Tesla and Twitter CEO Elon Musk said Tuesday that the criminal conviction of pro-Trump meme creator Douglass Mackey was “over the top.”
A Brooklyn jury last month found Mackey guilty of interfering in the 2016 presidential election over his social media posts, convicting him on one count of “Conspiracy Against Rights” over memes he shared. Mackey, who operated on Twitter under the pseudonym “Ricky Vaughn,” is facing 10 years behind bars.
“I think ‘criminal’ is over the top, there,” Musk said during a Twitter Spaces conversation. “I would agree with that. They went too far.”
“If that’s the standard for throwing someone in prison, then there should be a lot more people in prison,” the 51-year-old said.
“What are you in prison for? ‘Oh, meme crimes,’” someone else in the Twitter Spaces conversation quipped, to which Musk responded, “Exactly.”
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I asked @ElonMusk about Douglass Mackey, who the Biden DOJ wants to send to prison for 10 years for…