The suspect accused of attacking Paul Pelosi, husband of Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), with a hammer offered an apology and said, “He was never my target.”
“We kind of had a good rapport going,” suspect David DePape testified, according to reporters in the federal courtroom. “He was an amiable gentleman. We had a good rapport going, and I kind of trusted him.”
Defense attorney Angela Chang asked her client why he hit Mr. Pelosi. “To get to my other targets,” Mr. DePape said. “I felt really bad for him because we had a good rapport, and Paul was never a target.”
“I reacted because my plan was basically ruined,” he said.
During cross-examination, Assistant U.S. Attorney Laura Vartain Horn asked Mr. DePape whether he knew that going into the Pelosi home could lead to violence. “Wasn’t my intention, but a possibility, yes,” he responded.
After Mr. DePape broke into the home, Mr. Pelosi called the police before officers arrived. According to police body-camera footage of the incident, officers told Mr. DePape to drop a hammer that he was holding with Mr. Pelosi before Mr. DePape pulled away and then appeared to strike the lawmaker’s husband multiple times before he was apprehended.
Mr. DePape said he planned to abduct Ms. Pelosi and use her to lure other targets, including Hunter Biden, President Joe Biden’s son. He said that he targeted Ms. Pelosi first because she was a leader of the Democratic Party and he believed that her house would be easier to target.
According to court papers, he allegedly told authorities his other targets included California Gov. Gavin Newsom, actor Tom Hanks, Mr. Hunter Biden, and a professor at the University of Michigan not identified in the trial.
Also during the trial this week, Mr. Pelosi recounted how he was able to call the authorities while Mr. DePape said he was going to tie him up.
“The door opened and a very large man came in with a hammer in one hand and some ties in the other and he said, ‘Where’s Nancy?' And I think that woke me up,” Paul Pelosi said. “I recognized I was in serious danger.”
Mr. DePape faces life in prison if convicted, in the federal case, of attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assault on the immediate family member of a federal official. He also faces an attempted murder charge in a separate state case.
Gypsy Taub, who was in a relationship with Mr. DePape and shares two children with him, told the New York Post that she believes that Mr. DePape was acting under duress. She said she believes that authorities forced him to confess to the attack and said he didn’t seem like himself.
She added: “I already had doubts that his confession to police was false because it was only on audio, but I am glad the jury was able to see him testify and will be able to decide on the authenticity of that confession.”
Other witnesses who testified this week included Daniel Bernal, Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco chief of staff, and Mr. DePape’s neighbor Elizabeth Yates, who said she allowed him to shower at her home once a week.
