Woman who stormed Pelosi's office given 3-year jail term

A Pennsylvania woman who steered a group of rioters toward House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office Jan. 6, 2021, and directed others inside the Capitol to steal a laptop computer was sentenced in U.S. District Court in Washington on Thursday to three years in prison.

The woman, Riley June Williams, 24, was convicted in November of several charges, including felony civil disorder and impeding officers trying to defend the Capitol Rotunda. The jury deadlocked on whether she had played a role in the theft of the computer, which Pelosi used for Zoom calls during the coronavirus pandemic, and whether her actions amounted to obstruction of Congress' certification of the 2020 electoral vote.

Prosecutors reiterated their view Thursday that Williams had acted as an “accelerant” at the Capitol attack by marshaling those around her to form a “human battering ram,” pushing through police lines and ultimately forcing their way into the House speaker's office.

They said that Williams, who was 22 at the time, had become “obsessed” with far-right activist Nick Fuentes and the Groyper Army, a White nationalist organization that was a vocal proponent of the false claim that Donald Trump won the 2020 election. Williams boasted about stealing items from the speaker's office while taking great pains to cover her tracks in the weeks after the riot, prosecutors said.

Williams' lawyer, Lori Ulrich, told Judge Amy Berman Jackson that Williams had been “played and manipulated” at an impressionable age and led to believe false claims about the election that were perpetuated by a number of “grown, adult men” such as Fuentes, her father and Trump.