Denise Aguilar, a vocal California vaccine critic and founder of a survivalist group known as Mamalitia, has said she wasn’t involved in the violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, although she admits to being in Washington, D.C. that day.
But despite attempts to distance herself from the attempted coup, a since-deleted Instagram video shows Aguilar celebrating the deadly mob and suggesting she was among the rioters who roamed the Capitol grounds. She also called for similar take-overs in statehouses across the country.
“We stormed the Capitol. And patriots broke open the doors. They took back, we’re taking back our states. Really this is what it is,” Aguilar told her social media followers in the now-deleted video.
Emergency sirens were audible in the background, and she said her eyes were teary and irritated from what she claimed was bear spray.
“This is a revolution,” the Stockton mom said. “And we’ve been talking about this for a very long time. It’s here. We went into the Capitol.”
While she says “we went into the Capitol,” Aguilar does not say where exactly she had gone inside or whether she was referring to other rioters with whom she aligned.
Aguilar has said her new organization, Mamalitia, is peaceful and apolitical, a place for like-minded “prepper” mothers to learn how to forage for food, embrace natural medicine and fire guns. In another statement posted the day of the riots, Aguilar said her anti-vaccine group Freedom Angels did not support violence.
“Let me (be) very clear,” Aguilar wrote in the statement. “As a patriot and as cofounder of Freedom Angels we do not condone violence. We never have. We are here to protect our country from traitors. Discernment is necessary.”
In the deleted video, Aguilar refers to herself as one of the Freedom Angels co-founders, but did not mention Mamalitia by name. Both groups were among dozens on the state law enforcement’s radar during last fall’s protests.
Aguilar’s connection to political protests dates back to at least 2019. She was among the trio of Freedom Angels co-founders who repeatedly disrupted the California Legislature and attempted to block the entrance to the building, The Sacramento Bee reported.
During the coronavirus pandemic, she and her group aligned themselves with other far-right groups that decried California’s economic restrictions. Aguilar declined to comment for a Sacramento Bee story on April 29 that documented her evolution from an activist decrying vaccine mandates to the founder of a self-described militia.
She began Mamalitia gradually. The group’s website was registered anonymously through GoDaddy in the days after the insurrection in D.C., according to internet domain name records. It features photos of women canning food, disassembling a rifle and children shooting bows and firearms. Another photo shows a group of 11 women armed with rifles and posing before a setting sun.
“The tyrants have created women who are ready to go like it’s 1776,” the website’s landing page reads.
“We are just simply a group of women who are training each other and networking together,” she said in the video responding to The Bee’s April 29 story. “See how they try to spin it and they try to tie me into all this extremism, but they quite can’t because I’m not extreme?”
She also told her thousands of followers that The Bee’s story was both exactly how she wanted to be portrayed and “borderline defamation.”
“They’re trying to tie me into the Washington thing, unsuccessfully,” Aguilar said in the response video posted last month. “They tried to tie me in, but they have to say I wasn’t involved. Because I wasn’t.”
In the deleted video from January, however, Aguilar said she wandered to the Capitol after speaking at the “Health Freedom” stage. She had heard that a group was storming the building, she said. She described seeing both “patriots” and Antifa “dressed up like patriots” who were “antagonizing and starting violence.”
“This is war,” Aguilar said in the video. “War is very messy and war is very violent. And that’s what we experienced today. People are taking back their Capitol, and we’re taking back our government. And this is the spot that we’re in. This is what we have to do.”
No federal charges have been filed against Aguilar, according to court records. It’s unclear whether she’ll be implicated in the U.S. Department of Justice’s sprawling investigation into the riots, which have resulted in some 400 arrests on a host of crimes ranging from trespass to conspiracy.
Aguilar did not respond to requests to comment for this story. She has said that the news media mischaracterizes her and her anti-vaccine and militia groups, yet she declines almost all interviews with reporters.
“We are front-line. Freedom Angels are front-line patriots,” she said in the deleted video from January. “We will storm our Capitols if needed, and we need more front-line leaders.” She also said she was returning to California to “get back to work.”
“And that means, you know, taking back our government,” she said.
This story was originally published May 27, 2021 5:00 AM.
