“This was politically motivated,” Jenkins said. She implored the public to “watch the words that we say and to turn down the volume of our political rhetoric.”
DePape is charged federally with influencing, impeding, or retaliating against a federal official by threatening or injuring a family member. He also faces one count of attempted kidnapping of a United States official on account of the performance of official duties.
San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins laid out some of the details contained in a federal filing, debunking the right-wing conspiracies amplified by the right wing.
Details include:
- In the ambulance to the hospital, Paul Pelosi told police he had never seen DePape before, the complaint said.
- “We have nothing to suggest that these two men knew each other prior to this incident,” she said.
- DePape told police of his plans to hold Speaker Pelosi hostage to “talk to her” and viewed her “as the “leader of the pack of lies told by the Democratic Party,” the eight-page complaint says.
- “If she were to tell DePape the ‘truth,’ he would let her go and if she ‘lied,’ he was going to break “her kneecaps,” the complaint alleges.
- “By breaking Nancy’s kneecaps, she would then have to be wheeled into Congress, which would show other members of Congress there were consequences to actions,” the complaint says DePape told investigators.
Read below details in FBI Special Agent Stephanie Minor’s affidavit to support probable cause to issue a criminal complaint against David DePape.
Below is the full content of the press conference announcing charges against DePape.
DePape is a Canadian citizen who legally entered the United States in 2000 but has stayed long after his visa expired, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.