The husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been violently assaulted with a hammer after a break-in at the couple's California house.
Paul Pelosi, 82, was left hospitalised following the attack at their £4.4million San Francisco home during the early hours of Friday morning.
The intruder, 42-year-old David Depape, was carrying a hammer when he reportedly confronted the speaker's husband as he stormed into the couple's home and shouted "where is Nancy, where is Nancy?".
“Early this morning, an assailant broke into the Pelosi residence in San Francisco and violently assaulted Mr Pelosi,” spokesman Drew Hammill said in a statement.
“The assailant is in custody and the motive for the attack is under investigation" it continued.
The 82-year-old is in a hospital in San Francisco and is expected to make a full recovery.
Nancy Pelosi, who is second in line to the U.S. presidency, was not at home at the time of the early morning assault.
“The Speaker and her family are grateful to the first responders and medical professionals involved, and request privacy at this time,” the statement concluded.
Mr Pelosi owns a real estate and venture capital firm.
It is not the first time Pelosi’s home has been targeted. In January of last year, their Pacific Heights home was vandalised overnight with a pig's head surrounded in a pool of red paint, as well as a spray-painted message.
Also, a North Carolina man, Cleveland Meredith, was sentenced last December to 28 months in prison after pleading guilty to threatening to shoot Pelosi.
Meredith, 53, had travelled to Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, planning to attend rallies on that day, but didn’t arrive until the evening, when the pro-Trump riot at the U.S. Capitol had been tamped down.
Another man, Steven Martis, 77, of Arizona, was sentenced in February to 21 months behind bars for threatening to kill Pelosi in messages to her Washington DC office.
The attack on Mr Pelosi comes as the US Capitol Police record a drastic rise in threat cases - a 144 per cent increase from 2017 to 2021, according to the department.
The news comes as Ms Pelosi said former President Donald Trump is not "man enough to show up" to testify on January 6.
The House speaker provoked the former president over the subpoena that was served on Friday and sent a firm order for him to testify under oath before the committee investigating the Capitol attacks in January.
“I don’t think his lawyers will want him to show up because he has to testify under oath. We’ll see if he’s man enough to show up,” Pelosi said in an interview to MSNBC.
