I was accused of leaking company data by a colleague who framed me with a fake screenshot

Priya called me into her office at 3pm on a Tuesday. No warning, no calendar invite, just a terse message saying come now. When I walked in, Liam was sitting there with his arms crossed, and Priya had her laptop turned toward me. She showed me a screenshot of a Slack message where I apparently shared the Q3 budget spreadsheet with someone outside the company. I stared at it for a solid ten seconds before I could speak. It looked like my profile picture and my username, but I had never sent that message. I knew immediately who had done it. Liam had asked me to cover for his missed deadline the week before, and I said no because I was already drowning in my own work. He told me I would regret it. I guess this was his idea of payback.

I tried to call Jack straight after the meeting, but he was in Singapore for a business trip and his phone went straight to voicemail. I left him a shaky message and then made the stupidest decision of the day. I posted in the team group chat saying I had been falsely accused and that someone was trying to destroy my reputation. I was panicking and I just wanted people to know the truth. Within twenty minutes, Liam had screenshotted my message and shared it in our extended friend group chat, the one that includes people from other departments and even some former colleagues. He wrote that I was gaslighting everyone and that Priya had the evidence. A few people in that chat started piling on, calling me unprofessional and saying I was acting guilty.

I was sitting at my desk trying not to cry when Sam, this junior developer who has been with us for about six months, slid into the chair next to me. He whispered that he had seen Liam using a screenshot-editing tool on his phone during lunch yesterday. Sam showed me a photo he took with his own phone. It was blurry but clear enough to see Liam's screen with some kind of editing interface open. I asked Sam if he would be willing to tell Priya what he saw. He looked scared but he nodded.

I went back to Priya's office with Sam and his photo. I told her I wanted a full forensic audit of the Slack metadata, including timestamps and IP logs. Priya looked uncomfortable but she agreed. She said the group chat drama had already damaged team morale and that she hoped I understood why she had to proceed carefully. I told her I understood perfectly, but that didn't mean I had to like it.

The audit took three days. HR confirmed that the screenshot had been fabricated. The Slack metadata showed no record of the message ever existing, and the burner email account used for the leak was created from Liam's home IP address. Liam got a written warning and was reassigned to a different team. I was officially cleared. But when I walked into the office on Monday, Priya barely looked at me. The friend group chat is still divided, with some people apologising and others staying silent. I have been waking up at 3am every night thinking about what would have happened if Sam had not taken that photo. AITA for posting in the group chat and making the whole thing worse?