Appearing before the Australian Senate inquiry into foreign influence through social media, the Trump appointee said concern about TikTok in the US was “broad and deep”, and crossed party lines.Following the United Kingdom, Australia and other countries’ ban of the app from government devices, the US is considering a full ban nationally. Legislation enacting a statewide ban was recently passed in Montana.TikTok has attempted to head off any potential ban by moving US user data to third-party servers within the country. It is also allowing its source code to be scrutinised by US tech firm Oracle, which will screen TikTok app updates.Carr told the committee while that was ultimately an issue being handled by the US Treasury department, there was a common view among Democrats and Republicans that the data could not be prevented from being accessed by Chinese government officials under the 2017 national security law.Carr, the most senior Republican member on the FCC, said only an outright ban of the app in the United States or removing all corporate ties to China would be acceptable.“Ultimately, I think some sort of … legislation that imposes a ban or a genuine divestiture is the way forward right now,” he said.“The argument that somehow TikTok is going to stand up to the CCP is belied by their inability to do it at any point in time publicly. For instance, when asked in US media interviews, whether they acknowledge the existence of the Uyghur genocide, their official on TV refused to address it.”Carr said that a Project Texas plan might work for other Chinese companies, but TikTok’s actions to date meant there was no trust for the United States.“We’ve had this years-long approach that strikes me is nothing short of a gaslighting in terms of their misrepresentations,” he said.A spokesperson for TikTok said divestment wouldn’t solve the problem if national security is the objective.“A change in ownership would not impose any new restrictions on data flows or access. The best way to address concerns about national security is with the transparent, US-based protection of US user data and systems, with robust third-party monitoring, vetting, and verification, which we are already implementing.”The Australian government has announced no plans beyond the ban of TikTok from government devices, but the Coalition is likely to push the Labor government for more restrictions on the app.The chair of the inquiry and shadow home affairs minister, senator James Paterson, opened the hearing by saying that the inquiry would serve as a starting point on making Australians a harder target for foreign interference.“We cannot allow foreign authoritarian regimes to have unfettered access to the devices of millions of Australians and the powerful opportunity that offers them to influence our democracy,” he said. “The work starts today to make us a harder target against the threat of cyber enabled foreign interference.”TikTok this week issued a factcheck on claims made about the app, and denied that Australian user data could be accessed in China.The inquiry is holding initial hearings on Thursday and Friday, and is due to report back to parliament in August. More

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      in Elections

      Another Texas Election Official Quits After Threats From Trump Supporters

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      Heider Garcia, the top election official in deep-red Tarrant County, had previously testified about being harassed by the former president’s right-wing supporters.Heider Garcia, the head of elections in Tarrant County, Texas, announced this week that he would resign after facing death threats, joining other beleaguered election officials across the nation who have quit under similar circumstances.Mr. Garcia oversees elections in a county where, in 2020, Donald J. Trump became only the second Republican presidential candidate to lose in more than 50 years. Right-wing skepticism of the election results fueled threats against him, even though the county received acclaim from state auditors for its handling of the 2020 voting. Why it’s importantWith Mr. Trump persistently repeating the lie that he won the 2020 election, many of his supporters and those in right-wing media have latched on to conspiracy theories and joined him in spreading disinformation about election security. Those tasked with running elections, even in deeply Republican areas that did vote for Mr. Trump in 2020, have borne the brunt of vitriol and threats from people persuaded by baseless claims of fraud.The threats made against himMr. Garcia detailed a series of threats as part of his written testimony last year to the Senate Judiciary Committee, which he urged to pass better protections for election officials.One of the threats made online that he cited: “hang him when convicted from fraud and let his lifeless body hang in public until maggots drip out his mouth.”He testified that he had repeatedly been the target of a doxxing campaign, including the posting of his home address on Twitter after Sidney Powell, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, falsely accused him on television and social media of manipulating election results.Mr. Garcia also testified that he received direct messages on Facebook with death threats calling him a “traitor,” and one election denier used Twitter to urge others to “hunt him down.”Heider Garcia’s backgroundMr. Garcia, whose political affiliation is not listed on public voting records, has overseen elections in Tarrant County since 2018. Before that, he had a similar role outside Sacramento in Placer County, Calif.He did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Tuesday.Election deniers have fixated on Mr. Garcia’s previous employment with Smartmatic, an election technology company that faced baseless accusations of rigging the 2020 election and filed a $2.7 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News that is similar to one brought by the voting machine company Dominion, which was settled on Tuesday. He had several roles with Smartmatic over more than a dozen years, ending in 2016, according to his LinkedIn profile. His work for the company in Venezuela, a favorite foil of the right wing because of its troubled socialist government, has been a focus of conspiracy theorists.What he said about the threats“I could not sleep that night, I just sat in the living room, until around 3:00 a.m., just waiting to see if anyone had read this and decided to act on it.”— From Mr. Garcia’s written testimony last year, describing the toll that the posting of his address online, along with other threats, had taken on him and his family.Other election officials who have quitAll three election officials resigned last year in another Texas county, Gillespie — at least one of whom cited repeated death threats and stalking.A rural Virginia county about 70 miles west of Richmond lost its entire elections staff this year after an onslaught of baseless voter fraud claims, NBC News reported.Read moreElection officials have resorted to an array of heightened security measures as threats against them have intensified, including hiring private security, fireproofing and erecting fencing around a vote tabulation center.The threats have led to several arrests by a Justice Department task force that was created in 2021 to focus on attempts to intimidate election officials. More

