David DePape, 42, is alleged to have attacked Nancy Pelosi, husband of Presiding Speaker Nancy. He is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday
The man alleged to have attacked Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, is expected in a San Francisco court on Tuesday for his arraignment.
David DePape, 42, is facing a litany of state charges, including attempted murder and assault with a deadly weapon, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said Monday. The federal charges that DePape faces are related to assault and attempted kidnapping.
“He has obviously been booked on these charges, we will file our complaint, we expect for him to be in court tomorrow, and that’s the most I can say,” Jenkins said in a news conference Monday, adding that DePape’s prior arrests and criminal history will be discussed in court Tuesday.
New details Monday of the assault on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband strongly suggested the alleged assailant had a political motive and added to news reports that he engaged with social media conspiracies and election denialism.
DePape, according to court documents, told police he planned to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage, calling her the “leader of the pack of lies” promoted by the Democrats.
“Since the horrific attack on Paul early Friday, we have been deluged with thousands of messages conveying concern, prayers and warm wishes. The statement said that they were most grateful.
The Paul Pelosi Domestic Violence Indicator During a State Referendum on July 11, 2016: Attorney General Eric DePape, the Attorney General, and the Defense Attorney General
Pelosi was taken to a hospital after the attack and underwent a “successful surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands,” Drew Hammill, a spokesman for Nancy Pelosi, said in a statement early Friday evening. He is expected to make a full recovery.
The court filing related to the federal charges against DePape revealed the most detailed account yet of Paul Pelosi’s 911 call while the incident was unfolding.
“Pelosi stated words to the effect of there is a male in the home and that the male is going to wait for Pelosi’s wife. Pelosi further conveyed that he does not know who the male is. The FBI agent said in the affidavit that the male claimed to be David.
Donald Trump Jr., for example, shared a picture of a hammer and a pair of underwear with the words “Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.” During the attack, DePape struck Pelosi with a hammer, according to a court filing.
“There’s no place for it in this country,” Mayorkas said in his first remarks since the attack last week, adding that it was difficult to label the incident “domestic terrorism” because of the legal implications of the term.
The violent attack on Paul Pelosi has raised fresh concerns over threats of political violence driven by partisan animosity and increasingly hostile political rhetoric – and highlighted the potential vulnerability of lawmakers and their families in the current political climate.
On Monday, Lake was asked a question about school safety while on the campaign trail. “It is not impossible to protect our kids at school. ,” she responded. They act like it. Nancy Pelosi has protection when she is in DC, but the house she rents does not have very much protection.
Donald Trump Jr. posted an image of his underwear and hammer with the words, “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, along with other prominent Republicans, have condemned the attack. Some, including former President Donald Trump, offered a more cautious response.
The political atmosphere is more isolated than it’s been in the past due to different groups of Americans on both sides fearing for their country. The evidence of the last few years also brings a foreboding sense that increasing numbers of Americans see violence as a legitimate form of political expression, especially under the influence of an ex-president who told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” in a presidential debate, then incited a mob attack on the Capitol, and who has warned of problems “like we’ve never seen” if he’s indicted as several criminal investigations swirl around him.
It’s premature to link any piece of political rhetoric to what transpired as this version will be tested in court. The incident makes it hard for extremists to take responsibility for their words.
Holt says that many of the conspiracy theories surrounding the assault of Paul Pelosi seem to be a response to the right to cast doubt on attackers’ motives or ideological influence. It can come in various degrees of intensity.
The comments from Lake and other right-wing pundits might have been disqualifying a few years ago. In the Trump era, candidates and surrogates attempt to establish credibility with a radical base of voters by saying what used to be seen as callous or offensive. Their rhetoric often exacerbates the process of dehumanizing political opponents that seems to make violence more likely.
It was the latest outburst of a climate of violence and harassment swamping modern politics. It took place less than two years after an armed insurrection at the US Capitol began over Trump’s claims of a stolen election. A man was arrested and charged with attempting to murder a conservative Supreme Court Justice. The GOP House Minority Whip was shot in the hip at a baseball practice five years ago. Less than 12 years ago, Democrat Gabby Giffords was left with a brain injury when she was shot in Tucson, Arizona.
