The New York Times published a “deceptive” story suggesting that a top Republican House candidate posed with a family he implied is his own for a campaign photo — which is entirely false; the report in the Times has also led to harassment of the military family in question, the Washington Reporter can confirm.

The story focuses primarily on how Republicans use their spouses to “soften their image[s].” One of the photos used by the Times is actually a screenshot from a campaign video of supporters posted by Republican Derrick Anderson, a standard practice of any political campaign in America. 

“In another scene filmed for potential use in a campaign ad, Mr. Anderson is seated around the dining room table with the same woman and three girls, chatting and smiling,” the Times wrote. “But the people are not relatives. They are the wife and children of a longtime friend. Mr. Anderson, who announced this month that he was engaged, does not have any children of his own.” 

While the people in the screenshot are Anderson supporters, and Anderson’s campaign never said that the people were his family, Democrats immediately accused him of staging the photos with his “fake family. In an attempt to prevent the Times’s coverage from being used to mislead voters, Anderson’s campaign told the Times about this error “many times,” his campaign told the Reporter. 

Anderson’s campaign revealed to the Reporter that the mother and daughters, who are friends of Anderson’s in the district and whose husband/father serves in the National Guard alongside Anderson, have been publicly and privately harassed and attacked after the Times story, including in posts on one of the daughter’s school social media threads.

Posing for photos with supporters is a standard practice of any political candidate. The Times’s coverage ignores the fact that Anderson’s Democratic opponent, Eugene Vindman, posed with supporters for campaign photos as well in privately posted b-roll, which the Anderson campaign supplied to the Times in advance of publication. None of it was in the story, which solely mentioned Vindman to note that his wife vouches for him in a recent ad. The Times did not respond to a request for comment. 

For years, campaigns have posted, publicly or privately, b-roll footage for outside allies to use in supporting materials. Both Vindman and Anderson did the exact same thing — although Anderson’s campaign noted that Vindman’s materials were primarily unlisted, whereas Anderson’s are publicly listed on his campaign YouTube. 

Vindman has been dogged by reports in the past few weeks that his campaign has engaged in “illegal” coordination with an allied super PAC. Additionally, his campaign is under scrutiny for Vindman’s deceptive depiction of his military career including referring to himself as a Colonel, even though he left the Army as Lt. Colonel, and often mentions using “assault-style weapons on the battlefield” even though there is no record of Vindman being in a firefight in active combat — neither of which were mentioned in the Times’s coverage. 

Anderson’s campaign has publicly called for Vindman to release his DD214 records to clear up any confusion. Public polling consistently shows that voters believe the state of the economy and the crisis at the border are top issues this election cycle. 

Anderson and Vindman are running to succeed Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D., Va.) in one of the nation’s most-watched House races.

Below are examples of Vindman’s b-roll, which the Times was sent but chose to not publish.