Megyn Kelly echoes conspiracies on Paul Pelosi attack: ‘I know enough to smell a rat’

Former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly is the latest prominent conservative like Donald Trump to allege some kind of conspiracy is afoot surrounding a break-in on Friday at the home of Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, where an armed assailant brutally beat Ms Pelosi’s husband Paul with a hammer.

During an episode of Ms Kelly’s SiriusXM podcast on Monday, she alleged details about the break-in that have been shared with the public are the work of a “rat” somewhere in the San Francisco police force.

“I’m not sure how that happened,” she said on her show. “How do you have police officers on site and an 82-year-old gets attacked with a hammer in front of you when you have a gun as a police officer?”

She agreed with her guest Arkansas GOP senator Tom Cotton, that the SFPD should release any footage they have of the incident, where officers say they arrived early on Friday morning and found Paul Pelosi and suspect David DePape struggling for control of a hammer.

“Let’s see it,” Kelly said. “Let’s see it all. I don’t know what went on. I know enough to smell a rat. There’s something going on here that they’re not telling us. I just don’t know what it is.”

The Independent has contacted the SFPD for comment.

An armed security detail protects Speaker Pelosi, but the Democratic leader and her team were away in Washington when the break-in attack occured in San Francisco.

SFPD chief Bill Scott said officers arrived at the Pelosi home in under five minutes after Mr Pelosi made a clandestine call to officers from inside a bathroom as Mr DePape waited outside.

The officers arrived at the front door of the home to find the two struggling over a hammer, believed to have been used to smash a back door and enter the residence.

“Officers, while still outside the doorway threshold, gave commands to both men to drop the hammer,” Mr Scott said at a news conference on Friday evening. “Mr DePape immediately pulled the hammer away from Mr Pelosi and violently attacked him with the hammer.”

Police then charged in, disarmed the man, and tackled him, according to the chief.

The US Capitol Police force is responsible for the security of Congress members and their family, and the agency is conducting a review of the case.

Capitol Police chief Thomas Manger said in a statement that the break-in was “an alarming reminder of the dangerous threats elected officials and public figures face during today’s contentious political climate” and said the department’s mission of protecting lawmakers has become “increasingly urgent” due to the “increasing number of threats against elected officials from city council members to federal judges”.

Many conservatives have spread conspiracies about the attack on Mr Pelosi, or even made light out of it.

Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake drew laughs from a crowd while joking about the attack and its relation to concerns over school shootings.

Donald Trump repeated a debunked conspiracy theory that the assailant hadn’t actually broken into the Pelosi home

Texas senator Ted Cruz, meanwhile, shared a post from a far-right commentator casting doubt that alleged attacked Mr DePape was motivated by right-wing ideology.

As The Independent has reported, Mr DePape left a trail of extremism online including Holocaust denial, anti-trans hate, antisemitism, racism, and QAnon theories.