The Department of Justice (DOJ) is seeking a 40-year prison sentence for David DePape, the man convicted of attacking now-former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) husband in October 2022.
Federal prosecutors said Friday that the sentence would “reflect the nature and circumstances of the offense,” USA Today reported on Saturday.
When the initial incident happened at the Pelosi residence in San Francisco, California, police were dispatched to the scene and later said DePape attacked Pelosi’s husband, Paul, with a hammer, Breitbart News noted.
Body camera footage of the incident shows the attack on Paul Pelosi; his call to 911 was also made public, Breitbart reported in January 2023.
Jurors later convicted DePape of assault for the attack on the elderly man, whose skull he fractured, according to an AFP report from November.
“He was also found guilty of attempting to kidnap Nancy Pelosi, the then-speaker of the House of Representatives, who was not at home at the time,” the report continued:
At the time of the October 2022 attack, Democrat Nancy Pelosi was second in line to the presidency and a regular target of 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.”
In January 2023, DePape told a local television station via a jailhouse phone call that he was sorry he did not attack more Democrats, adding, “I should have come better prepared,” according to Breitbart News.
The report noted, “In the wake of the attack, Democrats and the media attempted to blame Donald Trump and his ‘MAGA’ supporters for the brutal assault. However, associates of DePape described him as mentally ill.”
DePape, a Canadian, also lived in a hippie commune in Berkeley while allegedly residing in the United States illegally.
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