In a presidential administration and Justice Department that have treated Jan. 6 rioters as victims, it stood out on Tuesday when two federal prosecutors acknowledged the simple fact that “[o]n January 6, 2021, thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol while a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
The prosecutors who submitted that memo, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, were then placed on leave. They wrote those words in a sentencing memorandum for Taylor Taranto, who they noted had “promoted conspiracy theories” about Jan. 6.
The memo — which the DOJ subsequently withdrew — didn’t concern any sentencing for Taranto’s conduct on Jan. 6, which the DOJ previously alleged was criminal — before Donald Trump retook office. That’s because Trump began his second term as president by granting blanket pardons and ordering the dismissal of pending charges “against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
But that still left other criminal charges for Taranto, who was found guilty at a bench trial in May by U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, a Trump appointee, of carrying a pistol without a license and unlawful possession of ammunition, and of violating a crime called false information and hoaxes.
Like Jan. 6, those other charges involved Trump, though they stemmed from conduct in 2023. The sentencing memo recounted that Taranto “perpetrated a hoax on June 28, 2023, by falsely claiming that he would cause a car bomb to drive into the National Institute of Standards and Technology.” The next day, after Trump had posted on social media a purported street address for former President Barack Obama in Washington, Taranto reposted the address and then started livestreaming from his van on his YouTube channel as he drove through Obama’s D.C. neighborhood.
Per the memo, Taranto claimed “he was searching for ‘tunnels’ he believed would provide him access to the private residences of certain high-profile individuals, including former President Obama.” The prosecutors added:
He parked his van, walked away from it, and approached a restricted area protected by the United States Secret Service. He walked through the nearby woods and stated, “Gotta get the shot, stop at nothing to get the shot.” After noticing the presence of the Secret Service he said, “If I were them, I’d be watching this, watching my every move.” He also said, “So yeah, more than likely, these guys also all hang for treason” and “I control the block, we’ve got ‘em surrounded.” When Secret Service agents approached him, Taranto fled, but he was apprehended and placed under arrest. Shortly after his arrest, law enforcement conducted a sweep of Taranto’s van for hazardous materials and recovered two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. “Taranto’s actions caused the evacuation of a residential neighborhood and forced law enforcement agents from multiple agencies to respond to his false bomb hoax,” Valdivia and White wrote in the memo. They requested a prison sentence of 27 months, which they wrote “reflects the gravity of Taranto’s conduct, his lack of remorse, and the need to deter him and others from engaging in similar threatening conduct.” They noted that such a sentence is at the top of the range of the federal sentencing guidelines as they apply to his case. An entry subsequently appeared on Taranto’s court docket that said the memo was “entered in error,” after which two new lawyers appeared on the docket on behalf of the DOJ: Travis Wolf and Jonathan Hornok. As of 5 p.m. ET on Wednesday, a new sentencing memo hasn’t appeared on the docket ahead of Taranto’s sentencing, which had been scheduled for Thursday. Subscribe to the Deadline: Legal Newsletter for expert analysis on the top legal stories of the week, including updates from the Supreme Court and developments in the Trump administration’s legal cases.
Jordan Rubin is the Deadline: Legal Blog writer. He was a prosecutor for the New York County District Attorney’s Office in Manhattan and is the author of “Bizarro," a book about the secret war on synthetic drugs. Before he joined MS NOW, he was a legal reporter for Bloomberg Law.
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