Within hours of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s husband being attacked by a hammer-wielding intruder at the couple’s home, a slew of unsubstantiated claims began to circulate in fringe far-right circles, contradicting the official police account of what happened.
One of the most widely circulated myths about the attack is that Pelosi and his attacker, David DePape, were in a relationship and had a drunken brawl.
There is also an online claim that both DePape and Pelosi were in their underwear when police arrived, or that the two men knew each other and were friends prior to the attack.
But the FBI complaint against DePape quotes a witness as saying he was dressed “in all black” carrying a large black bag on his back, and, according to the complaint, Pelosi did not know DePape.
Another claim circulating is that two blogs and a Facebook account, which show signs that DePape was radicalised, were fake and only created on the day of the attack to support the narrative that he believed in far-right conspiracy theories.
But the BBC has screenshots of the blogs which show he had made posts as early as August, weeks before the attack.
Many of these misleading claims have since gone viral after being amplified by new Twitter chief Elon Musk and a number of conservative influencers.