David DePape, the man on trial in the attack on Paul Pelosi in his home, testified that a steady diet of right-wing conspiracy theories led him to a plan to take down prominent government figures.
DePape, 43, faces two federal felony charges in the October 2022 attack. Although he has conceded he struck Pelosi with a hammer, he has pleaded not guilty, claiming he didn’t target Pelosi’s wife, Nancy Pelosi, then the House speaker, to influence her in her official duties, as he’s charged with doing. Paul Pelosi sustained severe head injuries, and he testified Monday that he still has persistent headaches and dizziness as a result.
On Tuesday, DePape’s testimony painted a worldview consumed by conspiracy theories that led him down a path of alleged violence. He said he watched YouTube videos and listened to hours of podcasts from right-wing figures like Glenn Beck and Tim Pool, CBS News reported. He testified that he became interested in right-wing conspiracy theories after learning about Gamergate, a misogynistic online harassment campaign from the mid-2010s that some experts have linked to the rise of online alt-right communities and the right-wing media ecosystem that thrived during Donald Trump’s presidency.
DePape testified he had several “targets,” who included Hunter Biden, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Vice President Mike Pence, Sen. Bernie Sanders and Tom Hanks. DePape said that he went to the Pelosis’ San Francisco home to confront Nancy Pelosi about Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and that he’d planned to upload a video of his interrogation of her online, The Associated Press reported.
DePape said that he was angry when the congresswoman wasn’t at home but that he didn’t set out to hurt Paul Pelosi. “When he was on the ground bleeding, I was afraid for his life,” DePape said, according to an NBC Bay Area reporter in the courtroom. “I felt really bad for him, because we had a really good rapport until the last second.”
That DePape’s path to extremism began with the consumption of ring-wing media is unsurprising. Conservative media figures frequently adopt extreme, dehumanizing rhetoric to cast political opponents as enemies. “I think it’s hard to overstate the dangers here: This language moves beyond mere demonization, because it suggests a need for violent resistance,” Charlie Sykes, a former conservative talk show host who is the founder and editor of The Bulwark, told CNN (Sykes is also a regular columnist with MSNBC).
Clarissa-Jan Lim is a breaking news reporter for MS NOW. She was previously a senior reporter and editor at BuzzFeed News.