Meme maker's conviction renews debate about election law double standard

The federal felony conviction of a satirical meme maker for election interference has renewed the debate over whether there is a double standard regarding enforcement of election laws.

On Friday, a jury found digital provocateur Douglass Mackey guilty of election interference, and he is now facing up to 10 years in prison. During the 2016 presidential race, Mackey tweeted a meme that encouraged individuals to vote for then-Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton by text.

The Biden Department of Justice prosecuted Mackey for "Conspiracy Against Rights stemming from his scheme to deprive individuals of their constitutional right to vote," according to a press release from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Eastern District of New York.

Rep. Scott Perry (R-Pa.) told "Just the News, No Noise" TV show that while Mackey is facing prison time for posting memes, there hasn't been been an investigation into the contradictory instructions issued to voters by Pennsylvania election officials in the 2020 presidential election.

"People that were actually running the election said you can vote before the day of election, on the day of election, and even after the day of election," Perry explained. "They said, 'These people have to sign ballots, but these people don't. These people, these counties can cure ballots, but these people don't or can't.' Different standards across the board — 'these people can watch the vote counts happen, these people cannot.'

"No one's been prosecuted there. No one's been prosecuted for any of the allegations. The allegations, let's face it, haven't even been investigated regarding the 2020 election."

Shortly before the November 2020 presidential election, the Pennsylvania Secretary of State issued last-minute instructions on "curing" faulty ballots on Election Day, which were inconsistently executed across the state's 67 counties. The state Supreme Court has ruled that ballot curing is allowed but not required.

Perry added that Congress should reduce the DOJ's funding to discourage federal prosecutors from focusing on prosecutions of "their political adversaries."

"[T]he Department of Justice and prosecutors have too many resources on their hand, obviously — one is time, one is money," he said. "Well, we should make them more busy fighting real crimes by making sure that they don't have the money to fight these fake crimes against their political adversaries, which is exactly what this is.

"[A]s a legislator, I really want to get at and use the power of the purse to rein these people in and have them follow the Constitution and the oath that they took."

Former DOJ Civil Rights Division attorney J. Christian Adams told Just the News on Monday that he disagreed with Perry's comparison of Mackey's case to the 2020 election in Pennsylvania.

"Giving conflicting instructions isn't a federal crime, just an administrative screw-up," Adams said. He noted that the federal statute Mackey was found guilty of is regarding conspiracy to deprive of citizens of their rights, like the right to vote.

However, Adams added that the DOJ "waited after the Biden inauguration to bring this" case. He explained that the Trump administration's Justice Department likely didn't prosecute Mackey because it's "not a valid case."

Trump's DOJ "should've sent a letter of non-prosecution" to Mackey, Adams said, but that they didn't "because the DOJ was under control of the swamp."

While Adams pointed out that a jury convicted Mackey, not just a judge, he remarked that the "DOJ is trying to push envelope" of what is a conspiracy to deprive of citizens of their rights, "and they have pushed the envelope quite far."

Another unresolved issue about possible election interference stems from the letter signed by former intelligence officials that falsely portrayed the Hunter Biden laptop as Russian disinformation.

Just prior to the 2020 presidential election, 51 former intelligence officials derided as Russian disinformation the New York Post's story about materials found on Hunter Biden's laptop. The story was later confirmed and the laptop verified as authentic.

Weeks before he was elected House Speaker, Kevin McCarthy vowed to issue subpoenas to the former intelligence officials, saying the GOP would hold them accountable for allegedly lying to the American people.

While the subpoenas have not been issued, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) sent letters to 12 of the former officials, including former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper in February. He and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Michael Turner (R-Ohio) asked that the former officials fully comply with a request sent to them last April for relevant documents and testimony regarding the letter they signed.

"Your public statement served as a basis for Democrat operatives to try to delegitimize the scandalous allegations about Hunter Biden and the Biden family," Jordan wrote in a previous letter to Clapper requesting answers. "The Biden campaign repeatedly cited your statement to dismiss the allegations against Hunter Biden."

The New York Post asked the former officials last month if they regretted signing the letter. While most didn't respond, some of those who commented stood by the letter, and none of them expressed regret for signing it.

Former President Donald Trump seized on the issue of Hunter Biden's laptop and the former intelligence officials' letter during his speech at Mar-a-Lago on Tuesday.

The speech followed his arraignment in New York City regarding criminal charges from the Manhattan District Attorney grand jury probe, which is over alleged hush money payments made to porn star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy playmate Karen McDougal in 2016. Trump pleaded not guilty to all 34 counts of falsifying business records.

Trump noted in his speech how "the FBI and DOJ [were] in collusion with Twitter and Facebook in order not to say anything bad about the Hunter Biden laptop from hell, which exposes the Biden family as criminals and which, according to the pollsters, would have made a 17-point difference in the election result."

He added, "Now we remember the 51 intelligence agents who said Hunter Biden's laptop was Russian disinformation. 'It didn't exist, it was Russian disinformation.' Remember that? And that was all confirmed strongly by the FBI when they all knew that it wasn't Russian disinformation."