Update, 1/28/23: Well, well, well. It turns out that Miguel Almaguer’s report was inaccurate in one key detail — Paul Pelosi didn’t “walk away” from police after opening the door. John has more on that development after police finally — after more than two months — released the bodycam video. One has to wonder whether police misled the NBC reporter to distract from the oddly passive response of the two officers before DePape starting battering Pelosi with the hammer. That might explain why NBC took Almaguer off the air, too.

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Original post with original updates:

What actually transpired at the Pelosi household last week? We know the basics: a nutcase attacked an elderly man and nearly killed him after breaking into the house. We also know that Joe Biden and fellow Democrats have attempted to graft this attack onto their midterm “democracy in peril” messaging, including Biden’s national address this week, while simultaneously attempting to tamp down discussion of the facts of the case.

However, NBC offers new details this morning on the police response before the attack  — and Paul Pelosi’s curious reaction to it, at least at first. According to their sources, Pelosi himself opened the door when police arrived, and rather than walk out, began to walk back toward assailant David DePape. DePape even assured police that everything was “good,” which — given the broken window — police clearly didn’t believe.

Only then did the hammer attack occur, prompting an immediate response from the surprised officers, according to NBC:

EXCLUSIVE: New details emerge about the attack on Paul Pelosi. @Miguelnbc shares what happened once police arrived. pic.twitter.com/lTaJYDqgdi

— TODAY (@TODAYshow) November 4, 2022

None of this changes the basics of the case. DePape is still a lunatic who attacked an elderly man with a hammer after breaking into his house. Paul Pelosi is still lucky to be alive. But the sequence suggested by Miguel Almaguer raises some questions as to whether the attack itself might have been avoided, and what exactly was going on in the house before police arrived.

For instance, why would Pelosi have walked back toward DePape after opening the door to the police? Why not tell them he was in danger? NBC provides a couple of speculative opinions to answer the obvious question this report raises, but without any factual substantiation. They bring in a former FBI analyst to essentially claim that fear makes people do strange things, which may be true but still leaves the conclusion that it was a strange thing to do. The easiest thing to do would have been to walk the other way and tell officers of the danger inside. That would be even more true in the case of an intruder than, say, a domestic-violence situation, where the “fear makes you do strange things” explanation might apply more.

More oddities emerge, too. The new details don’t include whether Pelosi had been attacked prior to the officer’s arrival on scene; Miguel Almaguer notes that explicitly, in fact. If Pelosi was injured prior to their arrival, though, why would police have allowed him to go back into a residence with evidence of burglary apparent? In fact, one has to wonder why they would have let Pelosi do that even without apparent injuries, given the scene at that moment. And why weren’t the officers informed that the residence belonged to the Speaker of the House, who is second in line for succession to the presidency and could have also been inside the home at the time?

Body-cam video and the police reports would be helpful in this case to suss out the answers to the questions raised. At the moment, though, those are not available — and may not be for a long time. As David Strom wrote yesterday, the media doesn’t seem interested in digging deeper into the oddities of this case, and in fact are casting aspersions on anyone looking for some actual journalism in this case as conspiracy-theory kooks.

Fortunately, Pelosi has survived the ordeal and is now at home after surgery and a week in the hospital:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul Pelosi, was released from the hospital Thursday, a week after he suffered a brutal attack by an assailant who broke into the couple’s home in San Francisco.

Pelosi, 82, underwent surgery at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital to repair a skull fracture and injuries to his right arm and hands after the attack last Friday. …

In a statement after his release, Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said her husband “remains under doctors’ care as he continues to progress on a long recovery process and convalescence,” adding, “He is now home surrounded by his family who request privacy.”

That’s normally reasonable on their part, but not on the law-enforcement responses from the local police and the Capitol Police. We need a few more answers first, especially with Democrats from Joe Biden on down playing politics with this incident for electoral gain. Biden made it a matter of national public interest, and that means we need to drill down all the way to get those questions answered … whether “journalists” agree or not.

Update: So much for even this level of transparency from establishment media. At some point, NBC deleted the tweet of this video that actually aired this morning, and without posting any sort of explanation. That’s pretty lame, even considering the nature of this topic.

Update: WCNC has posted the original video report to YouTube. For now, anyway.