The woman accused of helping steal then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop during the January 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol has been sentenced to three years in prison on riot-related charges.
Riley June Williams, 23, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was convicted Thursday after a jury failed to reach a verdict in November on a charge of “aiding and abetting the theft of a laptop computer.”
A jury was also deadlocked in November on obstruction of justice charges, which related to the disruption of Congress by protesters, which was meeting to confirm President Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory when the riots broke out.
Instead, Williams was found guilty of four other counts, including felony disorderly conduct.
Prosecutors, asking U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson to sentence Williams to seven years and three months in prison, called the convicted woman an “accelerator” who “exacerbated the disorder.”
“Where others turned back, she moved forward,” prosecutors wrote in a court filing.
Williams’ defense, however, said her youth and gender set her apart from most of those present on January 6.
“In other ways, she is similar to many of the other January 6 defendants with no prior criminal record, who were caught with the mob that day, acting impulsively and without thinking about the consequences of their actions,” the defense wrote.
They asked for a year in prison for Williams, who was 22 at the time of the attack on the Capitol.
Jackson’s three-year sentence handed down Thursday also includes three years of supervised release and $2,000 in restitution, according to the U.S. Attorney’s office for the District of Columbia.
Prosecutors said Williams was an ardent supporter of the white nationalist “Groyper” movement, led by online personality Nick Fuentes who infamously dined 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 as he pushed unsubstantiated claims of fraud spread by Trump after his 2020 election loss.
William’s defense argued that her political beliefs should not affect the sentence.
But prosecutors detailed how Williams took part in the 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 she entered through the Senate doors two minutes after other rioters stormed the entrance, prosecutors said.
Inside the Capitol, she used men in helmets and bulletproof vests like a “human battering ram” to break through police lines, they said.
Meanwhile, in Pelosi’s office, Pelosi stole a hammer and encouraged another rioter to grab a laptop from the desk.
“As the other miscreant later tampered with the laptop and its cables, Williams recorded the theft she had just ordered and encouraged, and further instructed the miscreant, ‘Dude, put your gloves on!'” prosecutors said in court documents.
In all, Williams spent nearly 90 minutes inside the Capitol, prosecutors said.
Before her arrest, prosecutors alleged Williams also destroyed evidence, deleted her social media accounts, reset her iPhone and used software to wipe her computer.
That was after Williams bragged online that she had stolen Pelosi’s hammer, laptop and hard drives and that she had “given or attempted to give electronic devices to unspecified Russian individuals,” prosecutors said.
“To date, neither the laptop nor the hammer have been recovered,” they said in a June 2022 court filing.
About 1,000 people have been charged with federal crimes related to the Capitol riots. More than 400 were convicted, and more than half of them received prison sentences ranging from seven days to 10 years.