Fundraiser launched for medical treatments for Douglass Mackey's 2-year-old son Roy

A fundraiser has been launched for the young son of Douglass Mackey, the man who had been prosecuted by the Biden administration for a meme during the 2016 election, to fund medical care for the young boy.

Roy Mackey, 2, suffered a stroke in utero that resulted in a brain injury that the fundraiser stated has most likely resulted in Cerebral Palsy. In addition, the young Mackey is undergoing testing for what doctors believe may be Kabuki Syndrome, a rare genetic disorder. 

"Simple skills that come naturally to other children take tremendous effort for Roy. Right now, Roy is working hard to learn how to eat food—he's currently fed almost entirely by G-tube. He's also working hard just to roll all the way over—a stepping stone that will eventually help him learn to crawl, sit, and walk. Every gain he makes requires countless hours of therapy, dedication, and support," the fundraiser stated. 

The Mackeys are pursuing multitudes of life-changing treatments and therapies for Roy, which cost thousands of dollars each. This includes stem cell intervention, which costs $15,000 plus around $2,000 in travel expenses; the All Kids Are Perfect Intensives in North Carolina, which costs around $16,000, including travel; Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy and Neurop, which costs "hundreds of dollars per dive" or $14,000 for a home chamber, in addition to $14,000 for treatment with a world renowned doctor in New Orleans, as well as other treatments. 

"These are just the beginning of the expenses that Roy’s family is facing on their journey to give him the best chance at independence." As of Tuesday morning, the fundraiser has brought in over $23,000 for the costs. 

An update posted by Mackey on Tuesday stated, "Some progress this week in feeding therapy! Our little Roy is learning to drink water from a cup—slow and steady progress, but a big step forward! We are so proud of him. Thank you all for your support and for your prayers—we are extremely humbled and grateful for the massive outpouring of support for Roy these past few days!"

Douglass Mackey was convicted in 2023 on charges of election interference stemming from a meme he posted in 2016 to social media, jokingly saying to Hillary Clinton supporters that they can vote by text message. He had been sentenced to seven months in prison, however, an appeals court in late 2023 paused his prison sentence while his appeal played out. 

In July 2025, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals threw out his prison sentence. The court wrote that "the mere fact that Mackey posted the memes, even assuming that he did so with the intent to injure other citizens in the exercise of their right to vote, is not enough, standing alone, to prove a violation of Section 241. The government was obligated to show that Mackey knowingly entered into an agreement with other people to pursue that objective."

"This the government failed to do. Its primary evidence of agreement, apart from the memes themselves, consisted of exchanges among the participants in several private Twitter message groups—exchanges the government argued showed the intent of the participants to interfere with others’ exercise of their right to vote. Yet the government failed to offer sufficient evidence that Mackey even viewed—let alone participated in—any of these exchanges. And in the absence of such evidence, the government’s remaining circumstantial evidence cannot alone establish Mackey’s knowing agreement. Accordingly, the jury's verdict and the resulting judgement conviction must be set aside," the court states.