A pro-Trump social media influencer has been sentenced to seven months in prison for conspiring to suppress the votes of potentially thousands of people who supported former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election. Douglass Mackey, who was 33 when he was convicted in March, was also ordered to pay a $15,000 fine.
McGee, who has 58,000 followers on Twitter and goes by the nickname Ricky Vaughn, was charged with conspiring to spread deceptive information and ads targeting black and female voters.
Shortly before the 2016 election, these Twitter ads told voters they could avoid waiting in line at the polls by texting "Hillary" to a five-digit phone number, yet text-based voting did not exist in the United States.
During the trial, prosecutors pointed out that McGee "has long believed that black people are confused and stupid" and that "women should not vote." McGee has appeared on podcasts and posted on social media about these views.
"In the days leading up to and on Election Day, at least 4,900 phone numbers were texted with the word 'Hillary' or some derivative of the term, and McKee and his co-conspirators used Hillary-related content in multiple deceptive campaign images posted on Twitter," prosecutors said in a news release.
It's unclear if anyone was prevented from voting because of Mackey's machinations. Prosecutors said 99 percent of the text messages received by the number were sent after Mackey first posted Clinton's deceptive ads from one of his social media accounts.
McGee's attorney, Andrew Frisch, told CNBC he remains "optimistic" about the prospect of an appeal.