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Paul Pelosi, 82, spoke with investigators from his hospital bed following the brutal hammer attack at his San Francisco home that landed him in the ICU, a source told NBC Bay Area News.
He provided statements on Sunday to San Francisco police investigators, Capitol Police, the FBI and San Francisco District Attorney’s Office regarding the home invasion where Pelosi was beaten over the head with a hammer.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband is awake, has all cognitive functions and remembers the events of the attack – he is cooperating with multiple agencies, according to the source with knowledge of the investigation.
Federal charges of attempted kidnapping and retaliation against a federal official by threatening a family member were filed Monday against suspect David DePape.
Officials in California have also formally charged DePape with attempted murder among other felony charges in relation to Friday’s hammer attack. He will be arraigned in court on Tuesday.
DePape is accused of breaking into Pelosi’s home in Pacific Heights and beating Paul’s head with a hammer with the goal of holding Nancy hostage and breaking her kneecaps.
Fox News reported that DePape is in the U.S. illegally from Canada and is a ‘longtime’ visa overstayer.
Paul Pelosi (right) gave statements from his ICU bed to investigators with the San Francisco police, Capitol Police, the FBI and San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, according to a source familiar with the investigation. The husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (left) was attacked with a hammer at their home on Friday
A police car is situated outside Nancy and Paul Pelosi’s $6 million home in San Francisco, California on Saturday, October 29 – the day after the attack
David DePape, 42, (left) is accused of breaking into Pelosi’s $6million home and attacking Paul Pelosi, 82, with a hammer as he shouted: ‘Where’s Nancy?’
In a press conference on Monday, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins explicitly referred to the attack as ‘politically motivated.’ She also said she believes that DePape intended to murder Paul Pelosi.
Gene DePape, the adopted father of David, told KRON that he first met the suspect when he was a toddler and adopted him by the time he turned three
Jenkins told the media: ‘What is clear based on the evidence that we have thus far is that this house, and the speaker herself, were specifically targets of the defendant.’
Mr. Pelosi was home alone at the time of the attack.
Gene DePape, the adoptive father of the lone suspect, has spoken out about his son’s actions.
He told KRON in an interview that he first met the suspect when he was a toddler and adopted him by the time he turned three. At the time of adoption, Gene was married to the suspect’s biological mother. The couple split in 1993 but DePape remained living with his adoptive father until 1999.
Gene told the station that the suspect was ‘never in trouble as a kid’ and said that he was a ‘mild, gentle and kind’ child. He also stated his surprise when he found out about the incident at the Pelosi’s home.
DePape’s adoptive father went on to say that he hasn’t seen his son in nearly 20 years, recalling a dinner in 2003 as possibly the last time the pair were in each other’s presence.
He described DePape as ‘reclusive’ but said that he never exhibited any signs of violence. Gene said that he did not know of any abuse in the suspect’s childhood.
David told his own stepchildren – who have accused him of abuse – that he also suffered horrible abuse as a child, according to a blog post by his estranged daughter.
A San Francisco police vehicle blocks the street leading to Speaker Pelosi’s home the day of the attack
Shortly after the crime, Gene told the Association Press that the suspect had lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and had been a quiet boy.
‘David was never violent that I seen and was never in any trouble although he was very reclusive and played too much video games,’ Gene DePape said.
‘In 2007, I tried to get in touch but his girlfriend hung up on me when I asked to talk to him,’ Gene DePape said. He named that girlfriend as a woman named Gypsy.
Jenkins said in the press conference that Paul Pelosi was asleep in a loose-fitting pajama shirt and a pair of boxer shorts when he was awoken by DePape around 2:30 am.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins announcing the charges against David DePape on Monday afternoon. During the press conference she said: ‘What is clear based on the evidence that we have thus far is that this house, and the speaker herself, were specifically targets of the defendant’
At some point during the ordeal, Paul Pelosi attempted to escape into an elevator to call 911. When that avenue was closed off to him, he did manage to get to a bathroom where he was able to call the police.
