The alleged assailant of Nancy Pelosi has a political motive, and is likely to face charges 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.
The District Attorney in San Francisco said Monday that David DePape was facing a number of state charges. The federal charges of assault and attempted kidnapping were added to these charges.
“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.
The posts from last year endorse a lot of right-wing lies. He posted multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen, linked to websites claiming Covid vaccines were deadly, and shared videos questioning the January 6, 2021attack. CNN reviewed the posts before the social media company took the page down, and several of DePape’s relatives confirmed the page belonged to him.
Paul Pelosi and his brother-in-law, DePape, rejointly confronted the emergency room after the September 11 attack
Thousands of messages have poured in since the attack on Paul, with concern, prayers and warm wishes. We are thankful, according to the statement.
According to Nancy Pelosi’s office, Paul Pelosi underwent surgery after the attack for skull and arm injuries and a fractured skull.
The most detailed account of Paul Pelosi’s call to the emergency room was disclosed in the court filing related to federal charges against DePape.
San Francisco Police Chief William Scott told CNN there is no evidence that Mr. Pelosi knew this man. It’s a fact that the evidence indicates the opposite.
Pelosi and DePape both held a hammer to Pelosi’s arm as the door was opened. “Pelosi greeted the officers. The officers asked them what was going on. DePape said that everything was good. Officers then asked Pelosi and DePape to drop the hammer.”
Paul Pelosi, a Republican Senator and the Victim of a Domestic Extremism Attack, has No Place for It, nor Does it Exist in America
Mayorkas said in his first remarks since the attack last week that there was no place for it in this country.
To Mayorkas, violent domestic Extremism is one of the greatest terrorism related threats to the United States because the DHS tracks the threat environment and pushes information to state and local law enforcement authorities so they are alert to the threat.
“It is not impossible to protect our kids at school. They act like it is. Nancy Pelosi has protection when she goes to DC, but her house does not have a lot of protection, according to Lake.
Donald Trump Jr., meanwhile, shared an image on social media of a hammer and a pair of underwear with the words “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”
Even though several prominent Republicans, including Senate Minority LeaderMitch McConnell, have condemned the attack, some others, including former President Donald Trump, have offered a more cautious response.
American politics is rife with violence, intimidation, and inhumanity and poses a serious threat to democracy because of the increasing risks to political figures.
It is premature to link a specific piece of political rhetoric to what transpired when this version of events will be tested in court. But the incident leaves extremist politicians who fling vitriol – yet refuse to take responsibility for their words – on ever more tenuous ground.
The assault apparently intended for the speaker produced its own conspiracy theories and rhetorical cruelty. An alternative reality created by a gush of misinformation circulating on social media and on the ideological right is meant to blur truth, prevent accountability and further taint political discourse.
The internet elevation of conspiracies and commentary was not limited to the fringes of the internet; they also came from one of Donald Trump’s sons and a Republican who is running for Arizona governor. Lake appeared to mock Paul Pelosi over his assault and the security at his home. America has had a history of political violence and it is troubling that anyone could find humor in a physical attack.
It was the latest outburst of a climate of violence and harassment swamping modern politics. It took place less than two years after the violent insurrection at the US Capitol in which Trump made false claims about a stolen election. A man was charged with attempting to murder the justice in the Supreme Court. This came five years after GOP House Minority Whip Steve Scalise was shot at a congressional baseball practice. It was less than 12 years since Giffords was wounded in the head in Tucson, Arizona.
The Paul Pelosi attack also took place against a backdrop of tension surrounding the midterm elections next week, including 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?”
Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Graydon Young, the First Member of Oath Keepers, pleaded guilty to conspiracy on January 6
A Washington Post poll taken around the anniversary of the insurrection in January found, meanwhile, that 34% of Americans – and 40% of Republicans – said violence against the government is sometimes justified.
Last year we saw threats against Congress people and their families go up to 9,500, which is double what we’ve 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 spurious theory traces back to an incorrect early news report and a handful of pieces of evidence that its proponents have spun wildly out of context. Police and law enforcement have said that the suspect in the attack broke into Pelosi’s house and attacked her.
