A file photo of DePape, who bludgeoned Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer and was sentenced to 30 years in federal court, was also convicted Friday, June 21, 2024, of aggravated kidnapping by a state court which could put him behind bars for life.
| Photo Credit: AP

A man sentenced to 30 years in federal prison in the attack against former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband was convicted on Friday of aggravated kidnapping, a conviction that mandates life behind bars without the possibility of parole.

A San Francisco jury found David DePape also guilty of first-degree burglary, false imprisonment of an elder, threatening a family member of a public official and dissuading a witness.

The convictions on the additional charges in the state trial come weeks after a federal judge sentenced DePape, 44, for the 2022 attack against Paul Pelosi.

“Speaker Pelosi and her family remain in awe of their Pop’s bravery, which shone through again on the witness stand in this trial just as it did when he saved his own life on the night of the attack,” Pelosi’s office wrote in an emailed statement Friday. “For nearly 20 grueling months, Mr. Pelosi has demonstrated extraordinary courage and fortitude every day of his recovery.”

DePape’s public defender Adam Lipson said he was disappointed with the verdict and plans to appeal it. He called the prosecutors’ decision to file a kidnapping for ransom charge “vindictive.”

“It’s really unfortunate that it was charged this way. It was sort of a textbook vindictive prosecution,” Lipson said. “As soon as they found that the attempted murder charge was going to be dismissed, they added this charge.”

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said at a news conference Friday that all charges her office filed against DePape were based on the same evidence.

The jury was “able to find that he was guilty and so there’s no need for any accusations of vindictive prosecution,” she said. “We’re simply trying to do our jobs to make sure that he was held accountable for every act that occurred that night that was criminal.”

Lipson earlier argued that the state trial represents double jeopardy following the federal conviction. Even though the criminal counts are not the same, the two cases stem from the same act, he told the judge.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman agreed and dismissed the state charges of attempted murder, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon. Another judge upheld the decision on appeal.

Lipson said that the verdict means that after DePape serves 30 years in federal prison, he will be transferred to California “to spend the rest of his life in a California prison.”

Previously, a federal jury convicted DePape of assaulting a federal official’s family member and attempting to kidnap a federal official. On May 28, he was sentenced to 30 years in federal prison during an unusual resentencing hearing that resulted from judicial error.

Lipson focused his closing arguments on explaining to the jury that prosecutors did not prove DePape kidnapped Paul Pelosi, who was 82 at the time, with the intent “to exact from another person money or something valuable,” which is integral to the charge.

Assistant District Attorney Phoebe Maffei told the jury in her closing arguments that DePape had planned to record a video of his interrogation of Nancy Pelosi.

Lipson argued the video didn’t exist and if it did, it wouldn’t have had any value.

“When he broke into the Pelosis’ home his intent was to confront and potentially hurt and assault Nancy Pelosi. That was his intent at that time, that has nothing to do with Mr. Pelosi,” he said.

In her rebuttal, Maffei pointed out DePape told a detective and testified in federal court that he planned to get a video of Nancy Pelosi confessing to what he believed to be crimes and post it on the internet.

“There is inherent value in a video of the Speaker of the House confessing to crimes in her own home,” Maffei said.

The Oct. 28, 2022, attack on Paul Pelosi was captured on police body camera video just days before the midterm elections and shocked the political world. He suffered two head wounds including a skull fracture that was mended with plates and screws he will have for the rest of his life. His right arm and hand were also injured.

Accuused admits to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage

DePape admitted during his federal trial testimony that he planned to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage, record his interrogation of her, and “break her kneecaps” if she did not admit to the lies he said she told about “Russiagate,” a reference to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

Lipson told the jury during closing arguments that before the attack, DePape was living an isolated, lonely life and “went down the rabbit hole of propaganda and conspiracy theories.”

This week the judge expelled DePape’s former partner from the public gallery and the second floor of the San Francisco courthouse because the judge said she was trying to tamper with the jury.

On Monday and Tuesday, Gypsy Taub, a well-known activist in the Bay Area, handed out pieces of paper outside the courtroom with the address of a website she runs that promotes conspiracy theories. The cards were also found in a women’s bathroom near the courtroom, where the website’s address was scrawled in marker on a wall.

DePape’s federal public defender Angela Chaung said during his federal sentencing that DePape was first exposed to extreme beliefs by Taub, who has two sons with DePape.

Taub met DePape in Hawaii when he was 20 years old and she was in her 30s and pregnant, DePape’s twin sister, Joanne Robinson, said in a letter to the federal judge seeking leniency.

Robinson wrote that Taub isolated DePape from his family and inflicted “extreme psychological damage” on her brother.

San Francisco:

A man who attacked the elderly husband of former US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer was jailed Friday for 30 years.

David DePape was convicted last year of breaking into the couple’s San Francisco home and bludgeoning Paul Pelosi.

At the time of the October 2022 attack, Democrat Nancy Pelosi was second in line to the presidency and a regular target of outlandish far-right conspiracy theories.

Jurors heard how DePape — a Canadian former nudist activist who supported himself with occasional carpentry work — had initially planned to target Nancy Pelosi, planning to smash her kneecaps if she did not admit to her party’s “lies.”

On arriving at their home armed with rope, gloves and duct tape, DePape instead encountered her then-82-year-old husband, and kept asking, “Where’s Nancy?”

During what DePape told officers was a “pretty amicable” conversation with Paul Pelosi, the husband managed to call for help from law enforcement officers.

But moments later, in scenes captured by police bodycam, DePape hit Pelosi with a hammer before officers rushed at him and took the weapon away.

Pelosi was knocked unconscious and had his skull fractured. He spent almost a week in a hospital, where he underwent surgery.

Nancy Pelosi was not at home the night of the attack.

Prosecutors had asked the federal court in San Francisco to sentence DePape to 40 years in prison.

In the lead up to Friday’s sentencing, Nancy Pelosi had asked the judge to impose a “very long” sentence for an attack that “has had a devastating effect on three generations of our family.”  

“Even now, eighteen months after the home invasion and assault, the signs of blood and break-in are impossible to avoid.

“Our home remains a heartbreaking crime scene,” she wrote, according to court documents cited by the San Francisco Chronicle.

On Friday her office said the family was proud of Paul Pelosi “and his tremendous courage in saving his own life on the night of the attack and in testifying in this case.”

– Politicized–

DePape had pleaded not guilty to the charges.

While not denying the attack, his defense rested on contesting federal prosecutors’ claims that he had targeted Nancy Pelosi in her capacity as a federal official — a key factor in their charges.

Instead, his lawyers argued that DePape was driven to target a number of prominent liberal figures, due to his exposure to a web of obscure conspiracy theories.

In social media posts, DePape shared QAnon theories and false claims that the last US election was stolen.

The trial heard how DePape did not intend to stop his supposed anti-corruption crusade with Pelosi, and had drawn up a list of other targets including a feminist academic whom he accused of turning US schools into “pedophile molestation factories.”

Other personalities the defendant admitted wanting to attack included California Governor Gavin Newsom, President Joe Biden’s son Hunter, and actor Tom Hanks.

Jurors took less than 10 hours to reject DePape’s explanation of the attack, which took place just a few days before the US midterm elections.

The attack itself became politicized in the weeks after it occurred, with some members of the Republican Party mocking the incident and suggesting lurid and unsubstantiated explanations for why there was a man in Pelosi’s house late at night.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)