[DannyB2]

The announcement is dated: Wednesday, January 27, 2021 (today)

> Douglass Mackey, aka Ricky Vaughn, 31, of West Palm Beach, was charged by criminal complaint in the Eastern District of New York. He was taken into custody this morning

So he was taken into custody this morning. (today)

> As alleged in the complaint, between September 2016 and November 2016, in the lead up to the Nov. 8, 2016, U.S. Presidential Election, Mackey conspired with others to . . .

They're only now dealing with something that happened over four years ago?

Am I missing something?

[dragonwriter]

> They're only now dealing with something that happened over four years ago?

“The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine”.

> Am I missing something?

Yes, the history of the crime and related events related in the complaint linked fromm the press release. Compressing a bit:

The various Twitter accounts used in 2016 were under false names, a Congressional Candidate for whom Mackey worked outed Mackey as connected to the “Ricky Vaughn” the accounts in late 2018, the FBI interviewed that candidate and a documentary filmmaker who has interviewed “Ricky Vaughn” in 2018 and confirmed the identity in late 2020. There's lots of stuff not directly germane to the charges against Mackey about the narrative left out, but there was presumably more investigation to attempt to identify others involved because several co-conspirators are listed only by Twitter IDs.

[newacct583]

Not sure if this is sarcasm or not, but to spell it out: one good hypothesis might be that the victor in the election in question left office last week and doesn't control the justice department anymore. The same guy fired one FBI director and two attorneys general during the same term.

This case seems to be based on a handful of public tweets and some phone records that can be trivially subpoenaed. It's clearly been ready for years, and was likely suppressed internally.

[DannyB2]

Not sarcasm. Your reply was informative. I hadn't considered (although I should have) that the candidate in power would have interfered with the prosecution of this. Thanks.

[mc32]

A case like this doesn’t go from 0 to 100 in a week.

[function_seven]

I think that's parent's point. The case was stuck at "99" (like the old IE progress bar) internally, and only now has it been permitted to reach "100"

[dragonwriter]

The Complaint details the key connection being made between the pseudonym and the real person in a podcast appearance by a Congressional Candidate in 2018, and key FBI investigative activities occurring in October 2020, so it's not like it has gotten to 99 before Trump was in office and then Trump’s DOJ sat on it until Biden came into office.