Mother and son charged with helping steal laptop from Nancy Pelosi's office

Jan. 6, 2021 U.S. Capitol Riots.
Photo credit Samuel Corum/Getty Images

During the Jan. 6 Capitol riots, hundreds of insurrectionists stormed through the U.S. Capitol building, leaving the FBI with the job of finding those responsible. During the insurrection, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi had her laptop stolen, and now a mother and son have been charged in connection to the device's theft.

Maryann Mooney-Rondon and her son Rafael Rondon were charged with multiple misdemeanors after they reportedly breached the Capitol and walked through Pelosi's office, The Washington Post reported.

The mother-son duo was seen exiting the building in escape hoods; head coverings meant to protect members of Congress from poisonous gasses, prosecutors said.

Mooney-Rondon and her son are both from Watertown, New York, and were arrested on Friday, prosecutors said.

Court documents reported that the Rondon's are facing misdemeanor charges of theft of government property, disorderly conduct in a restricted building, and felony charges for obstructing an official proceeding — the ratification of President Joe Biden's election win.

Rondon, 23, has also been charged for possessing an unregistered sawed-off shotgun. The two do not have a lawyer listed on the charging documents.

The prosecutors claimed in their court documents that they helped another rioter, not named in the documents, steal a laptop sitting on a conference table in Pelosi's office.

The laptop also appears to be the one that prosecutors allege Riley June Williams helped steal. Williams was accused by prosecutors of having filmed another person stealing the laptop and then bragging about the theft online.

Williams has been in court, and her attorney claims the allegations are false. However, both cases mention a video only a few seconds long, where a woman told someone, "Dude, put gloves on."

The 55-year-old Mooney-Rondon shared with investigators that she lent a pair of gloves to a person attempting to steal the laptop, the affidavit said.

"I'm pretty sure I saw him put it in a backpack … probably 100 percent," Mooney-Rondon told the FBI, according to the affidavit.

Her son shared with investigators that he helped the man put it in a bag.

"While we were in the office, one of the [individuals] … was trying to rip the ethernet cords to one of the laptops, and he yelled at me and my mother to help him," Rondon said to the FBI, according to the affidavit. "And I was honestly a little bit afraid. … So I assisted him a little bit, and that was probably stupid of me."

He went on to say, "I think I like pushed [it] in his bag a little bit using a glove 'cause he didn't want to get his fingerprints on it."

Investigators have been working for the last eight months to correctly identify the mother and son, which led to the raiding of another woman's home in April, HuffPost reported.

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