Suspected Attacker of Speaker Pelosi’s Husband Dabbled in Nude Activism, Conspiracy Theories

David DePape’s recent writings offered support for right-leaning conspiracy theories, but he was previously affiliated with left-leaning causes.

David DePape, in a 2013 photo, is set to be arraigned Tuesday in connection with the attack on the husband of US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

David DePape had been involved in nude activism, slept in a bus and espoused various conspiracy theories in recent years before his arrest on Friday for allegedly attacking the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi at their Pacific Heights mansion.

DePape, 42, was in the San Francisco County Jail on Saturday, after being treated for unspecified injuries in the attack on 82-year-old Paul Pelosi, who underwent surgery for a skull fracture that police said was inflicted by a hammer. The Pelosi family said in a statement he is expected to fully recover.

DePape is set to be arraigned Tuesday on booking charges that include attempted homicide and assault with a deadly weapon. Police haven’t released a motive for the attack, which they said was targeted at the Pelosi family.

US Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi (R) and husband Paul Pelosi. Picture: AFP

Many of DePape’s recent writings on social media and his public activities offered support for right-leaning conspiracy theories. He posted messages on Facebook saying that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate, and he offered conspiracies related to Covid-19, according to law-enforcement sources who viewed them before his page was removed.

But in previous years, he was more affiliated with left-leaning causes. Mr. DePape was a participant in nude protests in the Bay Area, where he was long associated with a self-proclaimed “body freedom activist” named Oxane “Gypsy” Taub, according to DePape’s friends and local media archives. He spent time at her home in Berkeley, California, which has a gay rights flag and advertises treatment for drug addiction, neighbours said.

Taub was convicted of attempted abduction of a 14-year old and related felonies in 2021, and sentenced to state prison. Efforts to reach Taub through her lawyers were unsuccessful.

DePape met Taub about 20 years ago in Hawaii, when she was pregnant with her daughter, and very soon after moved to Bay Area of California, according to a webpage written by the daughter shortly after the attack on Mr Pelosi. The daughter, Inti Gonzalez, declined to comment on DePape. But she sent a copy of her blog post, which has since been taken down, to The Wall Street Journal.

San Francisco police officers and FBI agents gather in front of the home of U.S. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. Picture: AFP

DePape and Taub had two boys, according to the blog post. Ms Gonzalez called him a loving, caring man who looked after her and her siblings, taking them to parks and the beach. But she also alluded to a dark side in her post.

“There is some part of him that is a good person even though he has been very consumed by darkness,” she wrote.

DePape lived on and off over the years at a Victorian home in Berkeley that Taub shared with her children, according to neighbours. Occasionally, DePape and Taub appeared in local newspaper articles, such as in 2013 when DePape was identified in a San Francisco photograph as videotaping police making arrests at a nudist-rights rally the two attended. An Oakland Tribune article in 2008 references the couple and their children joining hundreds of others at a communal Thanksgiving dinner.

Ms Gonzalez’s post said her mother and DePape’s romantic relationship ended after about three years, but added that he remained in the family’s lives “and helped take care of us.” One of DePape’s social-media blogs that was taken down listed his current address in Richmond, California, near Berkeley. But while Taub has been in prison, DePape stayed at times at the Berkeley house, sometimes in a yellow school bus parked out front that serves as a spare room for their visitors, according to neighbours.

Oxane 'Gypsy' Taub.

Ryan La Conte, who lives in an apartment behind the house, said he saw DePape by the bus only a month ago. “He was just right over there,” Mr La Conte said motioning to the bus outside his home late Friday. “Had blankets, you got the sense that he was living here.” Mr La Conte added that he wasn’t surprised to learn of DePape’s arrest, judging from the unusual behavior he said of other people who live at the home. “The conversations that come out of that house late, late at night are kind off the wall crazy, like religion that leaves the aliens,” he said.

Dow Jones