Riot on Capitol Hill: Woman Accused of Stealing Pelosi’s Laptop Sentenced

A woman who was charged with helping to steal then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop during the January 6, 2021, assault of the United States Capitol has been sentenced to three years in prison on riot-related charges.

Riley June Williams, 23, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was sentenced Thursday despite a jury in november failure to reach a verdict on the charge of “aiding and abetting the theft of the laptop.”

In November, the jury was also deadlocked on the charge of obstructing an official proceeding, a reference to the disruption of Congress by protesters, who were gathering to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory when the riot broke out.

Instead, Williams was found guilty of four other charges, including felony disruption.

Requesting that U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson sentence Williams to seven years and three months in prison, prosecutors called the convicted woman an “accelerator” who “exacerbated the chaos.”

“Where others backed down, she pushed on,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.

Meanwhile, Williams’ defense said her youth and gender set her apart from most people present on Jan. 6.

“In other ways, he is similar to many of the other January 6 defendants with no criminal records, who were caught by the mob that day, acting impulsively and without thinking about the consequences of their actions,” the defense wrote.

They requested a one-year prison term for Williams, who was 22 at the time of the attack on the Capitol.

Jackson’s three-year sentence handed down Thursday also included three years of supervised release and a $2,000 restitution fee, according to the US Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia.

Prosecutors said Williams was an ardent supporter of the white national “Groyper” movement, led by online personality Nick Fuentes, who dined infamously with Trump and rapper Kanye West, now known as Ye, at Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in November 2022.

Prosecutors said Williams became “obsessed” with Fuentes while pushing unsubstantiated claims of fraud spread by Trump in the wake of his 2020 election loss.

William’s defense had argued that his political beliefs should not be taken into account in sentencing.

But prosecutors detailed how Williams participated in a day of destruction on January 6, after arriving in Washington, DC wearing an “I’m with Groyper” T-shirt.

she attended Trump’s “Stop the Steal” Rally before heading to the Capitol where he entered through a door in the Senate wing two minutes after other rioters breached the entrance, prosecutors said.

Inside the Capitol, he used men in helmets and body armor as a “human battering ram” to break through police lines, they said.

Meanwhile, in Pelosi’s office, he stole a sledgehammer and encouraged another rioter to grab a laptop from a table.

“When the other rioter later tampered with the laptop and its cables, Williams filmed the theft she had just ordered and encouraged, and then instructed the rioter, ‘Dude, put on gloves!’” prosecutors said in court documents.

In all, Williams spent nearly 90 minutes inside the Capitol, prosecutors said.

Before his arrest, prosecutors alleged that Williams also destroyed evidence, deleted his social media accounts, reset his iPhone and used software to wipe his computer.

That was after Williams bragged online that he had stolen Pelosi’s gavel, laptop and hard drives and that he “gave the electronic devices, or attempted to give them, to unspecified Russian individuals,” prosecutors said.

“To date, neither the laptop nor the deck have been recovered,” they said in a June 2022 court filing.

Some 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riot. More than 400 have been sentenced, and more than half of them received prison terms ranging from seven days to 10 years.