A man who attacked with a hammer the husband of Nancy Pelosi, the former Democratic leader of the United States House of Representatives, was sentenced Friday in San Francisco to 30 years in prison.
David DePape was convicted at the end of 2023 of entering the couple’s home in San Francisco in October 2022 and fracturing Paul Pelosi’s skull.
Nancy Pelosi was at the time the third-ranking figure in the state as Speaker of the House of Representatives and was regularly the target of conspiracy theories fueled by the far right.
The trial showed how Mr. DePape, an illegal Canadian carpenter with a solitary lifestyle, was immersed in a world poisoned by disinformation before taking action.
If he initially wanted to attack the parliamentarian, Nancy Pelosi was in Washington that day and not at her home in San Francisco.
Ahead of Friday’s hearing, Nancy Pelosi asked the judge to impose “a very long” sentence for this attack “which had devastating effects on three generations” of her family.
“Even today, 18 months after the intrusion and attack, the traces of blood and break-in are impossible to avoid,” she said in court documents cited by the San Francisco Chronicle daily.
During his trial, the 43-year-old man recounted — sometimes in tears — how he became an avid listener of far-right podcasts.
“Breaking the kneecaps”
On social networks, he notably shared publications claiming that American elites were corrupt and engaged in pedophilia, or that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump.
On the day of the attack, he broke into the Pelosi couple’s home in San Francisco with rope, gloves and duct tape.
He admitted to investigators that he planned to “break the kneecaps” of the elected official if she did not admit to the “lies” of the Democratic camp.
Paul Pelosi had managed to alert the police, who intervened at the last minute. The attack was filmed by the officers’ body-worn camera.
Occurring a few days before the midterm elections, the affair illustrated the seriousness of the effects of disinformation in the campaign, as well as the deep divisions in America.
Some members of the Republican Party had mocked the attack or expressed some skepticism despite the images.
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After this sentence pronounced by the federal courts, David DePape must now be tried by the Californian courts.