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      in Elections

      Misinformation Defense Worked in 2020, Up to a Point, Study Finds

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      Nearly 68 million Americans still visited untrustworthy websites 1.5 billion times in a month, according to Stanford researchers, causing concerns for 2024.Not long after misinformation plagued the 2016 election, journalists and content moderators scrambled to turn Americans away from untrustworthy websites before the 2020 vote.A new study suggests that, to some extent, their efforts succeeded.When Americans went to the polls in 2020, a far smaller portion had visited websites containing false and misleading narratives compared with four years earlier, according to researchers at Stanford. Although the number of such sites ballooned, the average visits among those people dropped, along with the time spent on each site.Efforts to educate people about the risk of misinformation after 2016, including content labels and media literacy training, most likely contributed to the decline, the researchers found. Their study was published on Thursday in the journal Nature Human Behaviour.“I am optimistic that the majority of the population is increasingly resilient to misinformation on the web,” said Jeff Hancock, the founding director of the Stanford Social Media Lab and the lead author of the report. “We’re getting better and better at distinguishing really problematic, bad, harmful information from what’s reliable or entertainment.”“I am optimistic that the majority of the population is increasingly resilient to misinformation on the web,” said Jeff Hancock, the lead author of the Stanford report.Ian C. Bates for The New York TimesStill, nearly 68 million people in the United States checked out websites that were not credible, visiting 1.5 billion times in a month in 2020, the researchers estimated. That included domains that are now defunct, such as theantimedia.com and obamawatcher.com. Some people in the study visited some of those sites hundreds of times.As the 2024 election approaches, the researchers worry that misinformation is evolving and splintering. Beyond web browsers, many people are exposed to conspiracy theories and extremism simply by scrolling through mobile apps such as TikTok. More dangerous content has shifted onto encrypted messaging apps with difficult-to-trace private channels, such as Telegram or WhatsApp.The boom in generative artificial intelligence, the technology behind the popular ChatGPT chatbot, has also raised alarms about deceptive images and mass-produced falsehoods.The Stanford researchers said that even limited or concentrated exposure to misinformation could have serious consequences. Baseless claims of election fraud incited a riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. More than two years later, congressional hearings, criminal trials and defamation court cases are still addressing what happened.The Stanford researchers monitored the online activity of 1,151 adults from Oct. 2 through Nov. 9, 2020, and found that 26.2 percent visited at least one of 1,796 unreliable websites. They noted that the time frame did not include the postelection period when baseless claims of voter fraud were especially pronounced.That was down from an earlier, separate report that found that 44.3 percent of adults visited at least one of 490 problematic domains in 2016.The shrinking audience may have been influenced by attempts, including by social media companies, to mitigate misinformation, according to the researchers. They noted that 5.6 percent of the visits to untrustworthy sites in 2020 originated from Facebook, down from 15.1 percent in 2016. Email also played a smaller role in sending users to such sites in 2020.Other researchers have highlighted more ways to limit the lure of misinformation, especially around elections. The Bipartisan Policy Center suggested in a report this week that states adopt direct-to-voter texts and emails that offer vetted information.Social media companies should also do more to discourage performative outrage and so-called groupthink on their platforms — behavior that can fortify extreme subcultures and intensify polarization, said Yini Zhang, an assistant communication professor at the University at Buffalo.Professor Zhang, who published a study this month about QAnon, said tech companies should instead encourage more moderate engagement, even by renaming “like” buttons to something like “respect.”“For regular social media users, what we can do is dial back on the tribal instincts, to try to be more introspective and say: ‘I’m not going to take the bait. I’m not going to pile on my opponent,’” she said.A QAnon flag on a vehicle headed to a pro-Trump rally in October. Yini Zhang, a University of Buffalo professor who published a study about QAnon, said social media companies should encourage users to “dial back on the tribal instincts.”Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesWith next year’s presidential election looming, researchers said they are concerned about populations known to be vulnerable to misinformation, such as older people, conservatives and people who do not speak English.More than 37 percent of people older than 65 visited misinformation sites in 2020 — a far higher rate than younger groups but an improvement from 56 percent in 2016, according to the Stanford report. In 2020, 36 percent of people who supported President Donald J. Trump in the election visited at least one misinformation site, compared with nearly 18 percent of people who supported Joseph R. Biden Jr. The participants also completed a survey that included questions about their preferred candidate.Mr. Hancock said that misinformation should be taken seriously, but that its scale should not be exaggerated. The Stanford study, he said, showed that the news consumed by most Americans was not misinformation but that certain groups of people were most likely to be targeted. Treating conspiracy theories and false narratives as an ever-present, wide-reaching threat could erode the public’s trust in legitimate news sources, he said.“I still think there’s a problem, but I think it’s one that we’re dealing with and that we’re also recognizing doesn’t affect most people most of the time,” Mr. Hancock said. “If we are teaching our citizens to be skeptical of everything, then trust is undermined in all the things that we care about.” More

