Within a day of the brutal hammer attack on Paul Pelosi, Nancy Pelosi’s 82-year-old husband, rightwing media began circulating scurrilous rumors. They said that the intruder did not break in, that he was invited in, and they claimed that the two men met in a gay bar, then quarreled.
The Capitol Police in D.C. had surveillance cameras around the property. Today they released the video of the intruder using a hammer to break the glass of the door or windows in the back of the house, then entering. This confirms the original account.
Capitol Police surveillance video from outside former Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco, released publicly on Friday, shows the man who attacked her husband in October breaking in.
Before he does that, the attacker can be seen peering into the dark house, walking away and then returning with bags, which he rummages around in for more than two minutes.
Shortly after 2 a.m. local time — the time stamp on the video says 5:10 a.m., which would be consistent with the Eastern time zone, where the Capitol Police force is based — the assailant starts trying to smash a window or a door with what appears to be a hammer. It takes him about 30 seconds of repeated strikes to break through, at which point he climbs into the house and the footage ends.
The surveillance video shows two key things.
First, it indicates that the attacker was outside the Pelosis’ home for several minutes before he entered, meaning it might have been possible to prevent the attack had the Capitol Police been monitoring the surveillance camera in real time.
Second, it unequivocally dispels a baseless conspiracy theory that began circulating soon after the attack: that the suspect, David DePape, had not broken in but rather had been invited in and then got into a fight with Mr. Pelosi.
The New York Times reported on Nov. 1 that the Capitol Police were not monitoring the video feed from the Pelosi home in real time, and that costly minutes elapsed before Capitol officers saw the break-in.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
How long do you think we will have to wait for a retraction and apology from right wing news media?
How Fox News reported it:
“U.S. Capitol Police (USCP) surveillance footage captured the moment when David DePape, 42, allegedly entered the Pelosi family’s San Francisco home to attack the former House speaker’s husband, Paul Pelosi.”
“ALLEGEDLY”
The right wing news media is skeptical of clear evidence against anyone who supports their fascist agenda, and presents as a certainty the fact-free conspiracy theories that demonize their opponents and call for their opponents to be imprisoned or sometimes violently attacked.
And what’s worse, too often the so-called liberal media is so fearful of being called “biased” that they treat their fact-free conspiracy theories as if they have the same weight as the truth.
I never know how FOX news reports. Thanks for watching. Why can’t they believe their own lying eyes?
Elon Musk spread the rumor about Paul Pelosi. Do you think he will apologize?
He suffers from a severe case of foot n’ mouth disease.
Anyone want to place odds that the next extreme right conspiracy theory about this issue will claim the video has been edited and revised?
I think one thing is clear about the extreme right. When their BS is revealed, they either fall silent acting as if the crap they spread earlier didn’t happen, or double down with new lies.
Seriously; fake news!! If a violent attack on the Capital caught on hours and hours of video was just a bunch of tourists. There is nothing the troglodytes can be shown to enter the mush between their ears.
Paul Pelosi’s handling of that incident was remarkable! If you listen to his 911 call, you see a man keeping his wits in the most stressful circumstances (after being woken up in the middle of the night) trying to let the operator what was happening while clearly being constrained by an armed assailant who was standing next to him listening and ready to attack if he said anything that the assailant didn’t like.
The video of the police demonstrates exactly how police act when it is white man who has broken in to someone else’s house and defies their orders to drop their weapon. Instead of firing bullets at the guy, the police stand down until the guy has a chance to use his hammer to bash his victim’s head in. Then they arrest him and somehow manage to do it without brutalizing him.
I had to quit watching and I’ll never watch it again. I so feel for Paul and Nancy Pelosi and their entire family. They did nothing to deserves this. No one does. My anger from the little bit I saw is with the police, as you sum up so well. The operator was about to hang up! And why didn’t the police have tasers at the ready? Paul Pelosi should never have to have been hit. And then I saw the first bit of the Memphis video. Way too much for me. Never forget that violence is a first resort for fascists and lunatics. Combine them, give them power or absolution, and we end up with a sad state of affairs.
Greg, I have been listening to your warnings. I fear that there may be more violence against elected officials. The Republicans have normalized by ignoring the seriousness of January 6. If that day was a walk in the park, we are in for more trouble. Every political leader needs security. I’m fearful of assassinations and what follows. Almost half the country is desensitized.
