Riley June Williams, the 22-year-old woman accused of stealing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop during the Capitol riot, with plans to sell the laptop to an accomplice in Russian, appears in a video making a Nazi salute, according to Bellingcat, a British investigative journalism website.
Robert Evans from Bellingcat reported;
In an interview with ITV on January 16, Williams’ mother described her daughter as getting caught up in the moment. She noted that Riley had been radicalized on far-right message boards but described her daughter’s main political goal as, “…wanting America to get the correct information”.
However, Bellingcat has since received information that suggests that Williams was more than just a Trump supporter caught up in the maelstrom. She is somebody who posted racist and Anti-Semitic content as well as filmed a video that appears openly pro-Nazi and promotes accelerationism (speeding up the collapse of society) as a pathway towards establishing a genocidal white supremacist state.
Several days after Williams was charged in mid-January, an antifascist activist reached out to Bellingcat with a video they believed showed her pledging allegiance to Adolf Hitler. Bellingcat has since shared the footage and findings of its investigation with NBC News.
Kelsey Vlamis from the Insider adds;
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, the concept of acceleration as it is used by white supremacists “sees modern society as irredeemable and believes it should be pushed to collapse so a fascist society built on ethnonationalism can take its place.”
Her lawyer has since said that Williams “took the president’s bait and went inside the Capitol.”
Prosecutors have said that Williams was attempting to cover up her actions by deleting posts from social media while she was on house arrest.