Jacob Hiles on Jan. 6, 2021 (via FBI court filings).
A convicted Jan. 6 rioter who said on social media that he “might start a revolution” before joining the crowd that descended on the U.S. Capitol that day has sued CNN for defamation.
Jacob Hiles, a charter boat captain from Virginia Beach, says that a CNN article about criminal charges filed against former U.S. Capitol Police Officer Michael Angelo Riley is “defamation per se” against Hiles. Hiles was accused of multiple misdemeanors in the Jan. 6 breach, when scores of Donald Trump supporters violently overwhelmed police and breached the Capitol building as Congress had begun to certify Joe Biden’s 2020 electoral win.
Riley was accused of obstruction of justice for sending messages to Hiles urging him to take his social media posts down placing him at the riot.
According to Hiles’ lawsuit, the CNN article defamed him in at least three ways:
a. The bold headline in much bigger font halfway through the article falsely states “Man wanted to start ‘a revolution’ on January 6.”
b. “Hiles, of Virginia, said on social media that he traveled to Washington, DC while thinking about starting ‘a revolution,’ according to investigators.”
c. “He had also posted on his Facebook page, ‘Feeling cute…might start a revolution later,’ tagging himself on Capitol Hill, according to documents supporting his arrest.”
These statements are “per se defamatory because they falsely accuse Hiles of felonious criminal activity of which he was not charged or convicted, either directly or indirectly,” and his reputation has been injured as a result, the complaint says.
“The statements accuse and impute to Plaintiff the intention to overthrow a sitting government which is one of the gravest felonies in the United States of America even though at the time of publication he had been charged with four Class B misdemeanors and entered a guilty plea to only one nonviolent misdemeanor and resulting in the three other charges being dismissed,” the complaint adds.
According to Hiles, CNN’s article was defamatory because it included details from court filings other than the Statement of Facts that accompanied his guilty plea, “which made it clear that Plaintiff had no intention of overthrowing the government.”
“In the Defamatory Article, CNN acknowledge [sic] that the Plaintiff pled guilty to one nonviolent federal misdemeanor of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a federal building, yet CNN continued to mislead their viewers by painting a picture of a violent revolutionary intent on causing violence on January 6, 2021,” the complaint says.
According to Hiles, the CNN story has reached “countless” people.
“Due to the Defamatory Article published by CNN, Hiles has received many credible death threats to the point where the United States Attorney’s office and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been notified of said threats,” the complaint says.
Hiles, who made national headlines in 2021 after announcing that Democrats would be banned from patronizing his charter boat company, also says his business “has suffered great losses as well due to the defamatory statements of CNN[.]”
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“In addition, Hiles’ minor daughter has suffered greatly due to CNN’s defamatory actions causing her to fear for her safety, losing many friendships and being ridiculed by her teachers,” the complaint adds.
Notably, the complaint does not provide specific examples of any of the above-described damages. Hiles’ lawyer did not immediately respond to Law&Crime’s request for comment.
Hiles is seeking $37 million in compensatory and $350,000 in punitive damages. In addition to CNN, the lawsuit names the story’s three co-authors as defendants.
According to court filings, Hiles drove from his home in Virginia Beach to attend Trump’s so-called “Stop the Steal” rally ahead of Congress’ certification of the election results. He met up with a cousin from Ohio and joined the pro-Trump crowd in the march to the Capitol building. After coming face-to-face with law enforcement — some of whom were visibly bleeding from altercations with rioters — Hiles and his cousin entered the building at around 2:45 p.m., some 30 minutes after the initial violent breach. Hiles had made several posts to social media about his time at the Capitol and expressed pride in being there.
“The day of the rally, he posted a selfie-style photograph of himself in a car on Facebook, geotagged to Capitol Hill, accompanied by the caption, ‘Feelin cute…might start a revolution later, IDK,”” federal prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memo, which also noted that Hiles had brought “goggles, which he wore later to protect himself from riot-control spray being deployed by law enforcement against the crowd.”
Hiles and his cousin left the building about 15 minutes after entering. He pleaded guilty in September 2021 to a misdemeanor count of parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a Capitol building, and was sentenced to two years of probation.
Riley, who had reportedly responded to reports of an explosive device near the Capitol complex on Jan. 6, was ultimately convicted by a jury in October of felony obstruction of justice. Although he faced a potential 20 years behind bars, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson, a Barack Obama appointee, sentenced him to two years of probation, including 120 days of home incarceration.
Hiles’ defamation lawsuit was initially filed in Virginia state court but has been removed to federal court in the Eastern District of Virginia.
CNN did not immediately respond to Law&Crime’s request for comment on the lawsuit.
Read Hiles’ complaint, below.
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