A Democrat who was partly responsible for kickstarting Donald Trump’s first impeachment, has won a congressional seat in Virginia against a Republican candidate accused of parading a “fake family.”
Yevgeny “Eugene” Vindman defeated Derrick Anderson on Tuesday to win the competitive seat in Central and Northern Virginia, according to The Associated Press.
His victory kept the seventh district, which is one of the state’s most purple, in Democratic hands, and put him in line to succeed Abigail Spanberger – a former intelligence officer who vacated the seat to run for governor.
Vindman, 49, is a native of Ukraine and moved with his family to the United States in 1979. He joined the Army, and it was his military service that led him and his twin brother, Alexander Vindman, to working with the White House National Security Council during the Trump administration in 2020.
The brothers were ultimately drawn into the first Trump impeachment saga after they filed a whistleblower complaint alleging that Trump had pushed Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, in a phone call to open an embarrassing criminal investigation into Joe Biden during the election year in return for continued US military aid.
The complaint led to Trump’s first impeachment by the House of Representatives, though he was acquitted in a Senate trial.
Vindman’s opponent, Anderson was recently criticized for campaign photos and videos featuring that appeared to show him sitting around a dining table with his wife and three daughters — but who turned out to be a female friend and her three daughters.
Democrats, including Vindman, accused Anderson of trying to peddle a “fake family” to voters and said he could not be trusted.
Anderson, who is unmarried and has no children, said he had never claimed that those pictured were his family members. He has separately announced that he is engaged, and has filmed himself with his fiancee.
The Republican lives with his dog, according to his campaign website.
Vindman initially entered the race for the congressional seat with powerful national allies, including the anti-Trump conservative Lincoln Project as well as California Representive Adam Schiff, who was this week elected to be a US Senator for California and is a regular target of the incoming president’s wrath.
Schiff, a prominent House Democrat, served as impeachment manager against Trump and later as a member of the bipartisan January 6 investigation.
