Only a few Capitol riot defendants remained jailed after President Donald Trump issued mass pardons to supporters who joined a mob’s attack on Jan. 6, 2021. A trial for one of them — a military veteran charged with federal firearms offenses and a hoax bomb threat — began Tuesday with testimony about his 2023 arrest near former President Barack Obama’s Washington home.
Taylor Taranto was arrested in Obama’s neighborhood on the same day in June 2023 that Trump posted on social media what he claimed was the former president’s address. Investigators said they found two guns, roughly 500 rounds of ammunition and a machete in Taranto’s van.
Taranto was livestreaming video on YouTube in which he said he was looking for “entrance points” to underground tunnels and wanted to get a “good angle on a shot,” according to prosecutors. He reposted Trump’s message about Obama’s home address and wrote, “We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta’s and Obama’s.” He was referring to John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton’s 2016 Democratic presidential campaign.
Taranto wasn’t the only Jan. 6 defendant whose criminal case didn’t end when Trump provided clemency to all of the more than 1,500 people charged in the riot. In some cases, Trump’s Justice Department concluded that the pardons covered separate offenses, such as charges for guns seized from homes during Capitol riot investigations.
In Taranto’s case, however, prosecutors said the firearms offenses he faces are “wholly unrelated to the pardon.” Taranto, a Navy veteran from Pasco, Washington, is charged with carrying firearms without a license, with illegally possessing large-capacity magazines and ammunition and with making a hoax bomb threat.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, is hearing testimony and will decide the case without a jury. The government’s first trial witness was an FBI agent who led the frantic search for Taranto after Capitol police investigators watched his livestreamed video and heard what they believed to be a bomb threat.
A prosecutor, Samuel White, told the judge that the video captured Taranto outlining his “ominous, threatening plan.” Taranto said on the video that he was in Gaithersburg, Maryland, on a “one-way” to the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
Taranto’s lawyers said he didn’t have any bomb-making material and wasn’t near the Gaithersburg institute. Defense attorney Pleasant Brodnax said the video shows Taranto was merely joking in an “avant-garde” manner.
“He believes he is a journalist and, to some extent, a comedian,” Broadnax said.
Taranto has been jailed since his arrest. The judge concluded that he poses a danger to the public.
Taranto was charged with four misdemeanors related to the Jan. 6 attack. Prosecutors said he joined the crush of rioters who breached the building. He was captured on video at the entrance of the Speaker’s Lobby around the time that a rioter, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed by an officer while she tried to climb through the broken window of a barricaded door.
Taranto’s wife told investigators that he came to Washington because then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy was offering to release unseen video of the Jan. 6 attack. Taranto made “ominous comments” about McCarthy on video, saying, “Coming at you McCarthy. Can’t stop what’s coming. Nothing can stop what’s coming,” according to prosecutors.
Taranto was attacked and injured by other inmates in the wing of the Washington jail where other Jan. 6 defendants were detained while awaiting trial, according to his lawyers. They said he was shunned for negative comments that he made about Babbitt.
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