House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's laptop went missing during the Jan. 6 insurrection – ensuing an FBI raid of an Alaskan home and ending with the arrest of New York mother and son.
Maryann Mooney-Rondon, 55, and her son, Rafael Rondon, 23, of Watertown, New York, were arrested Friday in connection with the stolen laptop, according to reporting by KTVU.
Both also face other charges related to the riot at the Capitol and Rafael Rondon faces possession of an unregistered sawed-off shotgun charge.
Mother and son appeared in federal court last Friday in Syracuse, New York, and were released pending further proceedings, according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of New York.
Mooney-Rondon allegedly admitted to being in both the Capitol the day of the riots and Pelosi's conference room. She allegedly provided gloves or a scarf to a man to steal Pelosi's laptop without leaving fingerprints.
"He asked, he said, give me - I don't know if it was gloves or a scarf I was wearing - and like I said he scared me," she said, according to the statement
Mooney-Rondon then said she believes she saw the man put the computer in his backpack. Her son told investigators that he thinks he might have pushed the computer "in his bag a little bit using a glove 'cause he didn't want to get his fingerprints on it," said the document.
"So I assisted him a little bit, and that was probably stupid of me," he said, according to the document.
Mother and son then entered the Senate Gallery, but after seeing it overrun with protesters, left the building altogether.
Both confirmed they were pictured in photos of the riot distributed by the FBI
Paul and Marilyn Hueper were in Washington for then-President Donald Trump's rally that preceded the breach at the Capitol but said they didn't take part in that. The FBI raided their Homer, Alaska, business in late April.
Photos of the Mooney-Rondon and Marilyn Hueper showed they had similar hairstyles and wore a similar black coat that day. Hueper said it was a case of mistaken identity.
She said that when an FBI agent arrived at their business, they were looking for Nancy Pelosi's laptop.
According to an FBI statement, the search warrant was obtained for the Alaska residence "based in part on evidence showing that residents (a married couple) trespassed on the ground of the U.S. Capitol." Two people in Homer identified Marilyn Hueper as being the person seen in photos taken inside the Capitol during the riot, according to the document.
But according to the document, "there is probable cause" to believe the mother and son are the two people shown in the photographs, especially considering their alleged admissions to being there and other evidence.