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      in Elections

      Attacks on Dominion Voting Persist Despite High-Profile Lawsuits

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      Unproven claims about Dominion Voting Systems still spread widely online.With a series of billion-dollar lawsuits, including a $1.6 billion case against Fox News headed to trial this month, Dominion Voting Systems sent a stark warning to anyone spreading falsehoods that the company’s technology contributed to fraud in the 2020 election: Be careful with your words, or you might pay the price.Not everyone is heeding the warning.“Dominion, why don’t you show us what’s inside your machines?” Mike Lindell, the MyPillow executive and prominent election denier, shouted during a livestream last month. He added that the company, which has filed a $1.3 billion defamation lawsuit against him, was engaged in “the biggest cover-up for the biggest crime in United States history — probably in world history.”Claims that election software companies like Dominion helped orchestrate widespread fraud in the 2020 election have been widely debunked in the years since former President Donald J. Trump and his allies first pushed the theories. But far-right Americans on social media and influencers in the news media have continued in recent weeks and months to make unfounded assertions about the company and its electronic voting machines, pressuring government officials to scrap contracts with Dominion, sometimes successfully.The enduring attacks illustrate how Mr. Trump’s voter fraud claims have taken root in the shared imagination of his supporters. And they reflect the daunting challenge that Dominion, and any other group that draws the attention of conspiracy theorists, faces in putting false claims to rest.The attacks about Dominion have not reached the fevered pitch of late 2020, when the company was cast as a central villain in an elaborate and fictitious voter fraud story. In that tale, the company swapped votes between candidates, injected fake ballots or allowed glaring security vulnerabilities to remain on voting machines.Dominion says all those claims have been made without proof to support them.“Nearly two years after the 2020 election, no credible evidence has ever been presented to any court or authority that voting machines did anything other than count votes accurately and reliably in all states,” Dominion said in an emailed statement.On Friday, the judge in Delaware overseeing the Fox defamation case ruled that it was “CRYSTAL clear” that Fox News and Fox Business had made false claims about the company — a major setback for the network.Many prominent influencers have avoided mentioning the company since Dominion started suing prominent conspiracy theorists in 2021. Fox News fired Lou Dobbs that year — only days after it was sued by Smartmatic, another election software company — saying the network was focusing on “new formats.” Mr. Dobbs is also a defendant in Dominion’s case against Fox, which is scheduled to go to trial on April 17.Yet there have been nearly nine million mentions of Dominion across social media websites, broadcasts and traditional media since Dominion filed its first lawsuit in January 2021, including nearly a million that have mentioned “fraud” or related conspiracy theories, according to Zignal Labs, a media monitoring company. Some of the most widely shared posts came from Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of Georgia, who tweeted last month that the lawsuits were politically motivated, and Kari Lake, the former Republican candidate for governor of