Attack on Paul Pelosi

On October 28, 2022, David Wayne DePape, then 42, broke into the Pacific Heights, San Francisco home of Paul Pelosi, husband of then-U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, by smashing through rear glass doors. DePape woke the 82-year-old Pelosi and demanded to speak with "Nancy," who was in Washington, D.C. at the time. When Pelosi said his wife was not home, DePape said he would wait. Pelosi managed to call 911 and, in a coded exchange with the dispatcher, conveyed that an unwanted "gentleman" was in the house awaiting his wife's return. Responding officers arrived and, from outside, witnessed DePape and Pelosi struggling over a hammer at the entryway; after an officer ordered DePape to drop the weapon, DePape struck Pelosi in the head with a single hammer blow. Officers then tackled and arrested DePape. Pelosi was hospitalized with a skull fracture requiring surgery, along with injuries to his hands and right arm, and was released on November 3, 2022.

Investigators, including the FBI, San Francisco Police Department, U.S. Capitol Police, and San Francisco District Attorney's Office, found that DePape had intended to take Nancy Pelosi hostage, interrogate her, and, according to his own statements to police, harm her if she "lied" to him. Items including zip ties, duct tape, rope, a second hammer, and gloves were recovered from his backpack, and a search of his residence in Richmond, California turned up additional hammers and a sword. Investigators said DePape had identified other potential targets, including California Governor Gavin Newsom, actor Tom Hanks, and Hunter Biden.

DePape, a Canadian citizen who had overstayed a U.S. visitor visa, was charged federally on October 31, 2022, with assaulting an immediate family member of a federal official with intent to retaliate, and attempted kidnapping of a federal official. He was separately charged by San Francisco prosecutors with state felonies including attempted murder, residential burglary, assault with a deadly weapon, and elder abuse. Prosecutors described the attack as politically motivated, citing DePape's embrace of QAnon, Pizzagate, and false claims of a stolen 2020 election, along with racist, antisemitic, and conspiratorial online posts.

At his federal trial, which began November 9, 2023, DePape testified and admitted to the attack, saying he had targeted Pelosi as part of a larger "grand plan" against multiple political figures. A jury convicted him on both federal counts on November 16, 2023, and he was sentenced on May 17, 2024, to 30 years in prison plus five years of supervised release. In the separate state case, a judge dismissed some charges on double-jeopardy grounds, but DePape was convicted on June 21, 2024, of five remaining state charges, including burglary, false imprisonment, and kidnapping, and was sentenced on October 29, 2024, to life in prison without parole. He began serving his sentence at the California Correctional Institution in Tehachapi on November 21, 2024.

The attack drew condemnation from officials across the political spectrum, alongside widespread misinformation and false "false flag" claims spread by some right-wing figures and commentators, which multiple news outlets reported as unsubstantiated.