Alleged Paul Pelosi Attacker Pleads Not Guilty
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The man who is accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacking her husband Paul Pelosi with a hammer pleaded not guilty to multiple charges on Tuesday.
David DePape, 42, is facing several charges, including attempted murder, residential burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder and threats to a public official’s family. The judge approved prosecutors’ motion to have DePape detained without bail.
DePape allegedly broke into the couple’s home early Friday morning, hoping to take Nancy Pelosi hostage. He arrived with zip ties and planned to break the speaker’s kneecaps with a hammer if she refused to tell the “truth” about Democrats’ “lies.” Instead, he found Paul Pelosi home alone and struck him in the head with a hammer, leaving the 82-year-old with a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hand.
While cameras monitored by the U.S. Capitol Police are installed around Pelosi’s home, no one was watching the live feed when DePape allegedly broke in, the Washington Post reported. Officers were monitoring live feeds from some 1,800 cameras that overlook the Capitol complex and beyond. It was not until local police arrived to the Pelosi home that a Capitol Police officer began watching the footage from San Francisco.
Video from the minutes before police arrived showed a man with a hammer breaking a glass panel and entering the home, according to the report.
Pelosi had traveled back to Washington, D.C., just hours earlier and much of her security left with her, including her around-the-clock security detail. The Capitol Police stopped continuously monitoring the video feeds from outside the San Francisco home.
Capitol Police Chief Tom Manger said in a statement to the paper on Tuesday that the country’s “political climate” will require “additional layers of physical security” despite the department having made improvements this year, including the hiring of 280 additional officers. He said the department will work to add “redundancies” to existing security measures for congressional leaders.
DePape, who has been described by an ex-girlfriend as a mentally ill drug addict, told authorities he was on a “suicide mission” to target other elected officials when he broke into the Pelosi home, according to prosecutors.
