The man who attacked Nancy Pelosi’s husband was also found guilty of kidnapping and faces life in prison

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — A man sentenced to 30 years in a federal prison for attacking the husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was found guilty Friday of aggravated kidnapping, a conviction that carries a sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

A jury in San Francisco also found David DePape guilty of first-degree burglary, false imprisonment of an elderly person, threatening a family member of a public official and deterring a witness.

The convictions on the additional charges come weeks after a federal judge sentenced DePape for the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi.

“Speaker Pelosi and her family remain in awe of her father’s bravery, which was again on display on the witness stand in this trial, just as it was when he saved his own life the night of the attack,” Pelosi’s office wrote in an emailed statement Friday. “For nearly 20 grueling months, Mr. Pelosi demonstrated extraordinary courage and strength on every day of his recovery.”

DePape’s public defender, Adam Lipson, said he was disappointed with the verdict and plans to appeal, calling prosecutors’ decision to file a kidnapping for ransom charge “vindictive.”

FILE – Paul Pelosi, husband of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, leaves the Phillip Burton Federal Building and the U.S. Courthouse after testifying in the federal trial of David DePape in San Francisco, Nov. 13, 2023. A judge on Tuesday, June 18, 2024, ejected the former partner of the conspiracy theorist accused of breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s home in 2022 from the courtroom and barred her from the public gallery as DePape’s state trial concluded. (AP Photo/Noah Berger, File)

Photo: ASSOCIATED PRESS/Noah Berger

“It’s really unfortunate that the charges were brought in this way. It was a textbook kind of vindictive prosecution,” Lipson said. “As soon as they knew the attempted murder charge was going to be dropped, they added that charge.”

Lipson had previously argued that the state trial was double jeopardy following the federal conviction. Even though the charges were not the same, the two cases were based on the same crime, he told the judge.

San Francisco Superior Court Judge Harry Dorfman agreed, dismissing the state’s charges of attempted murder, elder abuse and assault with a deadly weapon. Another judge affirmed the decision on appeal.

Lipson said the ruling means that after serving 30 years in a federal prison, DePape will be extradited to California “to spend the rest of his life in a California prison.”

A federal jury previously convicted DePape of assaulting a family member of a federal official and attempting to kidnap a federal official. On May 28, he was sentenced to 30 years in a federal prison in an unusual retrial that resulted from a miscarriage of justice.

In his closing argument, Lipson told the jury that the prosecution had failed to prove that DePape kidnapped Paul Pelosi, then 82, with the intent to “extort money or anything of value from another person,” a key component of the charge.

Assistant District Attorney Phoebe Maffei told the jury in her closing argument that DePape planned to record a video of his questioning of Nancy Pelosi.

Lipson argued that the video did not exist and even if it did exist, it had no value.

“When he broke into the Pelosi’s house, his intention was to confront and possibly injure and attack Nancy Pelosi. That was his intention at the time, this has nothing to do with Mr. Pelosi,” he said.

In her response, Maffei pointed out that DePape told an investigator and testified in federal court that he planned to obtain a video of Nancy Pelosi in which he believed she confessed to crimes and post it on the Internet.

“There is inherent value in a video of the Speaker of the House confessing to crimes in her own home,” Maffei said.

The attack on Paul Pelosi was captured on police bodycam video just days before the 2022 midterm elections and shocked the political world. He suffered two head injuries, including a skull fracture that was repaired with plates and screws that he will have for the rest of his life. His right arm and hand were also injured.

DePape admitted during his testimony in federal court that he planned to take Nancy Pelosi hostage, record his interrogation and “break her kneecaps” if she did not admit to the lies he said she told about “Russiagate,” a reference to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Lipson told the jury in his closing argument that before the attack, DePape had led an isolated, lonely life and had “fallen down the rabbit hole of propaganda and conspiracy theories.”

This week, the judge removed DePape’s former partner from the public gallery and the second floor of the San Francisco courthouse because, according to the judge, she tried to influence the jury.

On Monday and Tuesday, Gypsy Taub, a well-known San Francisco Bay Area activist, handed out notes outside the courtroom with the address of a conspiracy-theory website she runs. The notes were also found in a women’s restroom near the courtroom, where the website’s address was scrawled on a wall in marker.

DePape’s public defender in federal court said during the sentencing in federal court that DePape was first exposed to extreme views by Taub, who has two sons with DePape.

Taub met DePape in Hawaii when he was 20 and she was in her 30s and pregnant, DePape’s twin sister, Joanne Robinson, said in a letter to the federal judge asking for leniency.

Robinson wrote that Taub isolated DePape from his family and caused her brother “extreme psychological harm.”

Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.