Trump’s Jan. 6 Pardons Keep Child Sex Predator Out of Prison

Harris County court documents show that he accrued 1,306 days, or approximately three years and seven months, of credit while incarcerated. The majority of that time was in pre-trial detention, as he was not sentenced for his Capitol crimes until last summer.

The road to freedom for Taake, a one-time registered Republican, began on Jan. 20 this year. In the waning hours of Inauguration Day, President Donald Trump issued pardons for more than 1,500 people convicted in connection with Jan. 6—including Taake, who was released from one of the country’s most notorious federal prison complexes in Florence, Colorado.

At the end of September, he then struck a plea deal that requires him to register as a sex offender for 10 years, but that appears to be the extent of his punishment.

His attorney, Brett Podolosky, did not respond to several requests for comment.

Taake had already been caught in the online sex sting and was out on bond on solicitation charges when he attacked law enforcement in the Capitol in January 2021.

He was only busted for his part in the Capitol riot because he bragged about his role to a woman he matched with on the dating app Bumble.

The young professional, labeled “Witness 1” in an FBI affidavit, said a little “comically minimal ego-stroking” on her part coaxed Taake and other Jan. 6 rioters into spilling details about their roles in the attack. “I felt a bit of ‘civic duty,’ I guess, but truthfully, I was mostly just mad and thinking, ‘F— these guys,’” the woman said last year.

After he was arrested, he was held in pre-trial detention because of the severity of his violent actions inside the Capitol, and convicted of bear-spraying officers and carrying a metal whip. District Judge Carl Nichols said Taake’s actions on Jan. 6 were “the farthest thing from First Amendment expression.”

Prosecutors argued in a sentencing memorandum that Taake remained dangerous and remorseless last year, warranting the harshest possible sentence. “He has not exhibited an ounce of remorse for his actions, nor accepted responsibility—going so far as to deny responsibility even after his guilty plea,” they alleged.

An officer wrote in an impact statement that he was “immediately,” but temporarily, “blinded” after being hit with the spray and added that it was the worst pain he had ever experienced in his life, saying it was “like living death.”

After Taake was sentenced to six years’ imprisonment in June last year, he played the victim, according to prosecutors. “His enduring narrative is that he and other ‘patriots’ were heroes and that he is a wrongfully detained victim of ‘selective persecution,’” they said.

Taake—who has a string of other criminal convictions, including possession of cocaine and for striking someone with his vehicle while driving impaired—said he had wanted to take the fight “directly to the swamp creatures.”

Earlier this year, Taake sued the Trump administration, alleging that he was denied medical care and suffered injuries while imprisoned on riot-related charges. He claimed that he had been injected with estrogen and grew breasts while in prison.

Taake is one of at least nine pardoned Jan. 6 rioters who have run into fresh criminal trouble after they walked free—the likely first being Matthew Huttle, 33, who just six days after his January pardon was fatally shot by a cop during a roadside struggle after he was found with a loaded gun.

Arguably the most high-profile came in New York, when Christopher Moynihan, 34—who served 21 months for breaching the Capitol—was last month charged with allegedly texting plans to kill House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries.

In July, Edward Kelley, 36, a military veteran who breached the Capitol, was sentenced to life for plotting to murder FBI agents. Zachary Alam, 33, the rioter who smashed the Speaker’s Lobby door, was convicted in May of grand larceny and burglary.

In August, Shane Jason Woods, 44, received 17 years for a crash that killed a woman, and in January, Emily Hernandez, 24, was jailed for 10 years for a similar incident that occurred in 2022.

And NBC reported on Saturday that a former Jan. 6 defendant, identified as John Banuelos, was arrested on a Utah warrant for aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault.

The White House and the Department of Justice have been asked to comment on Taake avoiding jail for the solicitation charge.

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