Paul Pelosi attacker David DePape sentenced to 30 years in prison
David DePape was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison Friday for breaking into former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and bludgeoning her husband, Paul Pelosi, with a hammer.
DePape, 44, was convicted of breaking into the Pelosi’s San Francisco home in Pacific Heights and carrying out the bloody attack on the then-82-year-old on Oct. 28, 2022 in November last year.
The federal Department of Justice had asked for a 40 year prison term on charges of attempted kidnapping of a federal officer or employee and assault of an immediate family member of a federal official for DePape.
Prosecutors wrote in court documents: “There is nothing about the history and characteristics of the defendant that warrant leniency. The defendant has admitted — indeed bragged — that he knew what he was doing,” according to local news station KRON.
In a letter to court revealed Friday, Nancy Pelosi requested a “very long” sentence for the attacker, and added the attack had left her with “great fear and deep pain.”
Paul Pelosi also wrote a letter to court ahead of the sentencing in which he detailed how he is still badly affected by the attack.
He wrote: “The defendant severely damaged the nerves in my left hand. My forehand was ‘de-gloved’ exposing raw nerves and blood vessels.
“Surgeries and treatments mostly healed the skin, but underneath I still feel pinched nerves in my left hand. This makes basic tasks like using buttons, cutlery and simple tools more difficult,” according to CBS.
Paul also said he walks slowly, has difficulty with balance, gets terrible headaches and for a long time had trouble sleeping alone at home because he because “kept remembering the defendant breaking into my house.”
DePape’s attorneys requested a 14-year prison sentence, citing their client’s “abusive, long-term relationship with a partner who exploited his innate vulnerabilities and immersed him in a world of extreme beliefs where reality is not reality.”
The brutal assault was captured on police bodycam after Paul was able to raise the alarm and summon the police during the bizarre incident, which took place just days before the midterm elections and sent shockwaves through the political world.
The congresswoman’s husband was left with a fractured skull and other serious injuries.
DePape — who had immersed himself in internet conspiracy theories — later admitted to police he was there to try to kidnap then House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
Paul Pelosi testified at DePape’s trial he had been awakened by the man bursting into the bedroom and asking, “Where’s Nancy?” When he responded that she was in Washington, DePape said he would tie him up while they waited for her.
“It was a tremendous sense of shock to recognize that somebody had broken into the house, and looking at him and looking at the hammer and the ties, I recognized that I was in serious danger, so I tried to stay as calm as possible,” Pelosi told jurors.
DePape, who took the stand during the week-long trial, tearfully apologized for harming Paul Pelosi.
“He was never my target and I’m sorry he got hurt,” DePape said.
“I reacted because my plan was basically ruined.”
Instead, DePape said, he planned to get the former Speaker and other famous “targets” to admit to being members of what he believed was a a cabal of Satan-worshiping Democrat elites who run a global pedophile sex ring — completley unfounded theories he had absorbed from the fringes of the internet.
DePape told investigators that if Nancy Pelosi told “the truth”, he planned to “let her go, and if she “lied” he was going to “break her kneecaps,” according to the criminal complaint against him.
DePape also told jurors he had planned to wear an inflatable unicorn costume and record his interrogation of the Democratic speaker, then upload it online.
Prosecutors said he had rope and zip ties with him, and detectives found body cameras, a computer and a tablet, which included a list of other prominent figures whom he had planned to target.
DePape is also charged in state court with assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and residential burglary, among other felonies. Jury selection for the state case is expected on May 22.
