A federal choose on Friday sentenced David DePape to 30 years in jail, six months after a jury discovered him responsible of making an attempt to kidnap former U.S. Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi and utilizing a hammer to bludgeon her husband in a bloody October 2022 assault.
Decide Jacqueline Scott Corley delivered her choice throughout a listening to on the U.S. District Court docket for the Northern District of California, reprimanding DePape at size and saying she believed he continued to pose a hazard to the general public and “all Americans.”
“He broke into the home of that public official, he broke into that private space of home and violently attacked a public official’s spouse,” Scott Corley mentioned. “What that means and why this now is so harmful to everyone in the country and the future, is that when someone is considering now whether they want to go into public service, they have to think not only am I willing to take that risk myself, but am I willing to risk my spouse, my children, my grandchildren.”
DePape, wearing an orange jail sweatsuit and sporting ankle restraints, didn’t outwardly react as his sentence was learn.
The sentencing caps a federal trial that captivated the nation and raised chilling questions concerning the security of public officers amid heightened political extremism and the proliferation of on-line venues that give traction to baseless fanatical conspiracy theories.
In letters to the choose that their daughter, Christine Pelosi, learn in court docket, each Nancy and Paul Pelosi requested the choose to impose prolonged sentences.
In her letter, Nancy Pelosi mentioned her husband continues to endure bodily and emotionally from the assault, and that the violent incident “has had a devastating effect on three generations of our family.”
“It is therefore necessary that the guilty party’s sentence be very long as a punishment for the attack and the injuries Paul continues to suffer — and as a deterrent to others considering violence against public officials,” the previous speaker wrote.
Paul Pelosi mentioned his life “has been irrevocably changed,” and that he hasn’t absolutely recovered. He famous {that a} blood stain on the entrance entryway and the metallic plate now embedded in his head function enduring reminders of the assault.
Federal prosecutors had requested a 40-year federal jail time period with a terrorism enhancement, arguing that DePape has demonstrated no regret and {that a} powerful sentence would function a deterrent to different would-be assailants motivated by ideological extremism.
“At a time when extremism has led to attacks on public and elected officials, this case presents a moment to speak to others harboring ideologically motivated violent dreams and plans,” Assistant U.S. Attys. Helen Gilbert and Laura Vartain Horn wrote in a Could 10 submitting.
DePape confronted a mixed 50 years in federal jail: 30 years on the assault cost and 20 years for the tried kidnapping. Scott Corley sentenced him to the utmost time period on each counts, however to be served concurrently for a complete of 30 years. He’ll get credit score for the roughly 18 months he has spent in state custody.
DePape, 44, was accused of touring from his Richmond residence to the Pelosis’ Pacific Heights dwelling within the early morning hours of Oct. 28, 2022, with plans to carry the lawmaker hostage and interrogate her relating to unfounded claims fueled by far-right conspiracy theorists of corruption, human trafficking and little one abuse by Democrats and different public figures.
DePape broke into the house, however as a substitute of discovering Nancy Pelosi, who was in Washington on the time, he stumbled throughout the bed room the place her husband was sleeping.
“The door opened and a very large man came in, with a hammer in one hand and some ties in the other hand,” Paul Pelosi testified. “And he said, ‘Where’s Nancy?’ And I think that’s what woke me up.”
He was in a position to get to his cellphone and dial 911. When the police arrived, the 2 males had been struggling over DePape’s hammer. The prosecutors confirmed jurors graphic police body-camera video of DePape bludgeoning Paul Pelosi, then 82, fracturing his cranium and severely injuring his proper arm and left hand.
Nonetheless-pending state fees accuse DePape of tried homicide, assault with a lethal weapon, elder abuse, housebreaking and threats to a public official and her household. In distinction, the federal trial centered on whether or not DePape’s actions that morning had been indelibly tied to Speaker Pelosi’s official duties in Congress.
In making their case, federal prosecutors supplied jurors an in depth evaluate of DePape’s on-line purchases and search historical past to display how he spent months getting ready for the assault. Jurors heard parts of a police interview wherein DePape mentioned he thought of Speaker Pelosi the Democrats’ “leader of the pack” and that he would “break her kneecaps” if she didn’t admit to corruption and different claims of human trafficking and little one abuse.
DePape’s federal public defenders, Jodi Linker and Angela Chuang, had urged the choose to think about a extra lenient 14-year sentence, arguing their shopper suffers from psychological well being points and trauma from an abusive relationship with Gypsy Taub, his former romantic companion and the mom of his kids.
Linker and Chuang by no means disputed that their shopper dedicated the violence. They as a substitute tried to persuade the jury that DePape was motivated by elaborate conspiracy theories that had been nonetheless his deeply held beliefs.
They referenced assist letters from household and buddies describing the crimes as “completely out of character.”
“David was never violent when he was young, and I am sorry that this has happened,” DePape’s stepfather, Gene DePape, wrote in a press release to The Occasions. “I am very sorry to Paul and Nancy.”
The attorneys primarily based a lot of their request for leniency on the affect of Taub, a Bay Space nudism activist who not too long ago served time in state jail for making an attempt to abduct a 14-year-old boy in Berkeley. They maintained Taub remoted DePape from his household and “immersed him in a world of extreme beliefs where reality is not reality.”
“His long-term relationship with his ex-partner, Gypsy Taub, inflicted immeasurable harm to his mental state and what little support network he had in the form of his family,” DePape’s attorneys wrote in a Could 10 sentencing memo.
David DePape with Gypsy Taub at her nude wedding ceremony on the steps of San Francisco Metropolis Corridor in 2013.
(San Francisco Chronicle through Getty Pictures)
Chuang reiterated that argument throughout the sentencing listening to, saying DePape was “gaslit, abused and he was very intentionally cut off from his family,” whereas Taub watched quietly from a court docket bench.
In a recorded audio assertion she despatched The Occasions this week, Taub dismissed the attorneys’ allegations of abuse, saying: “I love David. I will always love him, regardless of what he does or says.”
“He’s an incredibly beautiful human being. But he’s very broken,” Taub mentioned.
Throughout an interview with The Occasions earlier than DePape’s trial in her cluttered, eclectic Berkeley dwelling, Taub espoused various conspiracy theories, utilizing phrasing almost equivalent to what DePape shared in his testimony, together with her perception that the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist assaults had been actually “an inside job” and that authorities has been corrupted by satanic cults that prey on kids.
On the time, she was adamant DePape had been falsely accused within the Pelosi assault, describing him as candy and delicate. He was such a pleasant particular person, she mentioned, that even after she married one other man, she allowed DePape to maintain residing in her dwelling and supported him financially.
In a single video Taub shared from greater than a decade in the past, she and DePape are nude, discussing his current expertise with psychedelics at a Burning Man competition within the Nevada desert.
“What is your dream for the planet?” Taub requested.
“I’d really like there to be peace,” he responded.
“And if the whole world could hear you right now, what would be your message to the world?” she requested.
“God is love. God is loving,” he mentioned. “And this is an illusion.”
