A California Republican Assembly candidate is facing renewed scrutiny after a 2019 video resurfaced showing her spreading antisemitic conspiracy theories.
Denise Aguilar, also known as Denise Aguilar Mendez, is co-founder of the anti-vaccine group “Freedom Angels” and the survivalist “Mamalitia.”
In a now-deleted video, she boasted of taking part in the Jan. 6, 2021, failed insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. It’s unclear when she deleted the video, but she later said she wasn’t involved in the riot, though she admits to being in Washington, D.C. that day.
USA Today published a report in March showing that Aguilar appeared in several photos and videos from the riot.
Aguilar is endorsed by both the California Republican Party and Assembly Republican Leader James Gallagher, R-Yuba City.
“Looking forward to it!” Gallagher wrote in a post on X in response to Aguilar posting about a campaign event featuring him and Sen. Shannon Grove, R-Bakersfield, in August.
Neither Aguilar’s campaign, the California GOP nor Gallagher responded to multiple Bee requests for comment by deadline.
A conspiracy theory ‘rabbit hole’
The video, posted on conservative social media video site Rumble on Oct. 17, 2019, and shared Tuesday by left-leaning Media Matters For America, shows Aguilar talking about the 2019 California wildfires before going down what she called a “rabbit hole.”
“So if you guys did not know, in the state of California, we had PG&E shutting off the power to the Bay Area communities, and this was not for fires. What’s been happening is that there were 2,100 children who were saved from human trafficking,” Aguilar said in the video.
She went on to accuse the utility Pacific Gas & Electric of being owned by the Rothschild family, which is false and also a common antisemitic trope, according to the Anti-Defamation League, that plays into the conspiracy theory that Jews secretly control the government. The Rothschilds are a Jewish family known for banking and other corporate management.
“So Rothschild, there’s a family, there’s certain families in the United States all over the world who are in charge of us. It’s the central banking system. They’re in charge of our money. The Federal Reserve is not a government entity. It’s actually a private company owned by these families that control our money,” Aguilar said, repeating a false and harmful antisemitic stereotype.
Aguilar said that “white hats” at PG&E used the 2019 Public Safety Power Shutoffs — intended to prevent further wildfires from starting — to “smoke out” child traffickers using underground tunnels.
“And in order to do that, they had to shut down the power grid on top. So 2,100 children have been saved. These children were trafficked, some of these children were farmed,” Aguilar said, with no evidence to support her claim.
The Legislative Jewish Caucus responds
Though legislative Republicans did not respond to The Bee’s request for comment, Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco, who co-chairs the California Legislative Jewish Caucus, did.
Wiener has been an outspoken critic of antisemitism coming from both the left and the right.
In an interview with The Bee, Wiener called the remarks “super antisemitic.”
“She’s like an extreme example of the conspiracy brain that’s infected the Republican Party and it’s just sad,” Wiener said.
Aguilar is running in a safe Democratic district, and Wiener said it’s unlike she will win election in November. However, he said he was concerned about the fact that she is endorsed by California GOP leadership, given her record of fringe extremism.
“We have to be very clear that these forms of bigotry are often overlapping, and the takeover of the Republican Party by conspiracy theorists is inherently dangerous for Jews,” Wiener said. “Conspiracy theories have often led to violence against Jews, because Jews are often at the heart of those conspiracy theories.”
He said that while not all Republicans are conspiracy theorists, “there is a certain cult within the Republican Party that is propagating dangerous conspiracy theories that invariably lead to demonization of Jews.”
Wiener said that includes people like conservative billionaire Elon Musk, who has propagated the antisemitic “Great Replacement Theory” — that Jews are trying to replace white Christian voters with immigrants — and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who speculated that Jewish controlled space lasers were responsible for California’s wildfires.
“It’s all dangerous and it’s not just one fringe candidate for the California Assembly,” Wiener said. “This conspiracy brained sickness goes all the way to the top of the Republican Party.”
A record of conspiracy theories and falsehoods
This is not the first conspiracy theory that Aguilar has promoted.
As noted by Media Matters, in 2019 she also promoted the “PizzaGate” conspiracy theory that alleged that a Washington, D.C.-based cabal was running a child sex trafficking ring out of a pizza restaurant in the nation’s capital. Those claims were false.
She also has falsely claimed that that Donald Trump won the 2020 presidential election.
Aguilar is one of several women in the right wing extremist movement who have been active in the Sacramento area, leading several protests at the State Capitol, often in collaboration with the far right street extremist group the Proud Boys. She got her political start by protesting California’s school vaccine requirement in 2019.
Aguilar is running in Assembly District 13, which includes the Stockton area. In the March primary, Aguilar received nearly 38% of the vote. Democratic candidate Rhodesia Ransom received 41.6%, while Edith Villapudua, also a Democrat, received 20.5%. As the top two vote-getters, Ransom and Aguilar will appear on the November general election ballot.
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