DePape was listening in on the phone call, and knew police were going to arrive, according to FBI interrogators, but ‘explained that he did not leave after Pelosi’s call to 9-1-1 because, much like the American founding fathers with the British, he was fighting against tyranny without the option of surrender.’
Other state charges include residential burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and false imprisonment of an elder.
If convicted on all charges, DePape could face life in prison. Jenkins said that her office will file a motion to keep DePape in custody without bail.
She continued: ‘One last thing that I want to say today is that as leaders and as citizens, it is incumbent upon us all, to watch the words that we say and to turn down the volume of our political rhetoric.’
DePape’s landlord is renowned photographer Malcolm Lubliner, shown here removing the suspect’s belongings from the home that they shared in Richmond, California
According to the criminal complaint, the day after the attack, authorities traced DePape to a home along Shasta Road in Richmond, California, around 18 miles north of San Francisco.
The home belongs to renowned Bay Area photographer Malcolm Lubliner who served as DePape’s landlord. DePape lived at the address for two years.
Investigators said that inside of the home, they found additional hammers, a sword, and pairs of gloves.
Lubliner has been a fixture in the California arts scene since the 1960s and has had his work displayed at the San Francisco Museum of Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art as well as at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC.
He has photographed American icons such as Jasper Johns and Janis Joplin.
At some point during the ordeal, Paul Pelosi attempted to escape into an elevator to call 911. When that avenue was closed off to him, he managed to get to a bathroom where he was able to call the police
On Friday, DePape walked into a bedroom of the $6million San Francisco home just before 3am on Friday, woke Paul Pelosi up and said he would wait for his wife to get home.
He told investigators he wanted ‘kneecap her’ if she ‘lied’ to him so she would have to be ‘wheeled into Congress, showing other Members there were consequences to actions’.
The suspect allegedly had zip ties with him when he broke into the couple’s San Francisco home – and was calling out ‘Where’s Nancy?’
DePape on Monday was charged with assault and attempted kidnapping by the Department of Justice.
The suspect, who is now in custody, is expected to appear in court this week on separate state charges. San Francisco police said DePape would be arraigned on charges of attempted homicide, first-degree burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, aggravated battery with serious bodily injury, elder abuse, threatening a public official, or family member, among others.
Paul Pelosi, who was the only one home when DePape broke in, called the police who arrived two minutes later to find the 82-year-old and DePape, 42, struggling over a hammer, according to a Department of Justice press release.
Officers told the men to drop the hammer. DePape then gained control of it and swung at Pelosi’s head, before he was arrested as Pelosi lay unconscious on the ground, San Francisco FBI special agent Stephanie Minor wrote in a request for a federal criminal complaint and arrest warrant.
Pelosi is pictured above leaving her San Francisco home on Sunday as her husband recovers in the ICU from a skull fracture
Paul Pelosi Jr., son of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and Paul Pelosi, walks outside his parent’s home in San Francisco, Saturday, one day after the attack
Pelosi had been asleep when DePape entered his bedroom and demanded to talk to ‘Nancy.’
‘Where’s Nancy?’ he asked.
Nancy Pelosi, who gets a security detail, was in Washington, D.C. at the time of the attack.
Pelosi told the intruder his wife was not there and would not be there for several days, and DePape said he would wait. Pelosi was somehow able to get into the bathroom while he called 911.
DePape told investigators he wanted to hold Nancy Pelosi captive and talk to her. He said that if the speaker told ‘the truth’ he would let her go, and if she ‘lied’ he would ‘break her kneecaps.’
‘She would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other Members of Congress there were consequences to actions,’ he explained.
DePape also explained that he broke into the house through a glass door using the hammer.
Pelosi now remains in the intensive care unit recovering from a skull fracture surrounded by family members.
When cops arrived at the exclusive property (pictured), they said they saw DePape assaulting Pelosi with a hammer
Gypsy Taub (right, pictured with DePape in 2013) was accused of sending messages to a former friend of her son, telling the minor that she wanted to date him and trying to lure him to meet with her secretly
Nancy was in Washington, DC at the time her husband was attacked
Following his attack on Pelosi, DePape has been accused by his daughter of sexually assaulting his three children when they were kids.
