Prosecutors: Mechanicsburg woman should spend 7+ years in prison over Capitol riot

Federal prosecutors want a Cumberland County woman who acted as an “accelerant” during the Jan. 6 insurrection at the United States Capitol to serve seven years in prison for her role.

They also want her to serve three years of supervised release, and pay $3,039 in restitution.

But Riley Williams, 24, of Mechanicsburg, is asking Federal Judge Amy Jackson to sentence her to one year and one day.

She has been in a federal jail, awaiting sentencing, since her jury trial ended in six convictions in November. A judge is expected to deliver her sentence on Feb. 22.

In the days before that hearing, attorneys on both sides have submitted memos to the court advocating their own sentences and the reasons why Williams’ sentence should be higher or lower.

Ulrich said Williams has no prior criminal record, got swept up in the mob that day and acted on impulse without thought to the consequences of her actions. Prosecutors disagreed.

“Williams’ actions on January 6, 2021 were not spontaneous, but rather the result of her deep-seated mindset that her belief that the presidential election was stolen gave her license to break the law,” prosecutors said. “Everywhere she went, Williams acted as an accelerant, exacerbating the mayhem,” prosecutors wrote.

In November, a District of Columbia jury found Williams guilty of six crimes: civil disorder; resisting or impeding certain officers; entering entering or remaining in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a capitol building; and parading, demonstrating or picketing in a capitol building.

Williams was also accused of obstructing an official congressional proceeding and aiding and abetting the theft of Nancy Pelosi’s laptop. However, the District of Columbia jury could not agree on those charges, and prosecutors moved to dismiss them.

Video footage, photos, and messages on social media showed that Williams was a fan of Nick Fuentes, a white supremacist speaker who fomented the “stop the steal” campaign in the weeks leading up to the certification of the 2020 Presidential Election.

Williams talked about going to the capitol Jan. 6, and rallied protesters, according to prosecutors. They said she organized the insurrectionists to put riot shields up front, and have everyone else push behind them to move the crowd forward. Additionally, she instructed people into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s office.

Prosecutors played videos at trial that showed Williams instructing other rioters to take Nancy Pelosi’s laptop using gloves, before they did so. After going home, Williams bragged on Discord, a social media app, that she stole Pelosi’s laptop.

But Williams’ lawyer, Lori Ulrich, told the jury that Williams was bragging because she ” wanted to be somebody.”

Williams did not even know the building she was inside, according to Ulrich. Ulrich said Williams told friends she thought she was storming the White House, the Washington Post reported.

Williams “… Participated in the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the United States Capitol—a violent attack that forced an interruption of the certification of the 2020 Electoral College vote count, threatened the peaceful transfer of power after the 2020 Presidential election, injured more than one hundred police officers and resulted in more than 2.8 million dollars in losses,” prosecutors wrote in a memorandum filed Monday.

Guidelines recommend that Williams serve between 70 and 87 months—six or seven years—in prison for the crimes she was found guilty of committing, according to prosecutors.

But Williams’ lawyer, Lori Ulrich, pushed back against that range, saying Williams should get a year and a day in prison, saying it is “reflective of the seriousness of Ms. Williams’ conduct of January 6th and provides just punishment for what she did on that day.”

Prosecutors are pushing for 87 months, the upper end of that range because of Williams’ role of not only participating in, but furtherance of, the chaos and violence of Jan. 6 as well as for the fact she destroyed evidence and showed no remorse for her crimes.

Prosecutors said following Williams’ arrest, her failure to comply with the terms of her pre-trial supervision should weigh against her.

Additionally, prosecutors say the guideline range for entering and remaining in a restricted building should be elevated because Williams committed that crime with the intent to commit a felony—namely, to obstruct a congressional proceeding.

However, Williams’ lawyer, Lori Ulrich, disagreed, saying the sentence needs to rely on the facts established at trial, and “not the Government’s dramatization of the facts that it supplied to the Probation Officer,” Ulrich said. “Ms. Williams has a due process right to a sentence based on accurate information.”

She also argued that some of the enhancements to Williams’ criminal charges are repetitive, and some of the enhancements cannot be applied because they were not proven at trial. For example, Ulrich said Williams never physically assaulted any officers, or used pepper spray to harm them, while in the capitol—unlike other defendants.

Ulrich previously asked Judge Amy Jackson to acquit Williams on one of the charges the District of Columbia jury found her guilty of—resisting or impeding officers—because there is no proof Williams intended to commit civil disorder, which is one of the elements of that crime, she said.

Immediately after the jury announced its verdict, Judge Jackson shocked Williams by ordering that she be imprisoned until her sentencing hearing. Williams enjoyed more than a year of pretrial supervision, as well as two supervised visits to the Pa, Renaissance Faire months before her trial.

Judge Jackson is scheduled to sentence Williams Feb. 22 at the E. Barrett Prettyman U.S. Courthouse.