There has been skepticism among some about the official narrative of what occurred during the Oct. 18 assault against Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), in part because certain details of that official narrative have inexplicably changed or been contradicted by other reported information.
One example is the question of who opened the front door of the Pelosi residence in San Francisco, as the Justice Department asserted that responding officers opened the door while local sources insist that evidence shows Pelosi himself opened the door, National Review reported.
The claim that it was Pelosi who opened the door of his home when the police arrived, and not the officers themselves, is reportedly based on a review of the footage of the body cameras worn by the responding officers from the San Francisco Police Department.
Body-cam footage shows Pelosi opening the door
On Nov. 11, a reporter for the local NBC Bay Area station, Bigad Shaban, reported that an unnamed source “familiar with the Pelosi investigation who personally viewed the body camera footage” had informed him that the footage showed that Pelosi had opened his front door when the police arrived at the home around 2:30 am.
According to Shaban, that comports with the narrative of events in the indictment filed by the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office, which asserted that Pelosi had opened the door of his home when the responding officers arrived.
It also aligns with the initial criminal complaint filed on Oct. 31 by the DOJ, in which the alleged assailant himself, David DePape, is quoted as saying in his interview with investigators that “Pelosi ran over and opened” the door after officers had knocked to announce their arrival.
A retracted viral NBC report tells the similarly contradictory story
Further, that particular detail about Pelosi, and not the police, being the one who opened the door was also included in the immediately retracted and deleted Nov. 4 report from NBC News correspondent Miguel Almaguer, who has since been suspended by the network, according to the Daily Beast.
In that deleted report based on unnamed law enforcement sources, Almaguer claimed, “After a ‘knock and announce,’ the front door was opened by Mr. Pelosi. The 82-year-old did not immediately declare an emergency or tried to leave his home but instead began walking several feet back into the foyer toward the assailant and away from police.”
All of that, however, starkly contradicts the official narrative of events within the superseding federal indictment issued on Nov. 9, which asserted that “The two officers who approached the door had their body-worn cameras activated. The two officers opened the door to see the foyer of the Pelosi Residence.”
DA says Pelosi may need to “explain” his actions to a jury
National Review also noted that the local NBC reporter Shaban also interviewed San Francisco DA Brooke Jenkins for his report, and though she declined to “speculate” on why Pelosi reportedly took certain actions — such as answering the door but not attempting to flee his assailant — she also did not contradict those reports.
Instead, Jenkins suggested that Pelosi “will one day need to explain, right, to potentially a jury why he did what he did and what thought process was going on in his mind” at that time.