Very sad. I don’t necessarily think the San Francisco police were the problem although we both suspect that if it was a Black man with a hammer they would not have been so restrained.
But the Memphis video is everything that is wrong with the “Blue Lives Matters” crowd. If unarmed white folks were violently roughed up by police the way that so many unarmed Black men (and sometimes women) are on a regular basis, real police reform would have happened decades ago.
I watched some of it but it was too gut wrenching to watch it all. The police chief was right in her description of the inhumanity and indifference to life. What were they thinking? The young man did nothing to enrage them. He just wanted to go home.
Tucker Carlson said this about Tyre Nichols’ murder:
Tucker on Tyre Nichols: “The very same people who are weeping on television about police brutality applauded when one of Nancy Pelosi’s officers murdered an unarmed woman called Ashli Babbitt.”
Tyre was an innocent man. Ashli Babbitt was an insurrectionist trying to be first to force her way into the Senate chamber, jumping into the path of an armed security guard protecting the Senators as they escaped. The guy who shot her was protecting Senators of both parties, not just Nancy Pelosi but Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley too.
@ronfilipowski
Forced myself to watch. Was absolutely horrified at the sheer speed and violence used by the suspect in this assassination attempt, and the news media needs to call it what it is. Seeing Paul Pelosi lying motionless on the floor brought home the horror of that night; how it could possibly happen that one could be nearly slaughtered like that in their own home, right in front of a police officer. Then, I made the mistake at glancing at the Twitter feed below the link. A sick, gut-wrenching horror show of homophobic jokes and vitriol aimed at Paul Pelosi, with absolutely no signs of empathy or remorse for being a part of the MAGA mob that helped to infect and enrage the suspect. Twitter has become an absolute cesspool for this kind of poison. One of the worst demonstrations of evil humanity that I’ve seen in a long time.
Agreed. It was painful to watch, and the pain was magnified by the MAGA laughter at seeing an 82 year old man beaten in his home.
I highly recommend every American who cares about education and race in America read Leonard Moore’s Teaching Black History to White People. White Americans have no understanding of what it means to be Black in this nation today. Or with any other ethnic or racial “category.” It’s worth quoting an extensive story Moore relates about a personal experience. To be Black and in the wrong place at the wrong time in this country is potentially deadly.
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A friend of mine has a boy who bought a used car. Like most African-American sons of responsible parents, he had been schooled in the proper response to the police. He was just out of the car lot and on his way to get a sound system installed when he was pulled over and harassed by the police. They told him his temporary license plate was in the wrong place. His uncle, who worked as a police officer, told him after the incident that this was not a thing at all.
He told his mother that he made eye contact with the police officer as he retrieved his billfold. “I wanted to see the guy who shot me,” he said.
Many year before, we went camping together up in the Shenandoah. This is the nicest kid you ever met. No teenage angst or sarcastic edge. That he would be handled like this by the police enrages me.
What a horrifying story! Sounds like Nazi Germany.
OK, Diane, but what about Hunter Biden?
I know. Hunter Biden will be the headline until 2024.
Truth doesn’t dispel insane conspiracy theories. That’s not how they work. They incorporate the truth into their insane, always unfolding narrative. You can already see this on Twitter, where people are saying the video “raises more questions than it answers,” such as “why is Pelosi holding a drink?” and “why does Pelosi answer the door with “Hi, how are you?”
Also, it’s sad that anyone would feel compelled to bring racism into this awful incident.
Not as sad as those who continue to deny the existence of the double standard in policing (and in the courts), because in their minds the victims of this double standard are always doing “something wrong” that caused the police to act out against them. Except that “something wrong” is always the kinds of actions that aren’t a problem when a white person (who just doesn’t look that dangerous to police) do it.
I just served jury duty and it was interesting that jury service began with the potential jurors watching a video on implicit bias. Which did not happen in any of my previous times I was called for jury duty. The judge in the case talked about implicit bias, too.
