After attack at Nancy Pelosi’s home, US braces for mid-terms mayhem
82-year-old Paul Pelosi underwent surgery for a fractured skull and other serious injuries after an intruder broke into the couple’s San Francisco home.
An attack on the husband of Nancy Pelosi, the US Speaker of the House of Representatives, has fuelled fears of a new wave of political violence just over a week before America’s critical midterm elections that will decide the balance of power in Congress.
Paul Pelosi, 82, underwent surgery for a fractured skull and other serious injuries on Friday night after an intruder wielding a hammer broke into the couple’s San Francisco home, shouting: “Where is Nancy?”
Police officers who arrived at the scene found the victim and a man named as David DePape, 42, wrestling for the hammer. DePape tore the weapon away from Paul Pelosi and struck him with it before he was tackled by officers. He is in custody, charged with attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and a string of other crimes. “This was not a random act,” Bill Scott, the chief of San Francisco police, said. “This was intentional.”
The attack on the home of one of the most powerful politicians in America has stunned Washington as politicians make their final pitch before the midterms to an increasingly polarised electorate and mounting threats of violence. Many had warned that such an incident was likely as threats on social media towards politicians, government officials, judges, election workers and law enforcement spill into stalking, harassment and physical attacks.
It had chilling echoes of the riot on January 6 last year, when supporters of Donald Trump who stormed the US Capitol in a bid to halt certification of Joe Biden’s election victory. As the mob rampaged through the halls of Congress, rioters demanded to see the Speaker, 82, chanting “Nancy, Nancy,” and told police: “We’re coming in if you don’t bring her out.”
The senior Democrat’s office was ransacked in the melee that ended with an armed siege at the doors of the House of Representatives, with one protester shot dead by police as members of Congress cowered inside. More than 150 police officers were injured. One died the next day and others took their own lives in the weeks that followed.
Trump allegedly watched the violence unfold on television, resisting frantic calls for him to intervene and call off the mob.
Almost two years on from the insurrection, the rift between left and right continues to widen. Politicians have warned for months that a catastrophe was coming. Threats to US politicians are at an all-time high and members of Congress from both parties have sought additional protection at their homes.
Attacks on US politicians in recent years include the shootings of the Democratic congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords as she met constituents in Arizona in 2011 and the Republican Steve Scalise during a baseball practice session in Virginia in 2017. Both survived.
Those incidents stunned colleagues but were seen as a horrific aberration. Today, threats online have become commonplace, increasingly metastasising into physical threats.
In July a man with a gun was arrested outside the Seattle home of the left-wing Democratic congresswoman Pramilla Jayapal. The New York Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was forced to seek round-the-clock security after a string of death threats.
As protests swelled against the Supreme Court ruling on the right to abortion in June, conservative justices have also faced violent threats. On the eve of the decision, a man was arrested near the home of Brett Kavanaugh, armed with a pistol and a knife. He had travelled from California to Washington planning to kill the justice and then himself.
Liz Cheney, the Republican vice-chairwoman of the House committee investigating Trump’s role in the January 6 attack and the object of the former president’s fury, was forced to conduct much of her doomed Republican primary campaign in Wyoming behind closed doors after receiving death threats.
Republican politicians have grown ever more reckless in their threats towards Democratic opponents, eager to court favour with Trump’s support base and the former president himself.
The Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, once dismissed as the lunatic fringe of her party but now among the most influential Republicans in Congress, made explicit threats to Pelosi at a rally in 2019.
“She’s a traitor to our country, she’s guilty of treason,"Greene said, to applause from her audience. “She gives aid and comfort to our enemies who illegally invade our land. That’s what treason is . . . And it’s a crime punishable by death is what treason is. Nancy Pelosi is guilty of treason.” Greene would later claim in court that “I don’t recall saying all of this.”
Greene, in turn, has faced threats and harassment, but has exploited them to raise the temperature and return fire on Democrats. “Violence and crime are rampant in Joe Biden’s America,” she tweeted on Friday. “It shouldn’t happen to Paul Pelosi. It shouldn’t happen to innocent Americans. It shouldn’t happen to me.”
Paul Gosar, a Republican congressman, shared an animated meme showing him killing Ocasio-Cortez and attacking president Biden last year. Ocasio-Cortez warned then that Gosar would “face no consequences” because the Republican House leader Kevin McCarthy “cheers him on”.
McCarthy, who hopes to become Speaker if Republicans take back the majority after the mid-terms on November 8, was recorded at a party fundraiser last year saying to roars of laughter: “I want you to watch Nancy Pelosi hand me that gavel. It will be hard not to hit her with it.”
McCarthy said on Friday that he had reached out “to check in on Paul”, and was “praying for a full recovery”. While other Republicans posted outraged tweets condemning the attack, however, McCarthy did not issue a public statement on social media, apparently fearful of crossing Trump, who has said nothing.
Trump’s refusal to concede defeat or relinquish his post as kingmaker in the Republican Party as he eyes another run to take back the White House has ensured that new threats at the midterms were inevitable.
With Republican leaders still cowed by the former president, hundreds of candidates who reject the 2020 election result are on the ballot in almost every state, handpicked for Trump’s coveted endorsement for their loyalty.
Hemmed in by mounting legal troubles, including Department of Justice investigations for his role in January 6 and the trove of classified government documents seized by the FBI at his home at Mar-a-Lago in August, Trump has turned for support to the most extreme wing of his support base as he eyes another presidential run in 2024, whipping up support at rallies across the country.
As criminal trials of far-right militias accused of leading the attempt to overthrow democracy on January 6 get under way, Trump has promised to pardon convicted rioters if he regains the presidency.
As if to underscore his point, the US government issued a security bulletin to law enforcement agencies across the country on Friday, warning of a “heightened threat” of violent attacks targeting political candidates and election workers from extremists with “ideological grievances”.
In New York, also on Friday, a man pleaded guilty to making a string of threats against the Democratic congressmen Eric Swalwell. Joshua Hall, 22, from Pennsylvania, told Swalwell’s staff that he “intended to come to the congressman’s office with firearms; and that if he saw the congressman, he would kill him”.
Trump has reposted a string of memes on his Truth Social social media platform, teasing his 2024 presidential run. One showed him as The Terminator, with the tagline “I’ll be back. 2024 . . . or before.” Other posts explicitly courted QAnon, the sprawling conspiracy cult that has come to obsess right-wing America. Declared a terrorist threat by the FBI, the movement has inspired scores of violent attacks across America and QAnon supporters were prominent among January 6 rioters.
Trump kept QAnon at a discreet distance during his presidency, claiming just before the 2020 election: “I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much.” As his legal troubles mount, however, the former president has openly embraced QAnon, which reveres him as saviour figure, recruited to wage a secret war on Satan-worshipping paedophiles at the heart of American politics.
Trump’s recent rallies have closed with a QAnon anthem and sections of the crowd raising one finger in salute. The fusion with his Make America Great Again (Maga) movement has raised fears of further violence.
DePape’s motive for the assault of Paul Pelosi remains uncertain but he had reposted claims that the 2020 election was stolen and denounced the conviction of Derek Chauvin, the Minneapolis police officer found guilty of killing George Floyd, sparking the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, as a “modern lynching”.
Mia Bloom, a professor at Georgia State University who has studied QAnon, said that DePape’s social media posts showed he was “ranting about all these QAnon themes - the elites, the ruling class, the Jews - and how they’re to blame for everything”.
Bloom said that an incident targeting a senior political figure had been “almost inevitable”.
“These echo chambers validate violence,” she said.
THE SUNDAY TIMES
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