Riley Williams, 22, has been charged by the FBI with stealing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-California) laptop with the intention of selling it to Russia.
William was allegedly one of the rioters who stormed the U.S. Capitol building on Jan. 6.
Pelosi’s Deputy Chief Of Staff Drew Hammill previously had tweeted that a laptop from the Speaker’s office was stolen from a conference room.
The criminal case against Riley who, video footage shows, directed protesters toward Pelosi’s office during the Capitol riots. A tipster claimed that he was the former romantic partner of the defendant and that after fleeing the Capitol, she showed the tipster a video of her stealing the laptop from Pelosi’s office. The tipster said that the defendant then told him, she intended to sell the laptop to Russia’s foreign intelligence service, the SVR. It is unclear if the defendant had ties to the SVR, or if the comment was made as a joke.
The laptop has not been recovered.
