Paul Pelosi targeted by malicious disinformation following the attack at his home
In the early morning of October 28, David DePape allegedly broke into Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco house with the intention of violently interrogating the Speaker of the House about the Democratic party. Instead, he found her husband, Paul Pelosi, asleep in bed. DePape confronted Mr. Pelosi, eventually striking him in the head with a hammer and fracturing the 82 year old’s skull.
At a time when Mr. Pelosi should be recovering from this brutal attack and garnering nothing but sympathy, he has instead, become a target for the second time - finding himself at the center of insidious and malicious disinformation campaigns used to target and discredit his wife.
It appears DePape’s attack on the Pelosi house was likely motivated by his belief in right-wing conspiracies. His social media footprint includes extensive posts on QAnon topics, the idea that Democrats stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump, and even defenses of Kanye West’s recent antisemitic comments. However, many right-wing, alt-social users have chosen to disregard this plausible motivation for a more salacious (and politically convenient) theory – that DePape was Paul Pelosi’s secret gay lover, and that the events of that night were a crime of passion.
Many users are pointing towards early rumors that DePape was found in his underwear at the Pelosi house as evidence that he was having an affair with Mr. Pelosi. However, this claim was proven to be false by the federal affidavit released on October 31, which contains witness statements confirming DePape was wearing shorts during the incident. Thus, a key premise of this rapidly spreading narrative is based on disinformation.
Disappointingly, the flames of this conspiracy theory have been further stoked by Elon Musk, who tweeted that “there is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye” and shared the link to a malicious Santa Monica Observer story supporting the story that “DePape was Paul Pelosi’s secret lover”. While Musk has since deleted the tweet, posting a link to a notorious false news website (that is part of an ecosystem of sites that masquerade as legitimate sources of information) full of baseless claims about Pelosi certainly helped grow the audience for this piece of disinformation. The story itself was shared at least 48 unique times in the last 2 days by alt-social users.
In addition to the idea that Pelosi was attacked by his lover (rather than a delusional conspiracist looking to harm the Speaker of the House), alt-social users are also boosting theories that this incident was a “false flag” that was planned by Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats to secure a Democratic victory in the upcoming midterms.
While it can be easy to dismiss these vicious attacks - both physical and virtual - as the acts of a few unhinged individuals, this is far from the reality. DePape’s views - his reality - was clearly shared and reinforced across alt-social communities in a manner that enabled him to believe that he not only could, but should, violently attack the Speaker of the House.
What makes it worse, is that these communities have since become a further vehicle to attack the reputation of an innocent man who became the victim of a violent crime, which public figures have all too eagerly leveraged for their own benefit. The reality is, that once a mistruth - disinformation - has been sent out into the world, it is difficult to correct the record and reverse the damage.
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