Pelosi hammer attacker David DePape tearfully testifies that he was radicalized by Gamergate

DePape and Pelosi fighting over the hammer in a still from bodycam footage

David DePape, the right-wing conspiracy-theorizing anti-semite who broke into former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's house and attacked her husband with a hammer, had a sad on the stand at his trial yesterday.

On Tuesday, in sometimes tearful testimony, Mr DePape told the court he used to have left-wing political beliefs before a political transformation that started when he was living in a garage without a toilet or shower, playing video games for hours at a time.

Giving evidence for more than an hour, he said that in the course of looking up information about video games he became interested in Gamergate, an anti-feminist campaign that targeted prominent women in the gaming world and became a huge online trend starting in 2014. He began listening to right-wing podcasters and watching political YouTube videos. "At that time, I was biased against Trump," Mr DePape said, "but there's, like, truth there. So if there's truth out there that I don't know, I want to know it."

DePape, 43, is charged with attempted kidnapping of a federal official and assaulting a federal official's family member. He will later be tried on state charges of attempted murder, assault with a deadly weapon and threats to a public official. If found guilty he faces having all his video games taken away, among other punishments.