“They went too far,” Musk said. “If that’s the standard for throwing someone in prison, then there should be a lot of people in prison.”
On Tuesday during an interview with prominent Twitter user Alx, Elon Musk expressed his thoughts on the Doulas Mackey case.
Musk slammed the Department of Justice over its desire to lock Mackey up for the crime of posting a Hillary Clinton meme in 2016, suggesting that the agency "went too far."
"Did you see the guy who got charged for a meme on Twitter?" Alx asked. "What were your thoughts on that?"
"That's the guy who was accused of election interference," Musk replied, laughing at the quality of Mackey's meme, which told Democrats they could vote for Clinton by text message during the 2016 election.
"People shouldn't believe everything that they see online," Alx said, "and I don't think that should be criminal."
"Criminal is over the top," Musk said in agreement. "They went too far. If that’s the standard for throwing someone in prison, then there should be a lot of people in prison."
While acknowledging the seriousness of the situation, Musk and Alx couldn't help but chuckle at the insane prospect of locking people up for "meme crimes."
On March 31, a New York City jury found Mackey, also known as Ricky Vaughn on Twitter, guilty on charges of election interference.
Despite being unable to provide evidence that anyone was deceived by the meme, the DOJ argued that Mackey's actions nonetheless amounted to election interference. Mackey's team pointed out that Clinton supporters had posted similar memes encouraging Trump voters to cast their ballots by text, but had not been charged.
"This wasn’t about changing votes. This was about vaporizing votes, making them disappear," argued Assistant US Attorney Turner Buford. He pointed out that the phone number on Mackey's meme "was real and set up to receive incoming messages," and that the release of the meme "was timed to flood the internet before Election Day."
Mackey's lawyer, Andrew Frisch, slammed the suggestion that anyone was actually fooled by the prank, calling it "ludicrous to anyone with a basic knowledge of how presidential elections work."
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