Brandon Gill, the son-in-law of right-wing pundit Dinesh D’Souza, has won the GOP nomination for a US House seat in Texas’ 26th District. A former investment banker, Gill set up a right-wing website called the DC Enquirer in 2022 to promote 2000 Mules, his father-in-law’s disproven conspiracy film about the 2020 election.
Gill easily claimed victory over 10 other candidates in the race to replace Representative Michael Burgess, who is retiring after 21 years in Congress. Gill won almost 60 percent of the vote in the comfortably red district, according to AP, and he’s the overwhelming favorite to win when he faces Democrat Ernest Lineberger III in November.
Gill was unknown in the political world until 2022, when he set up the DC Enquirer and immediately fashioned it into a staunchly pro former president Donald Trump outlet that boosted a myriad of election conspiracies.
“2000 Mules is changing minds, people are waking up and realizing that the 2020 election was neither free nor fair,” Gill wrote on Twitter in May 2022, a month after he attended the premiere of the film at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort. Gill’s website was one of the main promoters of 2000 Mules, a so-called documentary created by D’Souza that made wild allegations about widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election. The film was quickly debunked by multiple fact-checking organizations. In a court hearing last month, the group whose claims the film was based on told a judge they had no evidence to back up their claims.
In recent weeks, millions of dollars were spent on attack ads by two GOP super PACs to oppose far-right Republican House candidates, including Gill. But that was no match for the endorsements from a who’s who of the Republican Party’s MAGA faction, including Trump, his son Donald Trump Jr., Senator Ted Cruz, Representative Matt Gaetz, Senator Mike Lee, and even the McCloskeys—the far-right couple who became instant Republican celebrities in 2020 when they pointed guns at Black Lives Matter protesters walking past their St. Louis home.
And Gill still appears to be focused on boosting false claims of election fraud in 2020, posting on X in November: “No we are not going to ‘move on’ from a stolen election. Secure our elections!”
