San Francisco:
The person accused of attacking the husband of US Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi with a hammer pleaded not responsible to tried homicide and different expenses when he appeared Tuesday in a San Francisco court docket.
David DePape, 42, was ordered to be held in custody after the arraignment within the metropolis the place he’s alleged to have assaulted Paul Pelosi in a pre-dawn assault within the couple’s luxurious residence.
DePape, of California, was arrested Friday morning after he allegedly broke into the mansion, desiring to tie up the highly effective politician and break her kneecaps if she didn’t confess to Democratic Celebration “lies,” the US Justice Division mentioned in a court docket submitting.
DePape had tape, rope, zip ties and different supplies with him, the Justice Division mentioned, however he discovered solely Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband, whom he attacked, hitting him within the head with a hammer.
DePape wore orange jail garments and spoke solely to reply procedural questions in the course of the transient look, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Decide Diane Northway signed an order banning DePape from being involved with the alleged sufferer or his spouse, or from going inside 150 yards (meters) of their residence.
The story of the assault rapidly metastasized right into a political litmus take a look at within the extremely divided United States.
Liberals blasted the damaging coarsening of public discourse and the prepared perpetuation of falsehoods by mainstream Republicans, that has seen Nancy Pelosi solid as a determine of hate on the fitting, and a respectable goal for real-life violence.
Swathes of the conservative media ecosystem, in the meantime, set about questioning the narrative across the assault, with lurid and unproven recommendations it was a sexual encounter gone fallacious.
New Twitter boss Elon Musk was amongst those that helped popularise the idea after tweeting a hyperlink to a speculative opinion piece by an outlet with a historical past of unreliability.
Talking exterior court docket, DePape’s court-appointed lawyer Adam Lipson mentioned the protection staff can be wanting into the swirling untruths which will have influenced his shopper.
“There’s additionally been a number of hypothesis concerning Mr. DePape’s vulnerability to misinformation and that’s actually one thing that we’re going to look into,” he advised reporters.
The suspect faces expenses on each a state and a federal stage.
San Francisco District Lawyer Brooke Jenkins on Monday mentioned DePape faces expenses of tried homicide, residential housebreaking, assault with a lethal weapon, elder abuse, false imprisonment of an elder in addition to threats to a public official and their household.
If convicted on the state expenses, he would face 13 years to life in jail, in keeping with Jenkins.
Federal authorities on Monday charged DePape with trying to kidnap a US official and assaulting her member of the family over her actions in her job.
(Apart from the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV employees and is printed from a syndicated feed.)
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