The nudist longtime ex-partner of DePape revealed in an interview from jail that he had been ‘mentally ill for a long time’ and had paranoid delusions.
Oxane ‘Gypsy’ Taub, 53, who was convicted in 2021 for trying to kidnap a 14-year-old boy, is also a longtime nudist activist. She says during her two decades with DePape she saw him transform following a disappearance of more than a year.
‘He came back in very bad shape. He thought he was Jesus. He was constantly paranoid, thinking people were after him,’ Taub told Bay area affiliate ABC 7 in a phone call from prison. ‘And it took a good year or two to get back to, you know, being halfway normal.’
‘He is mentally ill. He has been mentally ill for a long time,’ she said from the Californian Institution for Women in Corona, California, where she is serving time. The two previously lived together in Berkeley.
Taub says she first met DePape two decades ago when he had political views like her own, although the ‘hemp jewelry maker’s’ more recent postings have contain anti-Semitic themes and QAnon conspiracies as well as election fraud claims.
‘Well when I met him, he was only 20 years old, and he didn’t have any experience in politics, and he was very much in alignment with my views and I’ve always been very progressive. I absolutely admire Nancy Pelosi,’ said Taub.
The couple raised two sons and a daughter, and split seven years ago, she said.
Taub described herself as the ‘ex-life partner of David DePape and the mother of his children.’
DePape was also found to have run the website frenlyfrens.com, where he discussed how he had an invisible fairy friend that sometimes appeared to him in the form of a bird and shared images of Hillary Clinton as a zombie.
During one post he even ranted about not being able to buy a fairy house with a working door.
Many of his posts were filled with tirades against Jewish people, black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people, under categories such as ‘Trannies,’ ‘Da Jewbs’ and ‘Great Reset.’
DePape created his blog just months before the attack, registering it in August.
His very first post on the now-deleted site was entitled Mary Poppins, amid Disney World’s dispute with Florida Gov Ron DeSantis over his so-called Don’t Say Gay bill.
It included a video depicting a SWAT team firing at the magical nanny.
In the months since, he filled the blog with hundreds of posts depicting anti-Semitic and dystopian images.
One such post featured the Devil kneeling and asking a caricature of a Jewish person to teach him the arts of ‘lying, deception cheating and incitement.’
Several others contained images of rotting human flesh and blood, including zombified versions of Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton as he promoted his far-right conspiracy theories.
By late August, DePape seemed to become engrossed in Twitter’s decision to ban Jordan Peterson for his posts about transgender people after the Canadian psychologist compared being transgender to ‘satanic ritual abuse.’
More recently, amid backlash to rapper Kanye West’s tweet declaring war on the Jewish people, DePape posted: ‘We are ALL the Jews’ slave race.
In just the past month alone, DePape had published hundreds of blog posts promoting far-right conspiracy theories before he allegedly broke into Pelosi’s home, the Boston Globe reports.
In recent weeks, after Kanye West faced backlash for a tweet declaring war on the Jews, DePape shared his own anti-Semitic views on his blog
DePape was also active on 4chan, posting memes and debating other anonymous users about his beliefs.
In an October 24 post on the website, DePape complained he was being targeted by law enforcement officials he described as ‘paid shills’ trying to manipulate the message board.
‘I would come in and lay out the facts, and so all the paid shills would jump on me,’ he wrote. ‘To try and suppress it.’
DePape would also share some photos from a construction site he worked at, one highlighting a jackhammer with the number 33 on it, an apparent reference to a conspiracy theory about Free Masons and world domination.
But other posts on his blog seemed to be more personal, offering a glance into his delusions.
DePape wrote in recent months how he was becoming suicidal as his relationship with Taub was falling apart.
‘I was extremely suicidal,’ he posted four days before the attack, writing in an apparent letter to Inti Gonzalez, who has identified DePape as her father: ‘Mentally I would beg you guys daily to let me kill myself.’
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