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Left: Riley June Williams booking photo (via Dauphin County (Penn.) Prison). Right: Williams at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (via FBI court filing).
Legal troubles for the Pennsylvania woman accused of stealing former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol continue to pile up, as she now owes an ex-boyfriend thousands of dollars for defaming him.
Riley June Williams was convicted in November 2022 of two felonies and sentenced to three years behind bars for her role in the riot, when thousands of Donald Trump supporters descended on the Capitol as Congress had begun to certify President Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win. Although prosecutors said that Williams was seen on video stealing the device and telling another rioter to “Take that f—— laptop” out of Pelosi’s office suite, she was ultimately not convicted of the theft charge.
Investigators had initially believed Williams might have tried to sell the device to Russia’s foreign intelligence services, and authorities believed that she went on the run after being identified in a video from Jan. 6, but her lawyer insisted that Williams was fleeing an abusive ex-boyfriend.
That ex, Michael Prodanov, of New Jersey, sued Williams over comments she made accusing him of abuse and domestic violence. On Oct. 16, Mercer County Superior Court Judge Douglas Hurd entered a judgment of default in his favor.
“Defendant Riley June Williams shall pay to Plaintiff the amount of $50,000 in compensation for (special damages, actual damages, nominal damages) for Defamation Per Se, and Defamation,” the order says. Hurd tacked on a restraining order against Williams, prohibiting her from “publishing per se defamatory and defamatory statements,” including on social media, about Prodanov, his business, and his personal relationships.
Williams is currently serving her sentence in federal prison.
According to his defamation complaint, filed in January 2022, Prodanov was romantically involved with Williams, but only for a short time.
“The Plaintiff and Defendant Williams were indeed in a brief tumultuous relationship, however there was no abusive behavior on the part of the Plaintiff, only the contretemps that exist in most relationships between young adults,” the complaint said.
Prodanov said he reported Williams to federal authorities and identified her as being involved with stealing Pelosi’s laptop, and told them that she had “expressed a desire to provide the stolen computer to a Russian citizen.”
The complaint said that Williams only sought a protective order against Prodanov after learning he had identified her to federal authorities.
Hurd also ordered Williams’ father and co-defendant, Cyrus “Cy” Sanders, to pay $50,000 to Prodanov as well. According to Prodanov’s complaint, Sanders posted to Facebook that Prodanov “created the false narrative against Riley Williams with Nancy Pelosi’s laptop.”
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“This is Mike the estranged stalker Russian boyfriend with a PFA against him who created this fake story against the young lady he physically and mentally abused,” Sanders allegedly wrote in a comment in response to a local news story about Williams’ arrest that had been posted to Facebook.
In his complaint, Prodanov noted that he is of Bulgarian descent and said that Sanders’ assertion that he is “a ‘Russian’ is not a slight as to the Plaintiff’s alleged ethnicity, but within context of the underlying facts and events, is instead tantamount to stating the Plaintiff is a Russian intelligence operative.”
Williams, for her part, sent a handwritten letter to the judge defending her non-response to the defamation lawsuit, and expressing her surprise that she was being sued at all.
“I was unaware that I had to answer to the plaintiff’s complaint and I apologize for this response being late,” she wrote in a letter received by the court on Sept. 20. “I’m confused on why I’m being sued for online statements when I have been legally barred from the internet since January of 2021.”
Williams insists that she has not made “any public statements” about Prodanov and says that his lawsuit is just part of his pattern of harassment, noting that she had previously obtained a Protection from Abuse order against him.
“Prodanov is a criminal stalker who I have had a PFA against and he has violated that PFA and was arrested for that violation,” her letter says. “This lawsuit is just another tactic he’s attempting to use to harrass me.”
A letter from Riley June Williams to Mercer County (N.J.) Superior Court Judge Douglas Hurd (via court filing).
In his complaint, Prodanov called the PFA order “spurious,” saying Williams had “falsely alleged that she had been stalked and harassed” by him.
Pelosi, then the speaker of the House, was especially targeted by violent rioters that day. According to a top Pelosi aide, staffers to the then-highest ranking lawmaker were forced to spend hours sheltering in place in an interior office as rioters ransacked the suite.
Read the judge’s order, below.
