The man accused of breaking into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s California home and violently beating her husband with a hammer appears to have made racist and often rambling posts online, including some questioning the 2020 election result, Defending former President Donald Trump and echoing QAnon’s post conspiracy theory.
David DePape, 42, who grew up in Powell River, British Columbia, left about 20 years ago to follow an older girlfriend to San Francisco. The street address listed for DePape in Berkeley, a college town in the Bay Area, points to a PO Box at a UPS store.
DePape was arrested at Pelosi’s home early Friday. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins said she is expected to file multiple felony charges, including attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon, burglary and elder abuse.
Stepfather Gene DePape said the suspect lived with him in Canada until he was 14 and was a quiet boy.
“David was never as violent as I saw him and never had any trouble, even though he was very reclusive and played too many video games,” Gene DePapp said.
He said he hadn’t seen his stepson since 2003 and that he had tried unsuccessfully to get in touch with him over the years.
“In 2007, I tried to get in touch with him, but when I asked to talk to him, his girlfriend hung up on me,” DePap said.
David DePape, known as a pro-nudity activist in Berkeley, has been picketing naked while protesting a local ordinance requiring people to dress in public.
Gene DePape said his son followed him to California with a girlfriend named Gypsy, and they have two children. De Pape also has a child and another woman, his stepfather said.
Photos released Friday by the San Francisco Chronicle show DePape romping naked with dozens of people outside City Hall at the 2013 wedding of pro-nude activist Gypsy Taub, who married another man. Taub did not return calls or emails Friday.
A 2013 article in The Chronicle described David DePape as a “cannabis jewelry maker” who lived with Taub in a Victorian apartment in Berkeley, where she hosted an episode on local public television called “Uncensored 9/ 11”, in which she appeared on a blatant conspiracy theory that the 2001 terrorist attack was an “inside job”.
A pair of web blogs posted online in recent months by the name of David DePape contain rants about technology, aliens, communists, religious minorities, transgender people and the global elite.
An Aug. 24 entry titled “Q” showed a series of nasty memes, including a photo of the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, and referenced QAnon, which was baseless The pro-Trump conspiracy theories support the belief that the country is run by the Deep State cabal or child sex traffickers, satanic paedophiles and baby-eating cannibals.
“Big Brother considers doing his own research a thought crime,” reads a post that appears to mix QAnon with George Orwell’s dystopian novel “1984.”
in an august. The 25 entry was titled “Gun Rights,” and the poster read: “You no longer have rights. Your basic human rights impede Big Brother’s ability to enslave and control you in a full and comprehensive manner.”
On Friday afternoon, web hosting service WordPress removed one of its sites for violating its terms of service.
on different websitessomeone posted by the name of DePape repeating false claims about COVID vaccines and wearing masks, questioning whether climate change is real, and showing illustrations of a zombified Hillary Clinton eating human flesh.
There appeared to be no direct posts about Pelosi, but there were entries defending former President Donald Trump and Yeh, the rapper officially known as Kane West, for recent anti-Semitic remarks.
In other posts, the author said Jews helped finance Hitler’s political rise in Germany and suggested that Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine involved an anti-Semitic conspiracy.
“The more Ukrainians, the cheaper the Jews buy land,” the post said.
In a Sept. 27 post, the writer said that any journalist who denies Trump’s false claims of widespread voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election “should be dragged straight into the street and shot.”
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Associated Press global investigative reporter Michael Biesecker reports from Washington, and breaking news investigative reporter Bernard Condon reports from New York. Journalist Stefanie Dazio in Los Angeles, Olga Rodriguez in San Francisco, and journalism researcher Jennifer Farrar in New York contributed.