David DePape, the man charged with breaking into Nancy Pelosi’s house and with attacking her husband Paul Pelosi, is seriously mentally ill and has been from some time. That’s according to his former girlfriend who spoke to the San Francisco Chronicle from a women’s prison where she is now incarcerated.

“He has never been able to hold a job,” Oxane “Gypsy” Taub said Sunday evening. “He has been homeless. This person really does suffer from mental illness and that is probably why he was there at 2 a.m.”

Taub, 53, said her onetime boyfriend — who appears to have spent recent weeks posting right-wing conspiracy theories onto personal websites with no apparent audience — “is a broken child in an adult body with serious mental problems.”…

When the pair met in Hawaii in 2000, she said, DePape “didn’t know anything about politics,” but came to share her fervor for many progressive causes — though Taub also espoused conspiracy theories about the September 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C.

“I don’t think he became a Trump supporter,” Taub said Sunday. “He was against the government, but if anything he was opposed to the shadow government, against the people who really run the government and use politicians as puppets. Like Trump was a puppet. David and I were against the shadow government.”

Taub and DePape’s relationship lasted for about 15 years. She says she and DePape never disagreed about politics during that time because when she knew him he was an Obama supporter who was “more on the far left than the far right.” But DePape started living on the streets and became paranoid. The couple tried getting back together but by that point DePape was convinced he was Jesus and their relationship ended in 2015. She later heard from a friend who was serving DePape meals at a church in Berkeley that he had “completely lost his mind” and would mumble incoherently.

It appears that at some time recently DePape did pick up various right wing conspiracies. CBS News is reporting today that he had a list of other possible targets though they haven’t revealed who else was on the list yet.

The suspect in the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul Pelosi had a list of people he wanted to target, law enforcement sources briefed on the investigation confirmed to CBS News…

They have not gone so far as to call the list a “hit list,” but authorities believe the suspect may have been planning to target others, the sources said…

The suspect planned to keep Paul Pelosi tied up until the speaker got home, law enforcement sources told CBS News.

DePape apparently only had a bicycle so his ability to attack people beyond San Francisco would have been pretty limited. But CNN is reporting he came prepared for the attempted kidnapping.

The man who is alleged to have attacked Paul Pelosi, the husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, with a hammer in the couple’s San Francisco home had with him a bag that contained multiple zip ties, among other things, according to two sources who have been briefed on the incident.

In addition to the zip ties, the suspect also had duct tape on him, according to a law enforcement source…

The hammer that was used to assault Paul Pelosi was brought by DePape, according to a law enforcement source and a senior congressional aide briefed on the assault…

“Officers, while still outside of the doorway threshold, gave commands to both men to drop the hammer. Mr. DePape immediately pulled the hammer away from Mr. Pelosi and violently attacked him with the hammer,” Scott said in a Friday news conference. “The officers immediately entered, tackled the suspect, disarmed him, took the hammer away from him, and took the suspect, Mr. DePape, into custody.”

As for some of the other early reports about a third person at the home, those were corrected by SFPD yesterday.

MORE: The SFPD also says that there were only TWO people inside the Pelosi home (Paul Pelosi and DePape) when they responded, clarifying statements made at Friday’s press conference which seemed to indicate there was a third person inside the home who opened the door. (2/2)

— Tom Winter (@Tom_Winter) October 30, 2022

DePape definitely appears to be a nutcase. Instead of scribbling his ramblings in a notebook, he put his online where they apparently had no audience. The claim that he’s just a more extreme version of every other right-winger pretty offensive. He may have recently taken on some of these conspiracies but well before that he was a homeless person with a serious mental illness who was convinced he was Jesus.

If Paul Pelosi hadn’t been able to call police there’s no telling how long this lunatic might have stayed in the house or what he might have done. As bad as this attack was, it could easily have turned out much worse.