David DePape: The man who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer, is a nudist far-right conspiracy theorist
The person accused of breaking into Residence Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California house and severely beating her spouse with a hammer appears to have created racist and usually rambling posts on the internet, including some that questioned the benefits of the 2020 election, defended previous President Donald Trump and echoed QAnon conspiracy theories.
David DePape, 42, grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, in advance of leaving about 20 several years ago to comply with an older girlfriend to San Francisco. A avenue deal with shown for DePape in the Bay Space college or university town of Berkeley led to a write-up office environment box at a UPS Retail outlet.
DePape was arrested at the Pelosi residence early Friday. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins mentioned she envisioned to file many felony charges, together with attempted murder, assault with a fatal weapon, theft and elder abuse.
Stepfather Gene DePape said the suspect experienced lived with him in Canada till he was 14 and experienced been a quiet boy.
“David was in no way violent that I found and was in no way in any issues whilst he was incredibly reclusive and played also substantially video clip video games,” Gene DePape claimed.
He said he hasn’t seen his stepson since 2003 and tried using to get in touch with him quite a few situations above the a long time with out achievement.
“In 2007, I tried to get in touch but his girlfriend hung up on me when I questioned to chat to him,“ Gene DePape stated.
David DePape was acknowledged in Berkeley as a professional-nudity activist who had picketed bare at protests against area ordinances requiring folks to be clothed in general public.
Gene DePape explained the girlfriend whom his son followed to California was named Gypsy and they experienced two little ones collectively. DePape also has a kid with a distinct woman, his stepfather claimed.
Images posted by The San Francisco Chronicle on Friday discovered DePape frolicking nude outside the house metropolis hall with dozens of other individuals at the 2013 marriage ceremony of professional-nudity activist Gypsy Taub, who was marrying a further guy. Taub did not reply Friday to phone calls or e-mails.
A 2013 short article in The Chronicle explained David DePape as a “hemp jewellery maker” who lived in a Victorian flat in Berkeley with Taub, who hosted a converse present on nearby general public-accessibility Tv referred to as “Uncensored 9/11,” in which she appeared naked and pushed conspiracy theories that the 2001 terrorist attacks have been “an inside task.”
A pair of world-wide-web weblogs posted in new months on line underneath the name David DePape contained rants about technological know-how, aliens, communists, spiritual minorities and international elites.
An Aug. 24 entry titled “Q,” displayed a scatological selection of memes that included photographs of the deceased sexual intercourse offender Jeffrey Epstein and produced reference to QAnon, the baseless pro-Trump conspiracy principle that espouses the perception that the nation is operate by a deep point out cabal of kid sex traffickers, satanic pedophiles and infant-feeding on cannibals.
“Big Brother has deemed doing your personal investigate as a thought criminal offense,” browse a put up that appeared to mix references to QAnon with George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
In an Aug. 25 entry titled “Gun Rights,” the poster wrote: “You no more time have legal rights. Your standard human rights hinder Significant Brothers potential to enslave and manage you in a entire and totalizing way.”
The web internet hosting support WordPress eradicated one of the web-sites Friday afternoon for violating its phrases of assistance.
On a different web-site, an individual putting up under DePape’s identify recurring phony claims about COVID vaccines and putting on masks, questioned whether climate adjust is genuine and displayed an illustration of a zombified Hillary Clinton dining on human flesh.
There appeared to be no direct posts about Pelosi, but there ended up entries defending former President Donald Trump and Ye, the rapper formally identified as Kanye West who just lately built antisemitic feedback.
In other posts, the writer explained Jews aided finance Hitler’s political rise in Germany and recommended an antisemitic plot was included in Russia’s new invasion of Ukraine.
In a Sept. 27 article, the writer explained any journalists who denied Trump’s wrong promises of common voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election “should be dragged straight out into the road and shot.”
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AP Worldwide Investigative Reporter Michael Biesecker described from Washington and Breaking News Investigative Reporter Bernard Condon from New York. Reporters Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles, Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco and news researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed to this report.
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