Former NFL, Ga. Southern player in Savannah arrested on Jan. 6 charges, due in DC court this week

Caption

Leander Antwione Williams, identified by the FBI as the man with a “W” on his shirt, is seen on bodycam footage in an altercation with police officers during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Credit: FBI

Former NFL and Georgia Southern University football player Leander Antwione Williams is set to appear before a Washington, D.C., federal judge Thursday, after he was arrested in Savannah late last week and charged in connection with the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol in 2021.

Federal prosecutors unsealed their criminal complaint Friday against Williams, who faces seven counts, including a felony charge of assaulting, resisting, or impeding law enforcement officers and a felony charge of civil disorder.

Williams, 31, completed one season for the Detroit Lions in 2016 as a linebacker, after having played college football at Georgia Southern University from 2011 to 2015.

He made an initial appearance in Savannah federal court on Friday, where Williams was released on a $25,000 bond.

A court-appointed attorney for Williams did not respond to GPB's request for comment on the case.

Writing in prosecutors' criminal complaint, an FBI agent alleges that Williams was among an initial group of rioters to breach the restricted perimeter of the Capitol grounds on Jan. 6, 2021, when Congress was in the process of certifying Joe Biden's 2020 electoral victory.

According to the agent, Williams pushed through a crowd of rioters who had gathered near a row of bike racks, before confronting and overpowering police officers stationed at the building's perimeter.

After Metropolitan D.C. Police officers attempted to push him away, Williams “jumped up and brought his hand and arm down forcefully” on an officer's head, the complaint states.

Law enforcement pushed Williams back down the Capitol steps, before he allegedly returned to the police line, grabbing and pushing two officers from the Capitol Police and Metro D.C. Police.

After rioters took over the plaza, Williams allegedly proceeded to the Lower West Terrace, which the agent describes as “the epicenter of some of the most chaos and violence against police officers” during the attempted insurrection.

Williams remained on the Capitol grounds until the evening, according to the complaint.

After being unable to identify Williams for nearly two years, the FBI received a tip in December 2022 pointing investigators to Williams's Instagram account, which allegedly included photographs that matched what the then-unidentified suspect had been wearing in videos of the Capitol attack.

FBI agents visited Williams's residence in July 2023, according to the complaint, where they spoke to him and observed Williams wearing on his waist a key fob with a red key matching one that the suspect on video had been wearing on his waist.

The FBI would later receive a tip in December 2023 alerting investigators to two Capitol complex employees who a tipster suggested may have been the suspect, but investigators later cleared the two employees.

It is unclear from the complaint why another 11 months would pass before Williams was arrested.

Prosecutors may have little time to work with in shepherding the case through court, as President-elect Trump is expected to end Jan. 6-related prosecutions after he takes office in two months.

Federal cases often take several months — and sometimes years — to reach a verdict, plea deal or other resolution: in another Jan. 6-related case involving a Savannah man, 22 months would pass after the case was filed before the defendant was found guilty.