Michael Riley was found guilty of obstruction of justice for deleting a Facebook message and suggesting that another user take down a post. However, during the trial, the jury couldn’t reach a verdict on the second charge.
After the FBI talked to a rioter, Michael Riley advised him to take down some content on Facebook that admitted that he was inside the Us Capitol on January 6.
Riley deleted his message to Hiles and hundreds of other messages with him, but told the jury he wasn’t trying to hide evidence.
The former officer told the FBI that Hiles had been pushed into the Capitol and wasn’t one of the people who attacked officers or broke things inside the building. Riley also told the jury that he didn’t think he was deleting evidence because the messages were on Facebook.
The jury was very close on the other count, but one juror seemed to be separated from the rest, so the government almost secured a guilty verdict on both counts.
Riley wrote to Jacob Hiles on January 7, 2021, that everyone who was in the building would be charged.
After deliberating across four days, jurors quickly agreed to convict Riley on one count of obstruction of justice, but one juror would not convict on the other count.
He also told the FBI that Hiles had been pushed into the Capitol and wasn’t one of the people who attacked officers or broke things inside the building.
Riley deleted his message to Hiles and hundreds of other messages with him. However, he told the jury that he didn’t think he was deleting evidence because the messages were on Facebook.
Despite working on the police force for about 25 years, he now faces up to 20 years in prison as his sentence.