Details from FBI documents depict attack on Paul Pelosi
In an interview with San Francisco police, David DePapp, the 42-year-old man accused of assaulting Pelosi, said he broke into Pelosi’s home on Broadway near Divisadero with a hammer, the indictment said. West’s home. He allegedly told police that Pelosi, 82, was lying in bed and seemed surprised by his presence. From there, DePape reportedly told Pelosi to wake up and ask about Nancy’s whereabouts.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said at a news conference Monday that no private security was present when DePapp entered the house.
DePape said he broke into Pelosi’s home to hold Nancy hostage, according to the criminal complaint. He reportedly told authorities that if Nancy Pelosi were to tell DePape the “truth,” he would let her go. But if not, DePape said, he would have broken “her kneecap,” the complaint said. He later explained that by faltering the speaker, she would need to be pushed into Congress, which would show other federal lawmakers there would be “consequences” for their actions, the indictment said.
DePape reportedly told authorities he viewed Nancy Pelosi as a “group leader” and said she was responsible for the “lies” that Democrats said.
Officials in the spokesman’s office said she was in Washington, D.C., at the time of the attack. According to police, when Paul Pelosi told DePape the information, DePape removed the tie from his pocket. DePape allegedly told authorities that he planned to restrain Pelosi so he could sleep because he was tired from carrying a backpack to Pelosi’s residence.
When DePape removed his tie from his pocket, Pelosi tried to get into the home’s elevator, where there was a phone, but DePape stopped him, authorities said. While they were talking to each other, Pelosi went to the bathroom and called 911 from her phone. DePape reportedly told authorities he didn’t leave Pelosi’s home after he realized Paul had called 911 because “just like the American Founding Fathers did with the British, he was fighting tyranny and didn’t surrender. choose.”
DePape led Pelosi downstairs to the front door, authorities said. When police knocked on the door, Pelosi ran to the door to open it and grabbed the hammer DePape was holding, the criminal complaint said. DePape reiterated that he had no intention of surrendering and said his plan was to “pass” Pelosi, the criminal complaint said.
Authorities said DePape pulled a hammer from Pelosi’s hand and struck him on the head with it. Responders rushed into the home immediately and restrained DePape. When dePape was arrested, police said they noticed Pelosi appeared to be unconscious on the floor.
Details of the criminal complaint, released Monday, are the first possible explanation for DePape’s motives, which police say are still under investigation. Since the attack, much of the media coverage has focused on DePape’s online activities.
Multiple media outlets reported that DePape made conspiracy posts on his Facebook page related to topics such as the COVID-19 vaccine and the 2020 presidential election results. Media reports said DePape’s Facebook account was suspended by the company on Friday. Posts on two separate blogs — one hosted on WordPress.com and the other on subscriber-only hosting service Wix — were attributed to user “daviddepape”, but SFGATE was unable to confirm whether one was DePape-related link.
On both sites, the poster shares parodies of Disney movies, AI art, and admits he’s “involved in it all” because of Gamergate, a campaign targeting “social justice” and women in video games harassment campaigns; homophobic, transphobic, anti-Black, anti-Muslim, and anti-Semitic sentiments that often accompany YouTube clips; and an obsession with Canadian expert Jordan Peterson and “anti-awakening” mathematician James Lindsay. The latest post on Wix’s website, published a day before the attack, was titled “Why colleges are becoming a cult”.
The criminal complaint also helps debunk numerous conspiracy theories that have circulated online since Friday that DePape and Pelosi knew each other and that DePape was a sex worker invited by Pelosi. These baseless theories, championed mostly by conservatives, can be traced in part to a since-retracted detail in a KTVU television report that said DePape was wearing only his underwear at the time of the attack.
The criminal complaint shows that DePape was wearing — possibly all black — at the time of his arrest and allegedly entered the home by breaking a glass door; Pelosi did not invite him in.
DePape was booked at the San Francisco County Jail on Friday morning. Jenkins said her office plans to charge DePape with attempted murder, burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, wrongful imprisonment of elders and threats to public officials and their families. Jenkins also said her office would file a motion to detain DePape without bail on charges that could lead to a sentence of 13 years to life in prison.
This breaking news story has been updated.
SFGATE Technical Editor Joshua Bote contributed to this report.