Highlights
- David Depape is a Berkley man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer
- A blog he allegedly runs has articles titled 'Hitler did nothing wrong,' 'Black pilled,' and 'Pedophile normalization.'
- DePape is being booked on charges including attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and burglary.
David DePape, who police say attacked House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband in San Francisco early Friday morning, has been linked to personal blogs that railed against the government and technology giants, and espoused far-right conspiracy theories.
DePape, 42, is accused of breaking into the couple's home and striking Paul Pelosi with a hammer.
DePape was taken into custody Friday and is being booked on charges including attempted homicide, assault with a deadly weapon, elder abuse and burglary. San Francisco Police Chief Bill Scott said the motive was "still being determined."
On one website registered to a David DePape, posts, some from as recently as this week, took aim at immigrants, "climate hysteria," "trannies" and promoted "pedo gate," the long-debunked conspiracy theory about prominent Democrats being involved in child-sex trafficking.
"This is what the gas chamber doors at Auschwitz look like," he wrote in one post. "So feminists are always talking about how they want equality," another post read.Using the research site DomainTools.com, Bloomberg News found several websites registered to a David DePape.
Those include 'FrenlyFrenz,' a blog containing affronts against immigrants, Jewish people and women. Another site registered under the name David DePape hosts the blog of Gypsy Taub, DePape's friend and former housemate.
A WordPress blog with posts under the David DePape name contains identical spellings of his targets, such as 'wamen' for 'women.'
It could not be independently verified that these were the accounts of the suspect arrested in the attack on Paul Pelosi. Public records show only one David DePape living in California, who is also 42 years old.
On one of the blogs, a post complained about the 'elites' and 'ruling class,' who 'never censor themselves.' The news media, he said in an undated bio page, have a 'narrative put forth by the people who rule you.'
'The founding father(s) built in protection against censorship coming from the government because they never imagined a day when Tech giants and private industry would be so powerful they could single handedly silence the people,' he wrote. The site has since been suspended for violating the web host's terms of service.
The more current blog was wide-ranging, packed with videos, memes, colorful drawings and categorized into sections with titles such as "voter fraud" and "groomer schools."
"Ya I remember the backlash and insults when you came out in support of Trump," he posted about the rapper Kanye West on Oct. 17. Days earlier, West posted antisemitic rants "- including wanting to go "death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE" "- that led to Adidas, the talent agency CAA and others to cut ties with him.
A 2013 San Francisco Chronicle article mentioned DePape's associations with Taub, a nude activist who organized protests against the city's proposed public nudity ban in 2012. Taub also pushed conspiracy theories about the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
DePape lived with Taub across San Francisco Bay in Berkeley, according to the Chronicle, and was the best man at her wedding. Online records show DePape owned as many as 12 Internet domains, including Taub's blog.
California State Senator Scott Wiener, who served as San Francisco supervisor for the Castro District from 2010 to 2016, told Bloomberg News he remembered DePape as part of a group protesting for the right to public nudity in the neighborhood in 2011 and 2012. Wiener said he's looking into what DePape's role was in those protests.
Wiener said that most "activists who believe in public nudity" are just "regular people," but that Taub and allies like DePape were "in a completely different category."