Sure, that may or may not have an impact, but this is how it starts. With the ideas that people used to demonize or make fun of by posting nasty video links (from right wing twitter feeds) of educators supposedly being too woke becoming more mainstream. But I’m old enough to remember the extreme denial of self-described “liberal” middle age white men who directed their anger at women who wanted to use the term “Ms” instead of “Mrs.” or “Miss” because THEY didn’t see any reason for it. And after all, if THEY don’t believe something is important or necessary, then it must be so.
I find the younger generation has a lot to teach us if we stop being certain that everything we believe is right because we already know we are good people without a racist bone in our bodies and how dare someone ask us to consider our own implicit bias because we are already certain that we have none at all. And decades later, those folks who thought using the term Ms placed far too much of a burden on them because they weren’t anti-woman seem embarrassingly obsolete. “How dare some lady ask me to use “Ms.” when I have always used Miss or Mrs. and my wife likes being called Mrs. and my mother and sisters don’t care, so that means I am justified when I simply refuse to use the term Ms. because those ladies are just making trouble for women everywhere.” Believe me, the reactionary folks who insist they aren’t racist or sexist and insist they have no implicit bias at all have been around for decades. And they often don’t recognize how much they are just like that older generation that refused to change because they decided the status quo was fine.
Anyone who watches the video of how Paul Pelosi’s attacker was treated can easily compare it to Tyre Nichols.
The NYT did the kind of analysis (excerpt below) that is way overdue. I have watched videos of a number of these types of encounters that go bad and so often I am shocked to hear supposedly liberal white folks who believe that there was just something that the person (who is almost always African American) “should” or “could” have done to avoid the fact that the police escalated an encounter because no reaction would have been acceptable and any reaction was used as a justification for the police to escalate.
NYT 1/29/23
“71 Commands in 13 Minutes: Officers Gave Tyre Nichols Impossible Orders
A Times analysis found that officers gave dozens of contradictory and unachievable orders to Mr. Nichols. The punishment was severe — and eventually fatal.”
“Police officers unleashed a barrage of commands that were confusing, conflicting and sometimes even impossible to obey, a Times analysis of footage from Tyre Nichols’s fatal traffic stop found. When Mr. Nichols could not comply — and even when he managed to — the officers responded with escalating force.
The review of the available footage found that officers shouted at least 71 commands during the approximately 13-minute period before they reported over the radio that Mr. Nichols was officially in custody. The orders were issued at two locations, one near Mr. Nichols’s vehicle and the other in the area he had fled to and where he would be severely beaten. The orders were often simultaneous and contradictory. Officers commanded Mr. Nichols to show his hands even as they were holding his hands. They told him to get on the ground even when he was on the ground. And they ordered him to reposition himself even when they had control of his body.
Experts say the actions of the Memphis police officers were an egregious example of a longstanding problem in policing in which officers physically punish civilians for perceived disrespect or disobedience — sometimes called “contempt of cop.” The practice was notoriously prevalent decades ago.”
This article is long, long overdue, because I have seen this outrageous behavior by police when I actually watch the entire videos of past events where a suspect ends up severely injured or dead. I would read comments (even here at this liberal blog) implying that the suspect could have acted in a way that would have stopped the police from being aggressive, when the OPPOSITE is true. No person, if their arm is twisted in such a way that causes immense pain, can “hold still”, and then too often I would see the uncontrollable movement that every person makes when someone causes them great pain used as the excuse to cause even MORE pain, which – since the person can’t help responding to even added pain – is the excuse for the police to add even more pain. I do understand the privilege of folks who claim that they or their own kid would act more respectfully and believe there isn’t an ounce of implicit racism in them because it never occurs to them that they could get out of a car with their hands up and be killed because officers were screaming two or three contradictory orders and it didn’t matter which order they chose to follow, it would be the “wrong” one that caused more violence to be reigned on them.
Just remember that the police who subdued Paul Pelosi’s attacker did not try to cause him more harm. They didn’t shout contradictory orders so that his failure to do both of them was the excuse for more violence. They subdued and arrested him. Despite the fact that he had just bashed a man’s head in, the police were able to do that. Just as the police are able to do this in many other instances, but they don’t, and the fact that some people excuse this and blame the victim is implicit racism.
Police acting with reasonable restraint shouldn’t be reserved for white suspects. Whether or not a suspect gets 1 second to comply before police manhandle them or a reasonable amount to comply before police manhandle him should not be based on race.