Man who attacked Nancy Pelosi's husband faces life in prison after kidnapping conviction

Body-worn camera footage appears to show David DePape and Paul Pelosi seconds before DePape attacks Pelosi with a hammer (via Law&Crime Network).

David DePape, 44, the conspiracy theorist who injured former House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul, 84, in a bloody hammer attack, was convicted Friday in a California state court. Charges include aggravated kidnapping, which requires a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole, according to The Associated Press .

Defense lawyer Adam Lipson argued that prosecutors did not prove, under the law, that his client intended on kidnapping Paul Pelosi “to exact from another person money or something valuable.” Assistant District Attorney Phoebe Maffei pointed at DePape’s motive: to hold hostage Nancy Pelosi, a top congressional Democrat and former House speaker, and to get her to confess to what he believed to be her lies about the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. His plan was to record this and put it on the internet. Such footage would have “inherent value,” the prosecution argued.

DePape made no secret of his plans. He was already convicted and sentenced to 30 years in prison for federal charges in the case. At that federal trial, he admitted that he intended to break Nancy Pelosi’s kneecaps and hold her hostage, and he confessed during trial to battering Paul Pelosi with the hammer after police arrived at the house during the Oct. 28, 2022, invasion. He was resentenced in a May 28 hearing because he was not allowed a chance to address the court in the original hearing.

Among other injuries, Paul Pelosi sustained a skull fracture, requiring plates and screws.

Attached to a supplemental memorandum filed before U.S. District Judge Jacqueline Corley delivered DePape his original sentence, former Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi emphasized how terrifying the ordeal was for her family and how DePape’s calls of “Where’s Nancy” on the day of her husband’s assault were “echoing the January 6th threats” that once “filled me with great fear and deep pain.”

Despite Paul Pelosi’s “courageous efforts” to save his own life, whether it was by trying to escape down an elevator, calling the police or then asking DePape to go outside, Nancy Pelosi told the court, nonetheless, her husband had nearly been killed and 18 months after the attack, the signs of DePape’s invasion were still “impossible to avoid” in their home.

“Our home remains a heartbreaking crime scene,” Pelosi wrote in the May 17 letter.

The former longtime House Speaker said her husband still suffers from dizziness, fainting spells and regular bruising because now he falls down more often.

Notably, she told the judge she and her husband do not speak of the night of the attack.

“Paul doesn’t want to undergo revisiting it and the doctors’ advice is that discussing the vicious assault would only renew his trauma,” she added.

A fear of a copycat attack is still palpable for her, she said.

DePape was an adherent to the QAnon conspiracy theory and his defense attorneys relied on his being swept up in that as cause for leniency at sentencing and sympathy from jurors.

Brandi Buchman contributed to this report.

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