Since the Oct. 28 attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, at their San Francisco home, news organizations have reported on two blogs written by a user who called himself “daviddepape.” That’s the same name as the man who has been criminally charged in the incident. But some social media and blog posts have claimed that the sites were fabricated to vilify conservatives.
“Two far-right websites attributed to David DePape to smear conservatives were fabricated — they were created Friday and deleted Saturday,” the Oct. 30 post says.
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Both blogs — called Frenly Frens and The Loving God — are no longer online, but parts of the sites were archived after the Pelosi attack and some media outlets reviewed them before they went dark. The Internet Archive, a nonprofit digital library that saves billions of web pages over time, has files showing the blogs were not created the day of the attack. And there’s no evidence to support the claim that they were created to smear conservatives.
The Washington Post reported that at least one site contained “hundreds of blog posts in recent months sharing memes in support of fringe commentators and far-right personalities. Many posts were filled with screeds against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people.”
The Washington Post traced the Frenly Frens, which was registered in August, to DePape’s name and address.
An archived version of the other blog shows posts from August.
Vice News detailed the steps it took to trace the blogs to DePape.
“Public records indicate that there’s only one person named David DePape in the state of California,” Vice said. “An SFgate article from 2013 about a Bay Area woman named Gypsy Taub, who was planning a naked wedding, identified ‘David DePape’ as the best man and a ‘hemp jewelry maker.’ The article also reported the two lived together. In 2007, a blog under the name David DePape posted several articles on a crafting site about making hemp jewelry. One post links to The Loving God.”
Vice News said it found identical posts on Frenly Frens and on The Loving God, including one post featuring a screenshot of a 2016 email to Taub. “Some of the most frequent posts are screenshots of text message arguments that he’s had with a family member,” Vice said.
We rate claims that these blogs were created the same day Pelosi was attacked to smear conservatives Pants on Fire!
