Paul Pelosi’s son says his father appears to be responding to treatment after he was brutally assaulted with a hammer during a home invasion.
“They are rebuilding him slowly,” Paul Pelosi Jr told reporters outside the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center on Sunday evening, according tothe New York Post.
Mr Pelosi Sr, 82, suffered a fractured skull when a man armed with a hammer broke into the San Francisco home he shares with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi early on Friday morning.
Suspect David DePape, 42, reportedly shouted “where’s Nancy” and allegedly attempted to restrain Mr Pelosi with zip ties and wait for Ms Pelosi to return home.
Police say the elder Mr Pelosi secretly called 911 and officers arrived at the home to find him struggling with the hammer, before Mr DePape allegedly struck him several times over the head.
Mr Pelosi had a “successful surgery” to repair his fractured skull on Friday, the House Speaker’s spokesman Drew Hamill said in a statement.
Prosecutors in San Francisco are expected to announce charges of attempted murder, assault and elder abuse on Monday.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins told ABC7 that Ms Pelosi was the target of the attack, and that the suspect could face additional federal charges.
Elon Musk, Donald Trump Jr and Republican-aligned commentators have spread baseless conspiracy theories about the attack.
Mr Musk tweeted a link to an unfounded rumour that Mr Pelosi might have known the intruder through his personal life, days after taking control of Twitter.
And the former president’s son posted a photo of a hammer and a pair of underpants, which critics decried as “dangerous” and “homophobic”.
Ms Pelosi wrote in a letter to her House colleagues that she and her family were “heartbroken and traumatised by the life-threatening attack on our Pop”.
