A U.S. Army veteran from California who was serving an 18-month sentence for disrupting Congress on January 6, 2021, was ordered released on July 12 based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling on the most frequently charged January 6 felony and its maximum 20-year prison sentence.
Jorge Aaron Riley, 46, of Sacramento, will be released “immediately” from the federal prison in Lompoc, California, by an order issued July 12 by Judge Amit Mehta of the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C. Bail request Pending resolution of a motion to set aside the judgment.
Riley’s release is the latest fallout from the Supreme Court’s ruling in a landmark case. Fisher v. United States. In a 6-3 ruling on June 28, the Supreme Court said the Department of Justice could bring obstruction charges only if it could prove that defendants interfered with the use of documents, objects or “other things” used during the counting of electoral votes that took place on January 6 at the U.S. Capitol.
Riley was arrested in January 2021 and subsequently indicted on five criminal counts, including felony obstruction and a misdemeanor related to the alleged unlawful entry on Capitol grounds. In March 2023, he accepted a plea agreement to one count of obstruction under Title 18, United States Code, Section 1512(c)(2).
FBI Original Statement of Fact During the incident, Riley was caught on multiple videos bragging about breaking into the Capitol building, saying he “smashed a window, got in through the door, forced his way in, and then just kept going further and further in,” according to the FBI.
“Tom Caldwell is literally the Richard Jewell of January 6th.”
Despite his comments, Riley was not charged with criminal damage to property or assaulting a police officer. The FBI cited Riley’s comments extensively from more than 150 Facebook posts he made on January 6 and in the days following.
“They came in and wouldn’t stop stealing so we stopped them,” he posted. “We took our country back you motherfuckers.”
While many of the defendants in the Jan. 6 case and their lawyers hailed the Supreme Court’s decision as a victory, the Justice Department does not appear to be giving up on trying to maintain the felony charges. In numerous court filings since June 28, prosecutors have expressed the view that the Supreme Court did not bar the application of Section 1512(c)(2), a law enacted in 2002 to combat corporate fraud in the wake of the Enron accounting scandal.
In Guy Wesley Reffitt, “the Court did not reject the application of section 1512(c)(2) to the January 6 indictment.” Department of Justice filings “Rather, the Court explained that the government must prove that a defendant impaired or attempted to impair the availability or integrity of records, documents, objects, or other things intended for use in a formal proceeding, such as witness testimony or intangible information.”
The Justice Department filed what appear to be new allegations in several court filings. response In probationer Tara Stottlemeyer’s motion to vacate her conviction under Section 1512(c)(2), prosecutors said she “intended to halt the certification process and to influence the votes and ballots on which the certification was based.”
Attorney William Shipley said this approach would not work. Motion to Compel They demanded that the government produce grand jury testimony proving that Stottlemyer tampered with documents and records used in the counting of electoral votes.
“It is undisputed that there is no statement in the second indictment that any records, documents, objects or anything else were damaged or manipulated by Mr. Stottlemeyer at any time on January 6, 2021,” Shipley wrote on July 5.
“There is no evidence that he engaged in any such conduct on January 6, 2021.”
Shipley said the motion was filed because “if the government suddenly comes up with some magical piece of evidence or theory to save a conviction, a failure to testify about ‘spoiled evidence’ now becomes a basis for exoneration.”
Prosecutors have sought postponements in most cases related to obstruction to allow them to more fully assess its impact. Fisher Judgment. The Supreme Court remanded the case to the U.S. Court of Appeals for “further proceedings consistent with this judgment.”
The sentencing hearing for Thomas E. Caldwell, who was convicted of obstructing official business and falsifying a document or process in the first of the Oath Keepers trials in November 2022, is scheduled for Oct. 22. Caldwell was acquitted of three other charges.
His lawyer, David Fisher, said he plans to file a new motion seeking acquittal on the obstruction of justice charge against Caldwell. Fisher Prosecutors said they would ask Judge Mehta to sentence Caldwell to 14 years in prison in the case.
“The Supreme Court has dealt a major blow to the Department of Justice’s excessive prosecution of Tom Caldwell and other J6ers,” Fischer told Blaze News. “We will ask the Court to reconsider its earlier decision denying our motion for acquittal and to acquit Tom. Tom Caldwell is very much Richard Jewell on January 6th.”
Jewell was a security guard who was falsely accused of being involved in the 1996 Atlanta Olympics bombing. Despite helping to clean up the area around a suspicious backpack that exploded a short time later, Jewell came under suspicion from the FBI and received negative press from the media as a result. He was later exonerated.
John Strand, who is serving a 32-month sentence for Section 1512(c)(2) obstruction of Congress and four misdemeanor counts, has filed a second motion for release while he awaits an appeal of his sentence.
Defense attorney Nicholas Smith said no evidence was presented at trial to show Strand destroyed evidence. Even if there was such evidence, Smith wrote, it would have to be prosecuted under Section 1512(c)(1), which is not included in Strand’s charges.
In a memorandum opinion denying Strand’s release in February 2024, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper wrote that if the Supreme Court strikes down Section 1512(c)(2), “Strand’s conviction under the same statute will likely also be overturned, as there is no evidence that he engaged in such conduct on January 6, 2021.”
