(Ken Silva, Headline USA) David DePape, who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband with a hammer last year, is a drug-addicted, mentally ill homeless man once associated with a nudist cult.
He also allegedly sexually abused his children, to boot.
But according to DePape’s defense attorney, it was his purported belief in “conspiracy theories” that motivated his attack on Paul Pelosi.
Defense attorney Jodi Linker said Thursday, at the beginning of DePape’s federal trial, that she won’t dispute that her client attacked Pelosi, an encounter caught on police body camera video. Instead, she will argue that he believed “with every ounce of his being” that he was taking action to stop government corruption and the abuse of children by politicians and actors.
“This is not a ‘whodunit.’ But what the government fails to acknowledge is the ‘whydunit,’ and the why matters in this case,” she said.
“These beliefs matter because both charges require that the government prove that Mr. DePape acted because of her performance of her official duties as a member of Congress,” Linker added.
DePape’s defense fits the narrative spread by mainstream media, which has focused on the defendant’s purported belief in the “right-wing QAnon conspiracy theory that claims the U.S. government is run by a cabal of devil-worshipping pedophiles”—as stated by the Associated Press.
Those same mainstream reports have largely ignored DePape’s past association with the so-called Castro Nudists cult—a name derives from San Francisco’s well-known gay district and not from the late communist Cuban dictator.
They’ve also ignored that his stepdaughter, Inti Gonzalez, accused him of abusing the two sons in a Facebook post and a post on her now-deleted blog.
As New York Post journalist Miranda Devine said in January—when police body cam footage of the attack was released—DePape’s supposed beliefs in conspiracies should be disregarded for the “real story.”
“The real story was that Democrat-run cities are now so overrun with the drug addicted, mentally ill and criminals that even the husband of Speaker Pelosi is not safe in his own bed,” she said. “Instead, we got silly theories from the right and fake claims from the left that a Trumpist did it.”
DePape faces federal charges of assaulting an immediate family member of a federal official and attempted kidnapping of a federal officer. The charges carry 30- and 2-year prison sentences, respectively.
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
