Man charged in Pelosi attack calls TV to apologize for not being ‘better prepared’

The man accused of attacking Paul Pelosi with a hammer made a bizarre phone call to a San Francisco television newsroom, lamenting that he was not “better prepared” for the attack.

David DePape on the same day authorities released body camera footage of the October incident, called KTVU from the San Francisco County Jail, where he is being held for attempted murder. He spoke for more than five minutes to a reporter, who was not allowed to challenge the suspect or ask follow-up questions, according to the station.

In October, DePape allegedly broke into the Pacific Heights home of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her husband, Paul, 82, who was assaulted and hospitalized after the incident.

On Friday, the suspect told KTVU that he got “the names and addresses of the targets so that I can pay them a visit…discuss their bad behavior.”

He continued; “I want to apologize to everyone. I messed up. What I did was really wrong. I’m so sorry I didn’t get more. It’s my fault. No one else does. Is to blame. I should have come better prepared.

DePape, who has pleaded not guilty, reportedly told San Francisco police after the assault that he planned to hold Ms Pelosi hostage, interrogate her and harm her if she “lies”.

“DePape articulated [that] he viewed Nancy as the ‘ringleader’ of the lies told by the Democratic Party,” read an FBI complaint. “If Nancy were to tell DePape the ‘truth’ he would let her go, and if she ‘lied’ he was going to break her ‘kneecaps’.”

In his Friday appeal to KTVU, DePape also denounced “fascists” and promised to create a website – although he remains behind bars – that would be “out of reach of tyrannical global fascists and their censors of Internet”.

The suspect, 42, had a checkered history in the San Francisco area, but in 2012 he was described as “megalomaniac and so out of touch with reality” by Linda Schneider, who had known him for several years and told CNN that she had cut off contact when her ideas “seemed so dangerous”.