Court Battles

Woman accused of stealing Pelosi’s laptop formally charged

A Pennsylvania woman this week was formally charged with stealing Speaker Nancy Pelosi‘s (D-Calif.) laptop during the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol.

Riley June Williams, 22, was accused of stealing the laptop out of Pelosi’s office in January and then seeking to sell it to Russians. She was arrested for the alleged crime just weeks after the riot and was formally charged this week, according to an indictment that was unsealed on Thursday.

Williams was also charged with resisting police. As of Thursday, she had not entered a plea, according to CNN.

The FBI said in court documents that Williams allegedly recorded video of an HP laptop in Pelosi’s office during the riot. In the video, she reportedly instructs a man to put on gloves when handling the laptop.

“Dude, put on gloves,” she said as the video shows a gloved hand remove the laptop from a desk, CNN reported.

Court documents from the FBI also detail that a social media account attributed to using the username “Riley” shared a post bragging about stealing from Pelosi and taking the lawmaker’s “hard drives.”

A witness also alleged in court documents in January that Williams sought to “send the computer device to a friend in Russia, who then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service,” but those plans reportedly fell through for unknown reasons.

The man said at the time that Williams either destroyed the computer or still had it.

Williams has since denied those allegations, CNN noted.