Mr Ciccarelli recalled in an interview this week: “If you make him talk about politics, it’s over. “Because he really believes in the whole MAGA, the ‘Pizzagate,’ the election being stolen – you know, all of it, it’s all clear.”
Mr. DePape’s sympathy for the most extreme right-wing conspiracy theories is part of a growing investigation into his background.
On Monday, Mr. DePape was charged with multiple state and federal felony counts, including try to kill Mr. Pelosi82 years old, still in the local hospital after surgery. In a statement Monday, Ms. Pelosi said her husband, “is making steady progress on what will be a long recovery.”
For a time, Mr. DePape, who grew up in British Columbia, Canada and moved to California about two decades ago to pursue a relationship with a woman he met in Hawaii. For a time, he housed a woman in the East Bay area who ran an urban farm for low-income residents, and sometimes helped tend the chickens.
But in the years leading up to the attack on the Pelosi family, Mr. DePape appeared to be spending more and more time in the darkest corners of the Internet, according to Mr. Ciccarelli. After working together for a few years, Mr. Ciccarelli helped Mr. DePape get off the street, moving him to a friend’s garage in Richmond, Calif.
Mr Ciccarelli said: “Once he was in the house, he had more time to use the computer. “Because when you’re living under a tree, you don’t have a plug.”
On Saturday, the FBI raided a Richmond garage and seized two hammers, a sword and a pair of gloves.
