Pelosi’s husband’s attacker regrets not being more violent

There is no trace of regret in David DePape, the man who broke into the house of the former speaker of the United States House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, on the night of October 28 last year and attacked her husband with a hammer, Paul, who had to undergo surgery for a severe skull fracture. After a video of the attack was broadcast last Friday, the defendant not only assumed responsibility for the crime in a call to a subsidiary of the Fox network, but also apologized for not having been even more violent.

“I attacked Pelosi because freedom is not that she is dying, it is that she is being systematically and deliberately murdered,” he explained to KTVU. “These killers have names and addresses, so I caught up with them for a little visit and to talk one-on-one with them about her misbehavior,” she added. DePape wryly apologized for not being able to do “more” during the attack. “No one else is to blame. I should have prepared better,” he added.

Video released Friday by the San Francisco Supreme Court shows the moment agents go to the Pelosi home and arrest DePape, who was beating 82-year-old Paul with a hammer. The file also includes the interview of the alleged attacker with the police, in which he admits that he wanted to take the Democratic congresswoman hostage. In fact, he went so far as to say that he wanted to “break her knees,” according to the report. But upon entering the house he found that she was not there because she had gone to Washington DC and confronted her husband.

In addition to the body camera footage carried by officers, there are others recorded by the home’s security system showing him breaking a window into the couple’s San Francisco home around two in the morning.

skull fracture

Audio of a 911 call from a distraught Paul can be heard below, in which he tries to alert him in a subtle way because DePape is in front of him. “I have a problem, but he thinks everything is fine,” he tells the caller, who asks if he knows him. “No, no, no, this gentleman has just entered my house and wants to wait for my wife to come home.” Then DePape cuts in on the call and says that he’s a “friend.”

In the video, recorded on the officers’ cameras, Pelosi and DePape are seen clutching a hammer. Then the assailant takes him and hits the congresswoman’s husband, who was barefoot and in his underpants, with the upper part of his pajamas.

Paul Pelosi was seriously injured. He had to undergo surgery for a fractured skull and injuries to his right arm and hands were treated. His wife, Nancy, described in an interview on November 17, after announcing that she would not run for re-election as Democratic leader, the “traumatic effect” of the intrusion. “If he had fallen or slipped on the ice in an accident and hit his head, it would be horrible. But for it to be an assault on him because they were looking for me is really…call it survivor’s guilt or something.”

The attack shocked Washington and highlighted the limitations of the United States Capitol Police (USCP), which is tasked with protecting Congress and the representatives who serve on it. While many politicians condemned the hack, some Republicans downplayed the incident, which also spawned a host of conspiracy theories.

DePape faces sentences of between 20 and 30 years for the crimes of assault and attempted kidnapping. Of Canadian origin, the defendant was in the United States irregularly. Internet records describe him as prone to fueling conspiracy theories on a wide range of topics, from aliens, communism, Jews, voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election in which Biden defeated Trump and another type of conspiracy embraced by the American extreme right.