New York (AFP)
A pro-Trump "influencer" was arrested Wednesday on charges of spreading false information on Twitter in 2016 to suppress thousands of votes intended for Hillary Clinton for the presidential election against the New York mogul.
According to the indictment released Wednesday, Douglass Mackey, 31, better known by the pseudonym Ricky Vaughn, posted a series of messages on Twitter in the weeks leading up to the November 8, 2016 presidential election, encouraging thousands of voters Hillary Clinton to send their vote by simple text - making them believe that their voice would be counted and that they would not need to go and vote for good.
The complaint does not directly name Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.
But the messages from Mr Mackey and his friends, cited in the complaint, left no doubt that voters they intended to fool, including using qualifiers that were insulting to Democrats.
The idea apparently came from the British campaign for the Brexit referendum in June 2016: a supporter of Donald Trump had picked up a misleading message calling on supporters of maintaining the United Kingdom in the European Union to send a text instead of voting in person in the referendum.
The complaint does not specifically say how many people missed the opportunity to vote for Hillary Clinton.
But the telecommunications company which had the number given by Mr. Mackey to send the texts, iVisionMobile, identified "at least 4,900 messages from single numbers" respecting the false voting instructions, indicates the complaint.
Although twice banned from Twitter, Douglass Mackey had managed each time to come back with a new account, also notes the legal document.
With some 58,000 subscribers in early 2016, he came 107th among the "influencers" of the election, ahead of the television channel NBC News or the presenter Stephen Colbert, according to the MIT Media Lab cited by the FBI.
Arrested in Florida on Wednesday, he faces up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
© 2021 AFP