A New York woman whose hand was seen touching the laptop that was stolen from Nancy Pelosi’s office during the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was sentenced along with her son for their roles in the riot and theft.
Maryann Mooney-Rondon, 57, was sentenced to five years of probation, with the first 12 months to be served in home incarceration, authorities said. She was also ordered to pay $3,658 in restitution, a $7,500 fine, and perform 350 hours of community service, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release.
Her son, Rafael Rondon, 25, was sentenced to five years of probation, consecutive to a separate federal sentence in the Northern District of New York, with the first 12 months to be served in home incarceration. In addition to the sentence, he was ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution and perform 350 hours of community service.
U.S. District Judge Jia Cobb said the duo were not criminal masterminds, NBC News reported.
“I’m not suggesting that you two are stupid or idiots,” she said but called it “juvenile” behavior. “I just think that they were acting very stupidly. No offense.”
Rafael Rondon Rondon, who admitted helping a man trying to rip cords from a laptop in then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office, said, “I made a stupid mistake,” the network reported.
Right: Marian Mooney-Rondon. Center: Rafael Rondon. (Images via FBI court filings.)
Mooney-Rondon said she had “a very bad lapse of judgment.”
“I’m a very — generally — measured, calculated person. I think things through. How the heck that happened, I really don’t have a clue,” she said, the network reported.
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According to the statement of stipulated facts, Mooney-Rondon drove with her son Rafael Rondon from Watertown — some 320 miles northwest of New York City — to the Washington, D.C., area on Jan. 5, 2021, to attend Donald Trump’s so-called “Stop the Steal” rally near the White House on Jan. 6.
At that event, Trump urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight like hell” against Congress’ certification of Joe Biden’s win in the 2020 presidential election. Mooney-Rondon joined that march and entered the building at around 2:23 p.m., around 10 minutes after the building was initially breached by violent rioters who smashed windows and broke doors.
She and her son made their way to then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office suite, where they apparently discussed stealing the laptop that they believed belonged to the top Democrat in the House at the time.
“It would be interesting to see what’s on that hard drive,” Mooney-Rondon apparently told an as-yet-unidentified man, according to court documents. She then provided that man with her gloves so that he could “retrieve the laptop computer without leaving fingerprint evidence on the device.” The man then took the computer.
Afterward, Mooney-Rondon and her son were seen in the Senate Gallery, where they stole a bag containing an “emergency escape hood,” which contains an air-filtering device that members of Congress and their staff keep on hand to use in emergencies. They eventually left the building after about 30 minutes inside at 2:52 p.m.
Law&Crime’s Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.
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