Arizona who has advanced voter fraud theories about election machines since her defeat last year.Far-right Americans on social media and influencers in the news media continue to make unfounded assertions about Dominion and its electronic voting machines.Brynn Anderson/Associated PressMr. Lindell remains one of the loudest voices pushing unproven claims against Dominion and electronic voting machines, posting hundreds of videos to Frank Speech, his news site, attacking the company with tales of voter fraud.Last month, Mr. Lindell celebrated on his livestream after Shasta County, a conservative stronghold in Northern California, voted to use paper ballots after ending its contract with Dominion. A county supervisor had flown to meet privately with Mr. Lindell before the vote, discussing how to run elections without voting machines, according to Mr. Lindell. The supervisor ultimately voted to switch to paper ballots.In an interview this week with The New York Times, Mr. Lindell claimed to have spent millions on campaigns to end election fraud, focusing on abolishing electronic voting systems and replacing them with paper ballots and hand counting.“I will never back down, ever, ever, ever,” he said in the interview. He added that Dominion’s lawsuit against him, which is continuing after the United States Supreme Court declined to consider his appeal, was “frivolous” and that the company was “guilty.”“They can’t deny it, nobody can deny it,” Mr. Lindell said.Joe Oltmann, the host of “Conservative Daily Podcast” and a promoter of voter fraud conspiracy theories, hosted an episode in late March titled “Dominion Is FINISHED,” in which he claimed that there was a “device that’s used in Dominion machines to actually transfer ballots,” offering only speculative support.“This changes everything,” Mr. Oltmann said.Dominion sent Mr. Oltmann a letter in 2020 demanding that he preserve documents related to his claims about the company, which is often the first step in a defamation lawsuit.In a livestream last month on Rumble, the streaming platform popular among right-wing influencers, Tina Peters, a former county clerk in Colorado who was indicted on 10 charges related to allegations that she tampered with Dominion’s election equipment, devoted more than an hour to various election fraud claims, many of them featuring Dominion. The discussion included a suggestion that because boxes belonging to Dominion were stamped with “Made in China,” the election system was vulnerable to manipulation by the Chinese Communist Party.Mr. Oltmann and Ms. Peters did not respond to requests for comment.The Fox lawsuit has also added fuel to the conspiracy theory fire.Far-right news sites have largely ignored the finding that Fox News hosts disparaged voter fraud claims privately, even as they gave them significant airtime. Instead, the Gateway Pundit, a far-right site known for pushing voter fraud theories, focused on separate documents showing that Dominion executives “knew its voting systems had major security issues,” the site wrote.The documents showed the frenzied private messages between Dominion employees as they were troubleshooting problems, with one employee remarking, “our products suck.” In an email, a Dominion spokeswoman noted the remark was about a splash screen that was hiding an error message.In February, Mr. Trump shared the Gateway Pundit story on Truth Social, his right-wing social network, stoking a fresh wave of attacks against the company.“We will not be silent,” said one far-right influencer whose messages are sometimes shared by Mr. Trump on Truth Social. “Dominion is the enemy!” More

