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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced Thursday she will scale back her role in Congress following last month’s brutal hammer attack on her husband, Paul Pelosi.
A trove of court documents released by prosecutors in San Francisco has shed more light on the suspect and the assault.
Questions still remain, however, about the lack of security for the home of the person second in line to succeed the president and the suspect’s motivations.
The suspect
Federal prosecutors have charged David DePape, 42, with a slew of charges related to the break-in and hammer attack at Mrs. Pelosi’s home.
Mr. DePape has pleaded not guilty to one count of assaulting an immediate family member of a U.S. official and one count of attempting kidnapping of a U.S. official. If convicted on both charges, he could get up to 50 years in prison.
Social media posts linked to Mr. DePape, a pro-nudity activist and illegal immigrant, include rambling screeds promoting QAnon and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, rants against the COVID-19 vaccine, and claims insisting former President Trump won the 2020 election. He also lived in a Berkeley commune that flew Black Lives Matter and gay-pride flags.
However, authorities have not attributed an ideological motive for Mr. DePape’s purported actions.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said last week the attack was not a “random act of violence” or “random residential burglary.”
“This is something that was specifically targeted,” she said, without offering further explanation.
Court documents filed in the case say Mr. DePape told officers at the scene that he was sick of the “level of lies” coming from Washington, D.
