President Donald Trump’s blanket Jan. 6 clemency and dismissal order keeps raising legal questions over how far his executive action reaches. One of the latest questions stems from a defendant who, on top of charges for alleged conduct on Jan. 6, 2021, faces gun-related charges from long after that day that he wants dropped, too.
Taylor Taranto was arrested in June 2023 near former President Barack Obama’s home in Washington, D.C., allegedly with firearms and ammunition in his van. Trump had posted a street address for Obama on social media, and Taranto reposted it and then began livestreaming from his van in Obama’s neighborhood, according to prosecutors.
Federal prosecutors brought an indictment over alleged conduct from both Jan. 6 and 2023. He pleaded not guilty ahead of a trial set for May.
Then Trump took office last month and commuted the sentences of some Jan. 6 defendants, granted pardons to everyone else who was convicted and told the Justice Department to dismiss pending charges “against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.”
The DOJ then moved to dismiss Taranto’s 2021 charges but not his 2023 charges. Prosecutors told the court that the DOJ “will continue prosecuting the charges unrelated to January 6 and intends to proceed with the trial that is scheduled to begin on May 12, 2025.”
But in a court filing earlier this month, Taranto’s counsel argued that “all his charges relate to the events on January 6, and are therefore covered by the President’s Executive Order.” Among other things, the defense cited part of a court order denying Taranto bail in 2023 that recounted that two days before his arrest in the Obama incident, “Taranto allegedly posted a video to YouTube of a recording of a phone call with Speaker McCarthy’s officer repeatedly asking to be granted access to certain video footage of the events of January 6.”
But even the current DOJ, whose U.S. attorney’s office in D.C. is led by Ed Martin, a supporter of Jan. 6 defendants, doesn’t want to dismiss the 2023 charges. “Taranto’s actions in June 2023 in Washington, D.C., were not offenses occurring at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,” the DOJ wrote Tuesday in a filing opposing the defense bid.
“Taranto’s possession of guns, large-capacity magazines, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, alarming statements about a ‘detonator’ in his car, and purportedly driving to a federal facility, all occurring in June 2023, and not at the United States Capitol, are wholly unrelated to the pardon for and dismissal of charges related to January 6, 2021 at the United States Capitol,” DOJ’s filing continued. It concluded: “They are not subject to dismissal by motion of the defendant or by order of the Court on this basis.”
So there’s a limit to how far the DOJ sees Trump’s executive action for Jan. 6 defendants extending. That means that if Taranto’s case moves forward as scheduled, there will be at least one Jan. 6-related trial that takes place while Trump is in office — at least according to the defense.
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