The Paul Pelosi attack took place in the midst of tension surrounding the upcoming elections and reports of groups monitoring voter drop boxes in Arizona. Earlier this summer, former Georgia poll worker Ruby Freeman searingly told the House select committee investigating January 6, 2021, that there was now nowhere she felt safe after getting drawn in to Trump’s voter fraud conspiracies and asked, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”
Paul Pelosi, Elon Musk, and Graydon Young: Social media gatekeepers should be ashamed of their personal lives – not politics
According to a Washington Post poll taken around the anniversary of the insurrection, 34% of Americans say violence against the government is justified.
In the last year, threats against Congress people and their families have risen to 9,500, which is double what we have seen before.
Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a conspiracy theory social media post featuring a hammer, as though the ordeal suffered by Paul Pelosi, who is still in the hospital, was funny. The new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, retweeted and deleted a similar post, raising the possibility that one of the world’s newest social media gatekeepers might end up exacerbating an already toxic political culture.
The details emerging from the investigation in the case of Paul Pelosi appear to undermine the claim by Republicans that the attack had nothing to do with politics.
“This attack goes to the core of our democracy and it can’t be just written off to some crazy person. Ed Davis is a former Boston police commissioner.
Trump, for instance, insisted in an interview that what happened was a “terrible thing” but was symptomatic of rising crime in American cities – a key Republican midterm election talking point.
The House January 6 committee has shown that Trump gained the confidence of those who attacked the Capitol by inciting them. That impression was further underlined on Monday when a former member of the Oath Keepers extremist group told a jury that after the election, he felt a “sense of desperation and hopelessness” because he believed Trump’s claims that fraud was committed in the 2020 election.
“I guess I was acting like a traitor against my own government,” said Graydon Young, the first Oath Keeper to plead guilty to conspiracy in connection to January 6.
The break-in of Mr. DePape: He’s not going to vote but he’s going to work for a political cause
His comments emphasized the power of the inflammatory rhetoric coming from leaders like Trump who have appeared to encourage political violence.
She said that it is sad to see that people believe it’s ok to use violence for political reasons.
The most complete and chilling narrative of the break-in has been given by the F.B.I. agent that accompanied the federal charges. It detailed a groggy early-morning home invasion that culminated with a single, sudden hammer blow, delivered in the presence of shocked police officers.
Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.
The officers quickly restrained Mr. DePape, who told them that he had left his backpack near the smashed door window on the rear porch. There was more than one hammer, tape, rope, two pairs of gloves and a journal when they examined it.
Why should the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Nancy, be stabbed in the back? A joke by Lake had a crack in his house
In the wake of the news that Pelosi, the husband House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, had been attacked with a hammer in his own home by an intruder who shouted “Where’s Nancy?,” Youngkin told a crowd at a campaign event that “Speaker Pelosi’s husband had a break-in last night in their house, and he was assaulted. There’s no room for violence anywhere, but we’re gonna send her back to be with him in California. That’s what we’re going to go do.”
Youngkin should still be applauded for his apology, even though it was a little late. It stands in contrast to the behavior of other members of his party.
The tape, of course, shows Lake making light of the situation. The crowd was laughing. Lake responses to that laughter? I do not control people, buddy. I do not control people. I can be responsible for myself but I cannot be responsible for others.
Of course, had she not been joking, Lake could have, in the moment, told the crowd that. Something along the lines of, “This isn’t a laughing matter.” She didn’t.
Source: https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/02/politics/glenn-youngkin-kari-lake-paul-pelosi/index.html
The Case of Paul Pelosi: A False Flag Attack on the Former U.S. President Donald Trump and Other Activists
Donald Trump, as he so often does, latched on to a conspiracy theory suggesting, wrongly, that the glass in Pelosi’s house was broken from the inside. “It’s weird things going on in that household in the last couple of weeks The former president was referring to himself.
Once the police identified the suspect in custody as David DePape, journalists quickly identified blog posts that appeared to be written by him. The writer of those posts embraced far-right views, including antisemitic tropes, false claims about the 2020 election and conspiracies about COVID vaccines. DePape’s daughter told The Los Angeles Times that her father wrote the posts.
Many of the right’s high-profile outlets cast doubt on whether the attack was tied to someone who shared some of their beliefs after learning of the story.
The Gateway Pundit, a website well-known for publishing false stories, called the attack “another liberal lie.” Conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza tweeted “nothing about the public account so far makes any sense.”
The pace at which figures picked up on conspiracies was something that was striking to a researcher at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue.
