Paul Pelosi did not know the man who attacked him in his home Oct. 28, according to San Francisco police and federal officials.
Neither Paul Pelosi nor the man charged in the attack were wearing only underwear at the time of the attack. An erroneous news report that said the alleged assailant was wearing underwear was later corrected.
An Oct. 28 attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, triggered a firestorm of misinformation that spread rapidly through right-wing communication networks — and on social media, where the false claims were amplified by public figures with millions of followers.
For example, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza repeatedly tweeted the unfounded claim that when police first saw the man who was charged in the attack, he was wearing only underwear. D’Souza, who made the debunked election fraud film "2,000 Mules," has 2.5 million followers on Twitter, and the tweets have been liked tens of thousands of times.
Elon Musk, who took over as Twitter’s owner Oct. 27, also fueled an unsubstantiated narrative that Pelosi knew his assailant when he tweeted a link to an article that claimed Pelosi had gotten into a drunken fight with a male prostitute. The article originated on a website known for spreading misinformation. Musk’s tweet was later deleted.
The Pelosi family has frequently been the subject of mis- and disinformation and demonization.
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