Pennsylvania woman found guilty in US Capitol riot case

Jury convicts defendant Riley June Williams on six counts however is cut up on whether or not she stole Nancy Pelosi’s laptop computer.

Riley June Williams
Prosecutors depicted Riley June Williams of Pennsylvania as directing different rioters of their assault on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 [File: Dauphin County Prison/AP Photo]

A Pennsylvania girl accused of storming the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021, has been convicted on six federal counts, together with civil dysfunction, theft of presidency property and assaulting the police.

However on Monday, the jury deciding Riley June Williams’ case couldn't attain a unanimous verdict on two additional fees, together with whether or not she stole a laptop computer from the workplace of Home Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

US District Choose Amy Berman Jackson ordered Williams, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, to be taken into custody after the jury delivered its verdict.

Williams is amongst an estimated 900 defendants arrested in connection to the Capitol assault, which happened because the US Congress was certifying Joe Biden because the winner of the 2020 presidential election.

The assault got here within the wake of then-President Donald Trump’s “Cease the Steal” rally, the place Trump falsely claimed to have received the election “by a landslide”.

Williams attended the rally wearing a T-shirt that learn, “I’m with groyper,” a reference to a loose-knit group of white supremacists who align themselves with Nick Fuentes, a proponent of the “America First” motion.

She then joined hundreds of rioters who entered the Capitol constructing, forcing legislators to evacuate.

Movies from that day present Williams directing different rioters to “push, push, push” in opposition to federal regulation enforcement as they tried to clear the Capitol Rotunda. She additionally pointed rioters in direction of a staircase that results in Pelosi’s workplace.

In a June courtroom submitting, prosecutors depicted Williams as being “among the many entrance line of rioters”, serving as a frontrunner to others.

“She engaged in repeated purposeful bodily clashes and verbal altercations with federal regulation enforcement officers and instructed others to do the identical,” prosecutors wrote.

One other video, posted to Williams’s social media, reveals what seems to be the theft of a Hewlett-Packard laptop computer from Pelosi’s workplace. A voice that prosecutors establish as Williams could be heard saying, “Dude, placed on gloves,” earlier than a pair of gloved fingers seize the pc.

Williams later boasted on social media that she took Pelosi’s gavel and laborious drives. “Up to now, neither the laptop computer nor the gavel has been recovered,” prosecutors stated.

Within the days following the Capitol assault, a witness referred to as the Federal Bureau of Investigation with data that Williams “meant to ship the pc machine to a buddy in Russia, who then deliberate to promote the machine to SVR, Russia’s overseas intelligence service”.

Williams denies the allegations, claiming they have been “made-up” by an ex-boyfriend.

Throughout her trial, prosecutors linked Williams to an extremist philosophy referred to as “accelerationism”, which views Western governments as corrupt and makes an attempt to speed up their demise.

“She not solely particularly sought to dam Congress from certifying the Electoral School vote, but in addition to undermine and hinder the federal government extra usually,” prosecutors wrote in courtroom filings.

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