This attack goes towards the heart of our Democracy and it can not be written off by a crazy person. Former Boston police commissioner Ed Davis said on CNN that what our leaders say matters.
Trump insisted in an interview that what happened was terrible, but that it was indicative of rising crime in American cities, which is a key Republican election talking point.
The House January 6 committee has already shown how Trump’s incitement before and after that day convinced those who attacked the Capitol they were doing what he wanted. A former member of Oath Keepers told a jury on Monday that after the election he felt like he was running out of time because he believed Trump was lying about election fraud.
“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 Particle Against Paul Pelosi: How David DePape and his Facebook Page Promote a Pseudoscalar Conspiracy
His comments underscored the power of the inflammatory rhetoric coming from leaders like Trump, who have appeared to offer tacit encouragement for political violence.
She said it is sad that people think it is okay to express political opinions through violence.
That evening, Raheem Kassam, a former Breitbart writer and co-host of Steve Bannon’s podcast, tweeted, “They’re still pretending it wasn’t Paul Pelosi’s gay lover,” earning over 1,000 retweets.
A conspiracy linked to Nancy Pelosi, who has long been a lightning rod for conservatives and played a starring role in GOP attack ads, was an especially appealing target for right-wing conspiracists, according to Cynthia Miller-Idriss, an American University professor who studies polarization and extremism.
“We’ve spent a lot of energy just pushing back, really ridiculous conspiracy theories, to make sure people stay focused on our team,” he said. “These things are harmful to society, they’re harmful to the victims involved – it’s really sad that we are here in this place, but we are.”
The theory was endorsed by one of the first widely shared twits on Friday, the day of the attack.
Donald Trump, Jr., Sebastian Dubka, and Dinesh D’Souza endorsed the theory over the course of the next couple of days. A Louisiana Republican congressman who is on the House Homeland Security Committee used a picture of Nancy Pelosi and a description about her as a male prostitute before he deleted his post.
Musk helped increase the audience for the conspiracy. There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye, as was commented on by the billionaire when he just completed his purchase of the social media network. He linked to an article in the Santa Monica Observer, an obscure website, claiming DePape was a male prostitute and Pelosi had been in a drunken dispute with him. The website has previously posted false news, such as a claim during the 2016 election that Clinton had died and been replaced with a body double for a debate.
David DePape was fond of conspiracy theories in the months and years before the attack, such as musings about a looming takeover by the global elite and antisemitic rants.
Miller-Idriss, the American University professor, said that prominent figures carelessly spreading misinformation can lead to wider impacts on society.
“It’s dangerous because it undermines peoples’ sense of truth, it helps them further divorce from reality,” she said. “It is a situation where they spread it further – and they pass it on.”
Journalists were able to identify some of the posts that appeared to be written by David DePape after he was identified as the suspect. 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.
The attack was tied to someone who shares some of the same beliefs, and many of the right’s outlets quickly moved to cast doubt on that.
The attack was called a “Liberal lie” by The Gateway Pundit. Conservative activist Dinesh D’Souza tweeted “nothing about the public account so far makes any sense.”
Holt, who was working at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, was struck by how quickly mainstream figures picked up on conspiracy theories.
Earlier this year, Holt reported about how a baseless story about biolabs in Ukraine could be traced back to one QAnon influencer on Twitter. The conspiracy theories appeared spontaneously with no single originator. “After the attack on Paul Pelosi, it seemed to kind of all churn at the same time. There wasn’t the same kind of, you know, origin point.”
After the attack on the US Capitol in January of 2021, the false flag conspiracy became more entrenched. The supporters of former President Donald Trump say that the FBI and elements of the “deep state” were behind the attack on him to prevent him from serving a second term.
Jones said that gun-control advocates staged the Sandy Hook shootings to make a point about gun ownership. He was recently ordered to pay more than $1 billion in damages stemming from those 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 of the story that says the CIA set this up to attack conservatives. There is a more sanitized version where you are just wondering what’s going on and not really knowing what’s happening.