New York, New York - A pro-Trump Twitter troll who posted fake ads telling Hillary Clinton supporters they could vote in the 2016 election by text was sentenced to seven months in prison Wednesday.

Douglass Mackey, an avid supporter of ex-President Donald Trump, was convicted of election interference in March, after a trial that drew the attention of anti-extremist groups and right-wing politicians and pundits.

Despite his arguments in court motions that his activities were protected First Amendment speech, Brooklyn Federal Court Judge Ann Donnelly countered that he was being sent to prison for conspiring to take away people's right to vote.

"You are not being sentenced for your political beliefs or for expressing those beliefs," she said. "Each one of us has the right to hold opinions and express those opinions."

Rather, she said, he used an "insidious" method of spreading lies to deceive people out of voting, describing it as "nothing short of an assault on our democracy."

"It is one of the cornerstones of our democracy, that's the right that you conspired with others to take... You decided that certain voters didn't deserve that right," she said.

Douglas Mackey tweeted official-looking fake campaign ads for Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential campaign, urging people to vote by text instead of in person, according to the feds. Mackey, whose wife just gave birth Tuesday, will have to surrender to authorities on January 18.

Donnelly denied his request to be free on bond pending his appeal.

Mackey, a former Manhattan resident living in West Palm Beach, Florida, gained fame and influence on the Internet as the Twitter user Ricky Vaughn, posting under the avatar of Charlie Sheen's character from the movie Major League, wearing a MAGA hat.

His past Twitter posts included vile racism and misogyny, such as describing women as "children with the right to vote," and writing, "Black people will believe anything they read ok twitter, and we let them vote why?"

One fake ad he posted shows a Black woman next to the words, "Avoid the line. Vote from home" and a text message code. Another has a similar message written in Spanish, next to a woman using her phone.

Jurors also heard from Microchip, a notorious anti-Clinton troll who tweeted hundreds of times a day "to cause as much chaos as possible, so that it would bleed over to Hillary Clinton and diminish her chances of winning."