After a lengthy federal court hearing in Washington, DC, on Tuesday, the case of Riley June Williams – a 22-year-old Pennsylvania woman accused of stealing or helping to steal a laptop from Mayor Nancy Pelosi’s office, and selling it to Russia’s foreign intelligence service – is more confused than ever.
According to a fact statement compiled by the FBI, a “former romantic partner” of Williams called the agency and claimed that Williams took the laptop during the attack on the United States Capitol and “intended to send the computer device to a friend in Russia, which then planned to sell the device to SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence service. ”The FBI added that the insider said the sale had failed for“ unknown reasons ”and that Williams still has the device or destroyed it. (Pelosi’s office confirmed that the laptop is missing, although one of his employees tweeted two days after the uprising which was “used only for presentations”.)
But during the Tuesday hearing, which aimed to define the conditions of her house arrest, her defense attorney, federal public defender AJ Kramer, argued that Williams’ house and her car were searched and she did not have her laptop. .
“In the allegation of computer theft, she is accused of helping and inciting, not theft itself,” said Kramer during the hearing. “Indeed, [law enforcement] searched everywhere, and she doesn’t have the computer. They searched the car and the house. “
After the hearing, Kramer told BuzzFeed News by phone that Williams denies all charges made against her – from the theft itself, including helping or encouraging the theft, to the allegations of attempted sales to Russia – and claimed that they were all lies invented by an ex who, as he said at the hearing, “swore Williams revenge for several things”. Williams filed for restraint against that ex, added Kramer.
Kramer added that he “thinks” that Williams never owned the laptop. The Justice Department declined to comment on this suggestion.
The FBI statement, however, includes screenshots of what appears to be Williams’s account on the social media platform Discord (which was one of the services used to organize the protests and the January 6 uprising), writing, “STOLE SHIT NANCY POLESI [sic]”AND“ I DOMT CARE I HAD DIFFICULT NANCY POLESIS DRIVES I DON’T CARE KILL ME. The document also contains several screenshots and descriptions of videos taken during the insurrection, apparently showing Williams on the Capitol, inciting other protesters and apparently directing the crowd up the stairs towards Pelosi’s office.
Screenshots of a video that informants told the FBI that Williams broadcast live on his own social media account show the hands of people in the process of picking up a laptop from a Congressional table. The FBI agent who writes the statement says the video appears to show Williams telling a man who is taking the computer to “put on gloves” and that writing about the video says “they took the laptop”.
The complaint against Williams in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia charges Williams on four counts, including helping and inciting “others to, embezzle, steal, steal” government property over $ 6,000, along with entry charges illegal and disorderly conduct that many of the other Capitol protesters faced. Justice Department attorney Kelly Smith made it clear that the government was still investigating Williams and that it was possible that she could face other charges in the future.
A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on whether another person was accused of stealing Pelosi’s laptop or recovering it.
The FBI’s fact statement accuses Williams of trying to escape before his arrest, deleting his social media accounts and changing his phone number. Williams encouraged others to delete insurrection-related messages as well, the Justice Department said. The day after his arrest warrant was officially issued, however, Williams surrendered.
Judge Zia Faruqui expressed surprise that the government was not advocating Williams’ arrest, since the allegations in the complaint against her were “quite shocking” and “read as something out of The americans, ”Referring to the TV show about Russian spies in the USA during the Cold War.
Instead of asking her to be detained, the Justice Department asked Williams to be kept under house arrest with an ankle monitor under her mother’s supervision, that she was not allowed to use any device with Internet access.
Kelly Smith, the lawyer representing the Department of Justice in the case, declined to explain why they were not asking for Williams’s arrest, saying that providing more details about the case could hamper the government’s investigation of Williams and the events of the January 6 uprising.
Smith pressed on Tuesday for a total ban on the Internet, including smartphones and televisions, and asked Williams to receive a flip phone to speak to his lawyer and receive mental health treatment.
“Our concern is that from now on the defendant will acquire new devices … that are easy to hide, and the damage that can be done can be done instantly in the cyber world,” said Smith during the hearing. “Yes, it is true that we have no evidence of the things she did after her arrest, but she was aware of public media scrutiny about her involvement during the time that she was deleting her accounts and instructing others to delete her.”
Kramer countered by saying that Williams deleted his accounts before January 6 because his ex, the same one Williams’ lawyers said warned the FBI, was logging into his accounts and sending messages to their people.
“I don’t agree with the defense characterization of when and why it deleted the accounts,” said Smith in response. The government recently acquired evidence that Williams, on January 10, instructed “one of his Discord associates to delete messages, and those messages had to do with the Capitol riot,” said Smith.
This evidence shows that Williams “is a motivated person and knows how to tell people to destroy records,” she added.
Faruqui, after Kramer told him about Williams ‘allegations against his ex, said that without further information from the government investigation, he may have to “heavily discount” the claims made by Williams’ ex, dismissing them as possibly made by someone “with an ax grind.”
“I will follow … what you are saying and I believe in these things,” said the judge to Smith, “but I also believe in Mr. Kramer. So, I wonder if there’s a megaphone being aimed at her, causing her to do bad things on the internet, or if she did it too. “
Finally, after two days, about four hours round trip, and almost 30 minutes of unregistered meetings about whether Williams should be allowed to watch TV if he was connected to the internet, Faruqui decided: Williams will be under the prison house with a monitor ankle and supervision of your mother, you will undergo a mental health assessment and will not be able to use the internet unless it is a video call with your lawyer or mental health professional. She can use a flip phone and watch TV, as long as she doesn’t use the TV to communicate with anyone.
His next hearing will be on March 25.