In her first interview since the attack on Paul Pelosi, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the moment she first learned about the assault on her husband at their home in San Francisco.
Pelosi told CNN’s Anderson Cooper that she “was asleep” in Washington after having just returned from San Francisco the night before. All of a sudden, she said, she heard the doorbell ring.
“I hear the doorbell ring and think, ‘It’s five-something,’ I look up I see it’s five [a.m. ET],” she said in the excerpt from the full interview, set to air Monday night. “They must be at the wrong apartment.”
Then the doorbell rang again, and then Pelosi heard a “bang, bang, bang, bang bang on the door.”
“So I run to the door, and I’m very scared,” Pelosi described. “I see the Capitol Police and they say, ‘We have to come in to talk to you.'”
Pelosi said her first thoughts went to her children and grandchildren, rather than her husband.
“I’m thinking ‘my children, my grandchildren,’ she said. “I never thought it would be Paul because, you know, I knew he wouldn’t be out and about, shall we say.”
“At that time, we didn’t even know where he was, or what his condition was,” Pelosi recalled. “We just knew there was an assault on him in our home.”
Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was bludgeoned with a hammer 11 days before the election by an intruder. Authorities said the suspect broke into the family’s San Francisco and was looking for the speaker before striking the 82-year-old in the head at least once.
The intruder told police he wanted to talk to Speaker Pelosi and would “break her kneecaps” as a lesson to other Democrats. Paul Pelosi suffered a fractured skull and other injuries in what authorities said was a intentional political attack.
David DePape, 42, is being held without bail in San Francisco after entering a not guilty plea to attempted murder and other charges in San Francisco. He also faces federal charges of attempted kidnapping of an elected official.
The fringe activist who followed conspiracy theories broke into the Pelosi home, woke up Paul Pelosi and demanded to talk to “Nancy,” authorities said. When Paul Pelosi told the intruder his wife was out of town, DePape said he would wait. After Paul Pelosi called 911, officers arrived to see the two men struggling over a hammer before DePape struck Paul Pelosi at least once in the head with the hammer.
DePape later told police he wanted to kidnap the speaker and threatened to injure her “to show other members of Congress there were consequences to actions.”
Amid speculation that Pelosi might retire should Democrats lose control of the House of Representateives after Tuesday’s miterms, Cooper asked the speaker if she has made a decision about her future.
Pelosi, 82, replied that her “decision will be affected [by] what happened the last week or two.” Cooper followed up by asking if the attack on her husband will play a role in her decision.
“Yes,” she replied.
