According to a charging document filed by the FBI, a woman stole a laptop or a hard drive from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Jan. 6 Capitol riots and intended to deliver it to Russian intelligence services.
In one of the stranger situations surrounding the Capitol attack, Pennsylvania woman Riley Williams, 22, planned to deliver the device to a Russian friend, who then planned to sell it to the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, according to an FBI statement of facts filed on Jan. 17. The plan was reported to the FBI by a former romantic partner of Williams’s.
Williams turned herself into law enforcement on Jan. 18. The FBI identified her in videos taken during the riot, including a 32-minute video report from U.K. news station ITV.
While Williams allegedly destroyed the device, the incident has raised national security and cybersecurity questions. The laptop missing from Pelosi’s office was used only for presentations, according to a staffer.
It’s difficult to understand the suspect’s motivations, said Adam Darrah, director of intelligence at Vigilante, a threat intelligence firm. “If we accept the premise that this was a premeditated act in order to steal U.S. government property … or secrets and then pass them to a foreign government, then we are talking about some very serious implications,” he told the Washington Examiner.
All lawmakers and their staff members are high-priority targets for adversaries, including technical and human intelligence operations, he said. “To think otherwise is naive.”
The scenario of a stolen laptop from Pelosi’s office raises serious concerns, added Adam Levin, founder and chairman of cybersecurity vendor Cyberscout. The speaker of the House is third in line of succession for the presidency, he noted.
“If Speaker Pelosi’s computer was stolen, the implications would be limited only by the amount of privileged data on that machine, which could be presidential-grade,” he told the Washington Examiner. “We cannot know what was on her machine without further compromising national security, but we have to assume the worst. If the story is true, this is a very serious compromise.”
The FBI document accused Williams of three minor criminal offenses, including knowingly entering a restricted building or grounds and disrupting the orderly conduct of government business.
But Williams could face other charges, including felony theft of government property, said former federal prosecutor Neama Rahmani.
If she tried to access the laptop, she could face hacking charges under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, Rahmani told the Washington Examiner. Also, depending on the laptop’s contents, additional espionage-related charges could come into play, including unlawfully accessing national defense information, unauthorized transfer of defense equipment, or transmission of classified information to an unauthorized person.
Most espionage offenses are punishable by up to 10 years in prison. But a person convicted of gathering and delivering defense information to aid a foreign government could face life in prison or even a death sentence, Rahmani said.
While some of the people who stormed the Capitol suggested they did so at the request of President Donald Trump, “There is no legal defense to committing a crime because one believes he or she is acting at the direction of the president,” Rahmani said. With Trump leaving office without pardoning the rioters, they “will have to defend their cases on the merits in federal court.”
