Cooke Campaign will monitor Van Orden’s account for defamatory conduct and “evaluate all legal options”
EAU CLAIRE, Wisc. — Today, counsel for Cooke for Congress sent a cease and desist letter to Derrick Van Orden directing him to stop producing defamatory and false AI deepfake videos and publicizing them through his social media accounts. The cease and desist letter comes as Van Orden, who has posted many such videos over the past several months, continues to publish AI deepfake videos of his opponent, Rebecca Cooke, ahead of the November 3 election.
The letter specifically cites an AI video that Derrick Van Orden posted to his X account on August 4th, 2026 at 3:50PM CST. That video purports to show Ms. Cooke speaking “on the campaign trail” in Eau Claire with former President Biden seated behind her. The video attributes to Ms. Cooke the statement that she seeks “to take advantage of as much corruption as possible and give every illegal alien free healthcare.”
“Ms. Cooke never made the statements attributed to her. She does not support, and has never supported, the positions ascribed to her in this deepfake. You are airing this false content to attempt to fool the voters of Wisconsin into believing she said something she did not to harm her reputation for your own political gain,” wrote Cooke’s counsel. “You are indisputably posting videos falsely conveying that Ms. Cooke has made particular statements, given the veneer of truth by putting them into the mouth of an AI-generated image of Ms. Cooke, for the patently obvious purpose of harming Ms. Cooke’s reputation for your own political advantage.”
“Derrick Van Orden can’t run on his record, and is instead spending his time and energy producing AI videos putting words in my mouth, pretending that I said things that I didn’t and that I support policies I do not,” said Cooke. “Ironically, these deep fakes are facilitated by the same data centers Derrick Van Orden gave special tax breaks at the expense of our energy and health care bills. Wisconsin deserves a member of Congress that tells the truth not only about his own record, but the incredibly difficult time so many families, farms, and working people are going through right now.
“We need leaders who are rooted in reality. He can’t defend his six votes for the Iran war that is jacking up prices for everyone,” Cooke continued. “He can’t defend his record of giving tax breaks to the billionaires he cares about more than his constituents. He would rather lie about me, than tell the truth about his record, his votes, his behavior. That ends today.”
You can find the full letter here.
