Trump defends former influencer convicted of election interference who has racist, antisemitic past

CNN —

Donald Trump and Donald Trump Jr. have come to the defense of a one time social media influencer who has been convicted of election interference and has a well-known history of pushing deeply racist, antisemitic, anti-Muslim and homophobic content online.

In a video posted by his campaign in early December, former President Trump blasted President Joe Biden and “his henchmen” for allegedly trampling on the First Amendment rights of Douglass Mackey, a longtime supporter of the former president who ran an anonymous, notorious Twitter account in 2016. Trump accused Biden of seeking to jail Mackey for “sharing a joking meme about Hillary Clinton several years ago. Nobody ever heard of anything like that.”

While the former president criticized the legal action taken against Mackey, Trump Jr. lauded the content featured on Mackey’s Twitter feed. He praised Mackey on his December 7 podcast as “maybe my favorite Twitter account of all time” and said the Biden administration wanted the former influencer in prison.

Mackey, however, was under federal investigation for conspiracy to suppress votes in the 2016 presidential election during Trump’s administration. Mackey was charged seven days after Biden took office and convicted earlier this year. He was sentenced to seven months in prison but is currently out pending an appeal of his case.

Prosecutors said Mackey, 34, targeted Black voters on Twitter with a tweet meant to look like a campaign advertisement that falsely claimed they could vote for Clinton through text messages during the 2016 election.

Mackey’s Twitter account at the time featured a slew of hateful content and he was ranked as 107th in a list of “election influencers” in the runup to the 2016