New judge named in Pelosi attack suspect David DePape’s case
By Tom Hall
3 December 2019
The trial of David DePape, charged with fatally stabbing his neighbor for an incident involving an illegal tree hugger, has been elevated to a new judge, a former federal prosecutor who presided over the trial of former Rep. Aaron Schock.
David DePape and Aaron Schock
David DePape is charged with first-degree murder in the stabbing death of his neighbor. Aaron Schock, a convicted murderer and former congressman, was indicted on federal charges in the death of his wife, who was shot and killed in their Virginia Capitol Hill home in 2013.
The judge handling the case is Robert E. Lamberth III, who spent 35 years on the Federal Reserve Board.
Lamberth was nominated to his position by President Bill Clinton and confirmed by the United States Senate in 1993. He was a law professor at the University of Virginia, and before that had been an assistant U.S. attorney and chief of the tax division of the United States Attorney’s Office in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Before becoming a judge, Lamberth was the government’s star witness in the Aaron Schock trial. Lamberth was a key figure in the prosecution’s case against Schock, who was sentenced to life in prison in 2013 for the murder of his wife, Carol. Lamberth testified that Schock acted as a “personal hit man” for President Bill Clinton through the Democratic party campaign in the 1996 presidential election.
Schock was a former member of the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania, serving as chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, and had become a powerful figure in the Democratic party. Schock was a close ally of Bill Clinton and was a powerful force behind two huge tax cuts.
In 1997, Clinton and President Al Gore, who would be elected the next president, reached a bargain that granted Schock a Senate seat and ended his criminal and political career. President George W. Bush later pardoned him, and Schock went on to become one of the leading Democratic critics of the Trump administration in the run-up to the November 2018 election.
Lamberth’s testimony in Schock’s trial, which
