Douglass Mackey

Douglass Mackey (born ) is an American alt-right social media influencer who posted under the alias Ricky Vaughn. In March 2023, he was convicted of conspiring to deprive citizens of their right to vote in the 2016 presidential election. In July 2025, Mackey's conviction was overturned after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit unanimously ruled that "the government failed to offer sufficient evidence that Mackey even viewed—let alone participated in" group messages with his alleged co-conspirators.

Early life Douglass Mackey grew up in Vermont and graduated from Harwood Union High School. He later graduated from Middlebury College in 2011 with a degree in economics. Afterwards, he worked as an economist for consulting firm John Dunham & Associates until he was fired in July 2016. above NBC News, Stephen Colbert and Newt Gingrich. According to HuffPost and a team of data scientists, Vaughn was the top promoter of the @TEN_GOP Twitter account, which was controlled by the Russian Internet Research Agency. They discussed ways to frame Hillary Clinton as a "warmonger" and to promote the narrative that Bernie Sanders had been "cheated" in the Democratic Party primaries, to stir his supporters' resentment against Clinton and the Democratic Party. and made memes suggesting to left-leaning voters that their friends secretly intended to vote for Trump.

Mackey was arrested in January 2021 for attempted voter suppression, alongside several alleged co-conspirators. The New York Times identified one of them as alt-right influencer Anthime Gionet, known online as Baked Alaska. In October, he was sentenced to seven months in jail. Oral arguments were heard on April 5, 2024, before a panel of the Second Circuit Court of Appeals consisting of Judges Debra Ann Livingston, Reena Raggi, and Beth Robinson.

On July 9, 2025, the Second Circuit unanimously overturned Mackey's conviction, finding that the government had failed to provide sufficient evidence that Mackey had conspired with others, and there was no evidence that his tweets tricked anyone into voting improperly.

Post-arrest media interviews After his conviction and sentencing, Mackey was interviewed by Tucker Carlson and Donald Trump Jr.

Carlson falsely claimed that Mackey was being jailed for "mocking Hillary Clinton on the internet", rather than for a voter suppression scheme. In a 2021 show, Carlson had described Mackey as a victim of political persecution and did not bring up Mackey's racist tweets, stating that "we have no idea what Doug Mackey’s views are". Donald Trump Jr. encouraged viewers to donate to Mackey's legal fund and said that Ricky Vaughn "may be my favorite Twitter account of all time".

Claims that Mackey had been jailed for merely criticizing Hillary Clinton were spread by Dinesh D'Souza and the online magazine The Post Millennial. The claims were rated "False" by USA Today.