Information reaching Kossyderrickent has it that Top US journalists release accurate information about Berkeley student and Paul Pelosi’s hammer attacker, David DePape. (Read More Here).
An assailant identified as David Depape broke into the couple’s home early Friday morning and “violently assaulted” the 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer, causing blunt-force trauma to his head and body, and the House speaker’s husband reportedly underwent brain surgery.
The 42-year-old Depape, of Berkeley, has previously made news for taking part in nude anti-war protests in the Castro neighborhood.
David Depape is shown in Berkeley, Calif.,on Friday, Dec. 13, 2013. An intruder attacked and severely beat House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer in the couple’s San Francisco home early Friday, Oct. 28, 2022, while searching for the Democratic leader. Police were called to the home to check on Paul Pelosi when they discovered the 82-year-old and the suspect, Depape, both grabbing onto the hammer, said Police Chief William Scott.
Teresa DePape, who is married to the suspect’s stepfather living in Powell River, British Columbia, told USA TODAY that DePape had left the area for California about 20 years ago.
“I didn’t know David to be a violent person,” she said. “But he was an aggressive speaker.”
The family had not been in regular contact with the suspect, but Teresa DePape said David emailed his stepfather a couple years ago, indicating that he would visit and did not follow up.
Mark DePape, a family member, said he had lost touch with DePape long ago.
“I haven’t seen David in over 25 years. I don’t know David (anymore). He doesn’t contact family. I’m sorry to hear of this tragedy.”
Teresa DePape also said David’s “strong opinions” that differed from the views of some family members, including his stepfather.
“David was a good kid; he just had opinions,” said Teresa DePape. She believed DePape was a fan of the Burning Man festival, an annual counter-culture arts gathering in the Nevada desert.
She declined to elaborate on those views.
After fielding reporters’ telephone calls, she contacted law enforcement authorities in San Francisco. She said they confirmed that DePape was in custody. Teresa DePape said the family would wait until he reached out to them.
“I hope you find the truth,” she said.DePape was booked in a local jail at 1:27 p.m. PT. He has been charged with burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, threatening a family member of a a public official, dissuading a witness from reporting a crime, elder abuse, battery with serious bodily injury, damaging a wireless device and attempted murder.
No bond has been set on any of the charges. Kevin Reyes of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue explains, “What we do is try to prevent extremism and hate in the real world by monitoring online spaces.”
Reyes was one of the first to find and capture DePape’s online rage, a variety of conspiracy theories and extremist ideologies on Facebook and his blog page, Welcome to Big Brother’s Censorship Hell. “COVID-19 conspiracies to information against women, content against the Jewish community, federal law enforcement, you know, pizza gate, even the pyramids on the dollar bills.”
But Reyes says there were no online warnings of an imminent attack, no threats to physically target anyone.
The head of UC Berkeley’s Center for right wing studies tells the I-Team it’s clear what fueled DePape, who reportedly said, “Where’s Nancy?” as he broke into the house.
Lawrence Rosenthal told the I-Team, “He was saying, where’s Nancy? Where do we remember that from? Remember that from January the 6th. And it was, as well, the occasion on which people were shouting, ‘hang Mike Pence.'”
Rosenthal says the attack at Pelosi’s house is a result of a failure of our national leaders to lower the temperature on political discourse, and disavow conspiracy theories.
“As long as the myth, and I use that word advisedly, the myth of the stolen election is maintained and nourished as it were, by the Republican Party, we’re going to find ourselves in a situation where the threat of actions like today’s or January 6, are going to be with us,” he said.
And those experts are watching now to see how extremists respond. They are concerned it could lead to other violent attacks.
His stepfather, Gene DePape, said David DePape grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, and left Canada about 20 years ago to pursue a relationship that brought him to California.
“I really don’t know what to think,” the suspect’s uncle, Mark DePape, said of his nephew’s alleged attack on Pelosi. “Hopefully it’s a scam. I don’t want to hear something like that.”
Last year, David DePape posted links on his Facebook page to multiple videos produced by My Pillow CEO Mike Lindell falsely alleging that the 2020 election was stolen. Other posts included transphobic images and linked to websites claiming Covid vaccines were deadly. “The death rates being promoted are what ever ‘THEY’ want to be promoted as the death rate,” one post read.
DePape also posted links to YouTube videos with titles like “Democrat FARCE Commission to Investigate January 6th Capitol Riot COLLAPSES in Congress!!!” and “Global Elites Plan To Take Control Of YOUR Money! (Revealed)”.
Two days after former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty of killing George Floyd, DePape wrote that the trial was “a modern lynching,” falsely indicating that Floyd died of a drug overdose.
He also posted content about the “Great Reset”– the sprawling conspiracy theory that global elites are using coronavirus to usher in a new world order in which they gain more power and oppress the masses. And he complained that politicians making promises to try to win votes “are offering you bribes in exchange for your further enslavement.”
Most of the public posts on DePape’s Facebook page were from 2021. In earlier years, DePape also posted long screeds about religion, including claims that “Jesus is the anti christ.” None of the public posts appeared to mention Pelosi.
Ron DePape, who said David DePape is a stepson of his brother’s from a previous marriage, told the newspaper: “We don’t have any contact with him and just feeling sad and sorry for the Pelosi family.”
“It’s just a sad event. It has to be mental health issues that he’s been carrying around I would think.”
The British Columbia resident told the San Francisco Chronicle that David DePape lived there but left “at an early age” to move to the US with a girlfriend: “He refused contact with any family. He just kind of disappeared.”
David DePape appears to have an online blog filled with conspiracy theories about the government, media and tech companies, and appeared to be a follower of the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to the newspaper.
The congressman said in a statement Friday:
“This assassination attempt never should have happened. This guy has a background that shows he’s been moved, instigated, and influenced by those people who seek to divide us. Turn on rightwing media on any given day or night. You will see frothing hosts shrieking unspeakable lies and unfounded conspiracy theories about women, religious and ethnic minorities, city residents, young people and scores of others Americans. That some are radicalized to commit unspeakable violence against their perceived enemies cannot be a surprise. This terrorism is growing and threatens every community in America.”
Early reports found that Pelosi’s attacker, David Depape, had embraced conspiracy theories about January 6, the 2020 election and Covid in online posts.
I’m Dani Anguiano and I’ll be taking over our live blog for the remainder of the day.
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