The 42-year-old accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s home in the dead of night on Friday walked into her bedroom and told her startled husband that he wanted to take her hostage and break “her kneecaps,” federal prosecutors said in a complaint filed Monday.
David DePape, the conspiracy theory-fixated suspect, was charged with a bevy of crimes over the brazen attack by both federal and local prosecutors on Monday.
Brooke Jenkins, the San Francisco district attorney, called DePape’s alleged actions “politically motivated” as she announced state charges of “attempted murder, residential burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder, as well as threats to a public official and their family.”
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Hours earlier, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of California had slapped DePape with federal charges of assault and attempted kidnapping.
If convicted in the federal case, DePape faces a prospective 30 years behind bars on the assault charge and 20 years for the attempted kidnapping. His state charges carry a sentence of 13 years to life in prison, according to Jenkins.
Around 2:30 a.m. during the Friday break-in, the 82-year-old Pelosi managed to place a surreptitious 911 call, summoning two San Francisco police officers to the scene. The pair knocked on the door, and were greeted by the sight of Pelosi tussling with DePape over a hammer, according to the criminal complaint. Pelosi then “greeted the officers.” When asked what was going on, the filing goes on to explain, DePape responded that “everything was good.”
As the officers commanded both men to drop the weapon, DePape wrenched it out of Pelosi’s hand and swung it, striking him in the head, the complaint states. Pelosi collapsed, apparently unconscious, and DePape was restrained and arrested. Investigators later found a roll of tape, white rope, a second hammer, a pair of rubber and cloth gloves, and zip ties on the scene.
Police have not formally offered a motive for the attack. But as The Daily Beast reported, DePape partook in a laundry list of far-right conspiracy nonsense, trafficking in antisemitic vitriol, COVID-19 disinformation, and fantasies about the 2020 election. On a personal blog he kept, DePape posted far-right memes, referenced the anonymous message board 4chan, mocked Amber Heard, and parroted QAnon conspiracy talking points.
Interviewed in an ambulance on the way to a hospital, Pelosi told police that he had been asleep when DePape entered the room. DePape told him he was looking for “Nancy,” indicating that he’d sit and wait for her—as Pelosi tried to explain his wife would be away for the next few days, he later said.
Pelosi then excused himself to use the bathroom, where his phone had been charging, Politico reported hours after the attack on Friday. Dialing 911, Pelosi began speaking to DePape in what a dispatcher identified as code language, a source told CNN the same day. The officers arrived two minutes later.
The speaker’s husband was admitted to a city hospital with a skull fracture and serious injuries to his hands and right arm, a Pelosi spokesperson said on Friday. He is expected to make a full recovery.
“Thanks to the excellent trauma care medical team at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital, Paul is making steady progress on what will be a long recovery process,” Nancy Pelosi said in a statement issued Monday night, adding that the family was “grateful” for the messages of support they’d received since Friday.
That DePape was allegedly carrying zip ties evoked the Jan. 6, 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. Some accused rioters that day allegedly had zip ties on them, including Eric Munchel and Guy Reffitt. In another echo of the Capitol attacks, multiple outlets reported DePape had woken Paul Pelosi up to loudly demand to know where “Nancy” was. Multiple rioters who entered the federal building on Jan. 6 were captured baying for the speaker’s blood, roaming the halls and barking, “Where are you, Nancy? We’re looking for you.”
DePape told investigators that he had broken into the Pelosi residence through a glass door, using a hammer, according to the complaint. He said he had wanted to detain Nancy Pelosi until she either told him the “truth” or “lied.” If the former, he said, he would have broken “her kneecaps,” with the complaint paraphrasing DePape’s explanation that “she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions.”
If she told the unspecified “truth,” though, DePape stated that he would have let her go. “In the course of the interview, DePape articulated he viewed Nancy as the ‘leader of the pack’ of lies told by the Democratic Party,” the complaint says.
He also “explained generally” that he had wanted to use the speaker as bait to lure another person to him. The individual was unidentified in the complaint.
The attack prompted some—including, notably, new ‘Chief Twit’ Elon Musk—to spread unfounded conspiracy theories. In a Sunday tweet on the incident, Musk suggested “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” To this, he attached a link to an article from a discredited outlet notorious for propagating misinformation. Musk’s tweet, blasted out to his 112 million followers, was deleted hours later.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins was quick to discredit rumblings of a cover-up on Sunday, telling reporters that DePape had been targeting Nancy Pelosi.
“We have nothing to suggest that [DePape and Paul Pelosi] knew each other prior to this incident,” Jenkins said, dismissing the idea that a third person had been in the home at the time.