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      in Elections

      Trump Supporter Convicted in 2016 Scheme to Suppress Votes for Clinton

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      The federal prosecution of Douglass Mackey turned on the question of when free speech turns into dirty tricks.Months before the 2016 presidential election, people intent on swaying the outcome were communicating in private Twitter groups with names like “War Room” and “Infowars Madman.”The participants included obscure figures and notorious online trolls, many of whom concealed their real identities. There were fans of Donald J. Trump and avowed haters of Hillary Clinton, all working toward a Republican victory while celebrating the “meme magic” they employed to circulate lies and attacks.According to federal prosecutors, one man, Douglass Mackey, crossed a line from political speech to criminal conduct when he posted images to Twitter that resembled campaign ads for Mrs. Clinton and falsely stated that people could vote simply by texting “Hillary” to a certain phone number.On Friday, after just over four days of deliberation, a jury in Brooklyn found Mr. Mackey guilty of conspiring to deprive others of their right to vote. He is scheduled to be sentenced in August and faces a maximum of 10 years in prison.Mr. Mackey, wearing a gray suit, white shirt and pink tie, was stoic as the verdict was read. His lawyer, Andrew J. Frisch, suggested that his client would appeal.“This case presents an unusual array of appellate issues that are exceptionally strong,” Mr. Frisch said, adding: “I’m confident about the way forward.”Breon Peace, the United States attorney in Brooklyn, said in a statement that by convicting Mr. Mackey the jury had rejected “his cynical attempt to use the constitutional right of free speech as a shield for his scheme to subvert the ballot box and suppress the vote.”Mr. Mackey posted one image showing a Black woman and a sign reading “African Americans for Hillary” a day after writing on Twitter about limiting turnout among Black voters. Another image, in Spanish, showed a woman looking at her phone.Both images, posted a week before the election, were accompanied by the hashtag #ImWithHer, which was used by the Clinton campaign. Both also included logos that looked like the campaign’s, and fine print saying they had been paid for by “Hillary for President.”Prosecutors said about 5,000 people sent texts to the number shown in the deceptive images.Mr. Mackey, 33, who grew up in Vermont, attended Middlebury College and once lived in Manhattan, testified in his own defense. He said he was in dozens of private online groups before the election but did not pay close attention to everything discussed in them.While testifying, Mr. Mackey said he found the vote-by-text images on an online message board and posted them with little thought. He added that he had not meant to trick anyone but wanted to “see what happens.”“Maybe even the media will pick it up, the Clinton campaign,” he testified, adding that the images might “rile them up, get under their skin, get them off their message that they wanted to push.”Mr. Mackey was seen, according to evidence, as someone who could marshal followers and move the national conversation. He used the pseudonym “Ricky Vaughn,” the name of a character in the movie “Major League.”In early 2016, the Ricky Vaughn account was included on a list of the top 150 election influencers compiled by a research group with the M.I.T. Media Lab, ranking ahead of NBC News, Drudge Report and Glenn Beck.As Mr. Mackey’s trial approached, people sympathetic to him claimed that he was being prosecuted unfairly. The defense sought to have his case dismissed, saying that the voting memes were protected by the First Amendment. But a judge denied that request, writing that the case was about conspiracy and injury, not speech.The star prosecution witness, a Twitter user known as Microchip, helped direct online attacks against Mrs. Clinton in 2016, but began cooperating with the F.B.I. two years later. He testified that the private groups that he and Mr. Mackey took part in had the goal of “destroying Hillary Clinton.”Communications from the groups provided a glimpse into a shadowy world of crass motives and dirty tricks in which anti-Clinton activists developed propaganda, spread falsehoods and exulted in their impact.Evidence showed that participants had shared memes about voting by social media, tried to figure out what font a Clinton ad used and circulated hashtags. One, #DraftOurDaughters, was posted on Twitter along with images suggesting that Mrs. Clinton would start wars and conscript women to fight them. Mr. Mackey advanced another, #NeverVote, that he wrote was meant to be spread in “Black social spaces.”During the trial, Mr. Frisch described his client’s posts as part of a rambunctious online discourse.“Speech regulates itself,” Mr. Frisch told jurors in his summation. “These memes were a bad idea and the marketplace of ideas killed them almost immediately.”Prosecutors countered that the false-voting images were part of an orchestrated effort to affect the election through deceit, adding that criminal activity cannot hide behind the First Amendment.“You can’t use speech to trick people out of their sacred right to vote,” one prosecutor, William J. Gullotta, told jurors.Prosecutors drew upon statements by Mr. Mackey, who wrote that the 2016 election was on “a knife’s edge,” to argue that he had tried to help Mr. Trump by suppressing votes.“Trump should write off the Black vote,” Mr. Mackey wrote at one point. “And just focus on depressing their turnout.” More