Paul Pelosi attack: Court hears DePape was on ‘suicide mission’ as Megyn Kelly raises conspiracies

Paul Pelosi, 82, is reportedly still recovering from a brutal assault that left him with a fractured skull in the hospital’s ICU.

NBC News confirmed that the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi remains in the intensive care unit and is surrounded by family members.

David DePape, the 42-year-old man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer, is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday over the assault.

Mr DePape is facing charges of attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, burglary and other felonies over the Friday attack on the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Charges against the 42-year-old man were expected to be officially filed on Monday afternoon.

He is also facing federal charges for assault on the immediate family member of a federal official and attempted kidnapping of a federal official.

A wide range of GOP reactions to the violent assault of Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in their home is showing the deep fractures that remain throughout the Republican Party.

Adding to the issue’s complexity is new reporting suggesting that the suspect involved in the attack was a follower of right-wing conspiracy theories, leading many who spread and embrace similar fantasies to reject the incident as a hoax or “false flag” event.

In Washington, congressional leaders responded with the typical shock and outrage that you’d expect members of the House and Senate to show after a violent attack that clearly targeted one of their own.

“Horrified and disgusted by the reports that Paul Pelosi was assaulted in his and Speaker Pelosi’s home last night,” tweeted Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell on Friday.

John Bowden has more of the reactions to the attack, or lack thereof, from inside Washington DC here.

Brooke Jenkins, the district attorney for San Francisco, has held a news conference to reveal charges against David DePape over the brutal attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the House Speaker.

DePape is charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse, residential burglary, false imprisonment and threatening the life/bodily harm of a public official He is in custody and is expected to be indicted on Tuesday morning.

Earlier he was federally charged with assault and attempted kidnapping.

Elon Musk shared a lurid, baseless conspiracy theory on Twitter about what transpired the night of the violent hammer attack on Paul Pelosi – just days after he took over the social media platform on the promise of stripping away content moderation.

“There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye,” he wrote, while sharing a link to an article that claimed – without any evidence – that Mr Pelosi was drunk and met his alleged attacker in a gay bar.

But, by early afternoon on Sunday, Mr Musk appeared to have had a change of heart and had taken the tweet down.

Rachel Sharp has the full report here.

The San Francisco District Attorney called for political rhetoric to be toned down as she announced charges against David DePape for the alleged attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

Brooke Jenkins demanded greater civility in US politics as she announced state charges against the suspect for his alleged brutal hammer attack on Paul Pelosi at the couple’s home in the city.

Donald Trump Jr was celebrated by the far right, and condemned everywhere else, for sharing a meme that made light of the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

The self-described “general in meme wars” shared the controversial post to his personal Instagram account on Sunday night, just two days after Paul Pelosi, 82, was forced to undergo surgery after being attacked at the couple’s San Francisco home by a hammer-wielding intruder.

The meme shared by Mr Trump included the picture of a pair of Hanes underwear alongside a hammer, with the caption that read: “Got my Paul Pelosi Halloween costume ready.”

Read the full report from The Independent below.

Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has blasted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy for saying “nothing” in the wake of the violent hammer attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband.

Taking to Twitter, the New York congresswoman wrote over the weekend: “Last year, a GOP Congressman shared a depiction of himself killing me. When the House rose to censure, @GOPLeader defended him.”

“Yesterday, a man sharing that member’s rhetoric tried to assassinate the Speaker and her spouse. What has @GOPLeader said? Nothing. This is who he is,” she tweeted.

By Monday, the Democratic lawmaker had further voiced her concerns about the response to the attack against the House Speaker’s husband by retweeting a video from NBC News reporter Ben Collins, where he discussed Elon Musk’s conspiracy theory tweet and the alt-right community that appear to be promoting and amplifying those views.

Sen Ted Cruz seemed to be amplifying misinformation about the man suspected of attacking Nancy Pelosi’s husband after he’d earlier condemned the incident as “horrific”.

On Friday, hours after learning that Paul Pelosi, 82, had been “violently assaulted” in the San Francisco home that he shares with the House speaker, who was in Washington DC at the time of the attack, the Texas senator tweeted out a message that said he and his wife Heidi were praying for the Pelosi family.

“We can have our political differences, but violence is always wrong and unacceptable,” he tweeted on Friday.

The Republican lawmaker then made an about-face on those earlier sympathies extended to his Democratic colleague, as by Monday he began posting tweets from unreliable sources that seemed to promote falsehoods and innuendo about the suspected attacker, 42-year-old David DePape.

In one of the posts, Sen Cruz had reshared a screenshot from alt-right activist Matt Walsh, in which he pushed back against the information that has been widely reported from reliable news outlets that Mr DePape had recently become engaged in posting on far-right political blogs.

Read the full report from The Independent here.

David DePape, the man suspected of attacking Nancy Pelosi’s husband, was “mentally ill for a long time” before the assault, his former partner alleged.

Mr DePape, 42, was arrested on Friday at the House speaker home where he and Paul Pelosi were seen fighting over a hammer by officers who had responded to the 911 call.

Gypsy Taub, who claims to be Mr DePape’s former partner, spoke out about the attack in an interview with ABC7.

Taub discussed an incident that occurred one time while they were together during which Mr DePape disappeared for a year and when he returned, was not the same person.

“He came back in very bad shape. He thought he was Jesus. He was constantly paranoid, thinking people were after him,” Taub said. “And it took a good year or two to get back to, you know, being halfway normal.”

When pressed by the news outlet about his past political affiliations, Taub relayed that he’d always aligned with her own persuasions which fell on the progressive side of the spectrum.

“Well when I met him, he was only 20 years old and he didn’t have any experience in politics,” said the former partner of Mr DePape, noting that “he was very much in alignment with my views and I’ve always been very progressive.”

“I absolutely admire Nancy Pelosi,” she added, before sending a message to the House speaker and her family that she would like to “express my deepest apology to Nancy Pelosi and her husband for the terrible tragic thing that happened.”

Johanna Chisholm has more details below.