DePape has been described on Twitter alternately as a far-right extremist and a nudist who sold handmade jewelry.
He also had ties to a Berkeley nudist activist named Gypsy Taub, according to California State Sen. Scott Wiener, D-San Francisco.
“She was the ringleader and she was extremely aggressive and creepy,” Wiener told Fox News Digital Friday. “And I think he was one of the people in her work.”
They weren’t “regular” nudity activists either, he said. They were aggressive, and she embraced 9/11 denials and has a criminal past.
According to an Alameda County District Attorney’s Office press release from last summer, a woman named Oxane Taub who shared the address was convicted of more than 20 charges after stalking a 14-year-old boy she had become “fixated on” and attempted to kidnap.
“Over the course of 14 months, she sent him numerous obsessive emails, created blogs directed at him, used his friends to send him messages and eventually tried to abduct him a few blocks from his school in Berkeley,” District Attorney Nancy O’Malley’s office said at the time. “While the case was pending, Taub also tried to dissuade the victim from testifying.”
Separate court filings show a 2017 lawsuit over Wiener’s anti-nudity ordinance was filed by a plaintiff named Oxane “Gypsy” Taub.
The FBI arrived at Taub’s address Friday afternoon and asked a young man there about DePape. He told them DePape hadn’t been there in years.
Facebook disabled DePape’s profile early Friday and declined to answer questions. At least two online blogs under DePape’s name are stocked with posts from the years of 2007 and 2022 speaking of “censorship,” “Big Brother,” and pedophiles. One contained calls for violence and antisemitic content. It was not immediately clear that he was responsible for the posts, and San Francisco police did not immediately respond to questions about DePape’s online presence.