Two federal prosecutors in Washington were informed on Wednesday that they would be placed on leave after requesting a stiff sentence for a man granted clemency after participating in the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, who later turned up armed outside the house of former President Barack Obama.
It was the latest act of retribution by the Trump administration against prosecutors in the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington who worked on cases related to Jan. 6, a campaign that has also included dismissals and demotions. The moves were earlier reported by ABC News.
The prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, asked a federal judge on Tuesday to sentence the man granted clemency, Taylor Taranto, to 27 months in prison after he was found guilty at a bench trial of showing up outside of Mr. Obama’s house in Washington with two firearms and ammunition in June 2023.
In their sentencing papers, Mr. Valdivia and Mr. White wrote that Mr. Taranto had been among the “mob of rioters” on Jan. 6 and that he had promoted conspiracy theories concerning the attack. Mr. Taranto was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct for his role in the Capitol attack, but those charges were dismissed as part of the blanket clemency that President Trump granted to all of the nearly 1,600 people accused of taking part in the riot.
In an extraordinary move, the Justice Department withdrew the sentencing papers on Wednesday afternoon, noting in a federal court database that they had been “entered in error.” Department officials did not immediately issue a new sentencing memo, but two new prosecutors filed appearances in the case, including Jonathan Hornok, the chief of the criminal division of the U.S. attorney’s office.
After Mr. Taranto was arrested in 2023, prosecutors said he had driven through Washington and the surrounding area in his van over the course of two days, livestreaming much of his wanderings and at one point suggesting that he had “outfitted his vehicle with a detonator.”
In court papers recommending that he receive a sentence of more than two years, Mr. Valdivia and Mr. White said that Mr. Taranto had apparently discovered Mr. Obama’s address in a social media message posted by Mr. Trump. Mr. Taranto reposted the address, the prosecutors said, and then broadcast footage of himself driving through Mr. Obama’s neighborhood, Kalorama in Northwest Washington, claiming he was searching for “tunnels.”
The prosecutors also noted that when the authorities discovered Mr. Taranto near the house, they found a pistol and a semiautomatic rifle in his van, along with hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
“His possession of two guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition should be viewed with the backdrop of political violence in mind, at a time when acts of violence perpetrated for political reasons are justifiably generating substantial public concern,” the prosecutors wrote.
Prosecutors who have worked on Jan. 6-related cases have been targeted for months as part of Mr. Trump’s broader effort to root out people in the Justice Department he believes to be disloyal.
The firings and demotions began in late January, just after Mr. Trump returned to office, when more than a dozen young prosecutors who worked on riot cases were dismissed from the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington.
The next month, several senior prosecutors who had worked on Jan. 6 cases involving far-right groups like the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers were demoted from supervisory positions to low-level jobs handling misdemeanors.
And in July, three more career prosecutors who handled the cases were also dismissed.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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