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WASHINGTON (AP) — A Pennsylvania pistillate linked to the far-right “Groyper” extremist question was convicted Monday of respective national charges aft prosecutors said she was portion of a radical that stormed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s bureau during the Jan. 6, 2021, onslaught connected the U.S. Capitol.
Riley June Williams was recovered blameworthy of six national counts, including civilian disorder. But the assemblage deadlocked connected 2 different charges, including “aiding and abetting the theft” of a laptop that was stolen from Pelosi’s bureau suite during the insurrection. The assemblage besides failed to scope a unanimous verdict connected whether Williams obstructed an authoritative proceeding.
U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson ordered Williams beryllium taken into custody aft the assemblage delivered its verdict.
Williams joined a mob’s onslaught connected the Capitol aft attending the “Stop the Steal” rally, wherever then-President Donald Trump addressed thousands of supporters earlier that day. Entering Pelosi’s office, she recovered a laptop connected a array and told different rioter, “Dude, enactment connected gloves,” earlier idiosyncratic with a achromatic gloved manus removed the computer, according to prosecutors.
Williams aboriginal bragged online that she stole Pelosi’s gavel, laptop and hard drives and that she “gave the physics devices, oregon attempted to springiness them, to unspecified Russian individuals,” prosecutors said successful a June 2022 tribunal filing.
“To date, neither the laptop nor the gavel has been recovered,” they added.
A witnesser described arsenic a erstwhile romanticist spouse of Williams told the FBI that she intended to nonstop the stolen laptop oregon hard thrust to a person successful Russia who planned to merchantability it to Russia’s overseas quality service. But the witnesser said Williams kept the instrumentality oregon destroyed it erstwhile the transportation fell through, according to an FBI agent’s affidavit.
Williams, a nonmigratory of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, was arrested little than 2 weeks aft the riot. She was charged with theft of authorities property, assaulting constabulary and obstructing the associated league of Congress for certifying the Electoral College vote. Williams besides faced misdemeanor charges, including disorderly oregon disruptive conduct.
Williams denied stealing the laptop erstwhile the FBI questioned her. She claimed her ex-boyfriend “made up” the allegation, prosecutors said.
Before she near the Capitol, Williams joined different rioters successful pushing against constabulary officers trying to wide the building’s Rotunda. Police assemblage camera captured the confrontation, arsenic Williams encouraged different rioters to “keep pushing,” and “push, push, push.”
Williams was wearing a garment bearing the message, “I’m with groyper,” erstwhile she entered the Capitol. The word “groyper” refers to followers of “America First” question person Nick Fuentes, who has utilized his online level to spew antisemitic and achromatic supremacist rhetoric.
Other followers of Fuentes person been charged with Jan. 6-related crimes, including former UCLA pupil Christian Secor, 24, of Costa Mesa, California. Secor, who was waving an “America First” emblem erstwhile helium entered the Capitol, was sentenced past period to 3 years and six months successful prison.
Williams’ online footprint besides included worldly associated with “accelerationism,” a convulsive ideology that asserts “Western governments are corrupt and unsalvageable, and truthful the champion happening a idiosyncratic tin bash is accelerate their illness by sowing societal chaos and generating governmental conflict,” prosecutors said.
In December 2020, Williams attended astatine slightest 2 rallies protesting the result of the statesmanlike election. Both rallies featured speeches by Fuentes.
“Her admiration of Nick Fuentes, self-identification arsenic a ‘Groyper,’ content successful Accelerationism, and enactment for unit each circumstantially amusement the mixed motives down her actions connected January 6: she not lone specifically sought to artifact Congress from certifying the Electoral College vote, but besides to undermine and obstruct the authorities much generally,” prosecutors wrote.
Before her trial, Williams’ attorneys questioned the relevance of her governmental activities and ideology.
“There is nary grounds linking her beliefs and actions anterior to January 6 with her actions that day,” they wrote. “There is simply a morganatic hazard that jurors volition justice Ms. Williams simply for the unpopular and utmost ideologies she has embraced successful the past, alternatively than for the existent crimes with which she is charged.”
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