Holt reported earlier this year on a baseless story about biolabs in Ukraine that was traced back to one QAnoninfluencer. The conspiracy theories appeared to come from nowhere this time. “After the attack on Paul Pelosi, it seemed to kind of all churn at the same time. The origin point wasn’t the same as before.
Holt says that the false flag conspiracies became more entrenched after the Capitol attack. Supporters of former President Donald Trump alleged that the attack was actually engineered by the FBI and other elements of the so-called “deep state” to discredit Trump and prevent him from serving another term.
Jones infamously said that the Sandy Hook school shootings were staged by gun-control advocates to create a pretext to restrict gun ownership. He was ordered to pay $1 billion in damages for making false claims. Fact-checking organizations like PolitiFact have debunked similar false flag claims in the wake of the Uvalde shooting, Buffalo shooting, and El Paso and Dayton shootings in 2019 and have flagged it as a recurring theme.
There is a deep end that says that the CIA set this up to attack conservatives. And then there is the more sanitized version of, you know, just asking questions and just wondering what’s going on here, when really the evidence is there.”
The conspiracy theories also cloud the fact that the attack on Pelosi is an incident of far-right domestic terrorism, says Erin Miller, who manages the Global Terrorism Database at the University of Maryland. She is concerned that the conspiracies can be a path to radicalization, especially as the country heads into another polarized election.
The House Speaker of the House Select Committee on Human Rights and Public Safety: Paul Pelosi, 48, in Los Angeles after his Oct. 28 attack
A source said that Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker, was home and resting some time after last week’s brutal attack.
He also waived his right to a hearing within 10 days at his arraignment at a San Francisco court room. There will be a hearing on Friday in San Francisco Superior Court to set the date for the preliminary hearing and bail setting.
“U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) lodged an immigration detainer on Canadian national David DePape with San Francisco County Jail, Nov. 1, following his Oct. 28 arrest,” the department said.
“He spelled out exactly what he did and why, so he was very clear about what his intentions were, about why he had those intentions, and what exactly he had planned to do,” Jenkins said on “Erin Burnett Outfront” on Friday, referring to DePape’s volunteered statements to police.
Jenkins said it’s not unusual for defense attorneys to explore all options to defend their clients, but added, “I don’t think we can definitely say at this point that he didn’t know what he was doing.”
A long recovery process and convalescence is what Paul is making progress on. He is now home surrounded by his family who request privacy,” a statement from the House speaker said.
During the hearing it was disclosed that Judge Loretta M. Giorgi previously worked with Pelosi’s daughter, Christine, at the San Francisco City Attorney’s office in the 1990s. Since then, she has not spoken to Ms. Pelosi.
“So I run to the door, and I’m very scared,” Pelosi said, describing what unfolded. “I see the Capitol Police and they say, ‘We have to come in to talk to you.’”
My children and my grandchildren are uppermost in my mind. I didn’t think Paul would be out and about. And so they came in. At that time, we didn’t even know where he was,” she said.
What will she do next year? Democrat Rep. Nancy Pelosi says the attack on her husband was “horrible” and it may have turned off midterm voters
Pelosi was asked if she would confirm that she has made a decision about what she would do, noting that there had been much discussion about whether she would retire if Democrats lose the House.
The speaker said the “decision will be affected about what happened the last week or two,” prompting Cooper to ask, “Will your decision be impacted by the attack in any way?”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested Sunday that Republicans’ “horrible response” to the politically motivated attack on her husband last month might have turned off some voters in last week’s midterm elections.
“The attack is horrible. Imagine what it would be like to not only be the target, but the husband who had to pay the price for the traumatic effect on our family. “But that trauma is intensified by the ridiculous disrespectful attitude that the Republicans – and there’s nobody disassociating themselves from the horrible response that they gave to it.”
Republicans responded to the attack immediately, from mockery to condemnation, including fanning conspiracy theories about it.
In contrast, Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican who drew criticism after referencing the attack as part of a political swipe at Nancy Pelosi, expressed regret over his remark.
“I prayed for you all, and I am sure you’ll be glad to rejoin me,” Aguilar told the Associated Press
“Each day takes us closer to recovery. It’s a long haul, but he’s doing well, comforted by the good wishes and especially the prayers of so many people throughout the country,” she said. “We thank them all for that. And again, so many who said, ‘I’m going to be sure to vote because this has gone too far.’”