David DePape was fueled by grievances against Hillary Clinton, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic Party and driven by the lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump when he smashed a hammer into the skull of Pelosi’s husband during a failed bid to kidnap the then-House speaker, a newly released recording shows.
DePape, 43, of Richmond, California, broke into Pelosi’s San Francisco home in October, and was arrested moments after he broke Paul Pelosi’s skull with a hammer in front of police responding to Paul Pelosi’s 911 call. A recording of DePape’s interrogation by a San Francisco police sergeant five hours after the incident was released Friday on the order of a state court judge, at the same time 911 tapes and body-camera recordings were given to the public.
In the interrogation recordings, DePape repeats many claims made by conspiracy-minded supporters of the QAnon movement and other fringe groups.
“It originates with Hillary,” DePape told the officer, referring to former secretary of state and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, before he focused on Nancy Pelosi, who was House speaker at the time. “Day in and day out, the person that was on the TV lying every day was Pelosi.”
He claimed that Democrats had been on a four-year “crime spree” against Trump, who lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. “They go from one crime to another crime to another crime and it’s like the whole (expletive) four years until they were finally able to steal the election,” DePape said. “It’s unacceptable.”
DePape told the officer he lived in a rented garage. He said he planned to hold Nancy Pelosi “hostage” and talk to her. “If she told the truth I’d let her go scot free,” he said. “If she (expletive) lied, I was going to break her kneecaps. DePape said he knew “without a doubt” she would lie.
DePape described his difficulty breaking into the home in San Francisco's upscale Pacific Heights neighborhood. Outdoor surveillance video also released Friday by San Francisco Superior Court shows him taking about 40 seconds to get inside, swinging a hammer furiously to smash the glass back-patio door before squeezing through. “That is like special glass,” DePape said. “I was actually getting pretty winded at that point.”
Once he was in, he found the house to be “huge and empty,” leading him to think, “What if they’re not even here?” he said, adding that he was surprised when he came upon Paul Pelosi, 82, in his bed. Nancy Pelosi was in Washington, D.C., at the time.
“I kind of told him, ‘I’m looking for Nancy Pelosi.’ He said, ‘She’s not here.’ ... He was like, ‘How can we resolve this?’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know,'” DePape said. “I’m like, ‘Honestly, can I tie you up? I just want to (expletive) go to sleep.'”
DePape told the officer he threw the hammer onto a stack of pillows and started taking out “twist ties” from his pocket, “so that I can restrain him, so I don’t have to worry about what he’s doing.”
Paul Pelosi then appeared to make a move, DePape said. “They have like an elevator, it might be a safe room ... he could go in there and escape ... and he could call for help,” DePape said. “So he darts into there, I go over, unarmed, and I’m like, ‘Don’t be doing this.'”
DePape described being in the bathroom with Pelosi when Pelosi called 911, but a transcript of the call, also released Friday, suggests Pelosi was on the phone for about 45 seconds before knocking is heard, and shortly after that, DePape’s voice comes onto the call.
DePape told the officer that by calling 911, Paul Pelosi was “pushing me into a corner where I have to do something.” After the three-minute call, Paul Pelosi was sitting on a bed. “I tell him really frankly ... I have other targets and I can’t be stopped by him, and if I have to go through him I will.”
He says Paul Pelosi then tried to “manipulate” him. In a falsetto, he mimicked Paul Pelosi saying, “Oh, no — the cops, they’re not doing anything.” In his own voice, DePape says, “There’s no way they got that (expletive) phone call and they’re not doing anything.”
Asked why he did not leave at that point, DePape invoked America’s “founding fathers,” saying, “They fought the British. They fought the tyranny, they didn’t just (expletive) surrender to it. When I left my house I went to fight tyranny, I did not leave to go surrender.”
Paul Pelosi, DePape said, wanted to go downstairs, so they did, DePape said. “At one point, I like, I reach over and I squeeze his shoulder, affectionately,” he said. “I just did it just to comfort him.”
Shortly after that, DePape spotted police lights through a window. “I told him, ‘The police are here.’ He tried to lie, he’s like, ‘Oh, no, no they’re not.’ I’m like, ‘Dude, that’s (expletive, expletive). I saw them.'”
Police knocked. When the door was opened — by whom is not clear — both men were holding the hammer with their right hands. “I think he grabs the hammer so that I don’t hit him in retaliation (for the police showing up),” DePape told the sergeant. “He thinks that I’ll just surrender. I didn’t come there to surrender. And I told (Paul Pelosi) that I will go through him. So I basically yanked it away from him and hit him. I’m there for the fight. If you stop me from going after evil you will take the punishment instead.”
The body-cam video shows that when DePape pulled the hammer from Paul Pelosi, Pelosi lurched backward, then DePape swung the hammer forward to deal a blow with what he told the sergeant was “full force.”
Pelosi required surgery for multiple skull fractures, and was hospitalized for close to a week. Nancy Pelosi on Friday told reporters that he was making progress “but it will take more time.”
Depape has been charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, and false imprisonment, plus other state felonies, as well as federal charges of attempted kidnapping of a federal officer and assault of an immediate family member of a federal official. A status conference for the case in U.S. District Court in San Francisco is scheduled for Feb. 8. His next hearing in the state case is set for Feb. 23.
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