An explosion caused by a police munition is seen while supporters of President Donald Trump riot in front of the US Capitol on January 6, 2021.
(CNN) — The Justice Department’s decision to sideline two US attorneys and remove mentions of Donald Trump and the US Capitol attack from court papers before the sentencing of a pardoned January 6 rioter is being viewed by former and current career prosecutors as an alarming whitewashing of history.
The events around the case of Taylor Taranto, who was convicted of bringing illegal guns near Barack Obama’s Washington, DC, residence after talking online about violence toward the federal government, has shocked the network of Justice Department employees and alumni, several sources told CNN.
Taranto was arrested in June 2023 after claiming on an internet livestream that he had a detonator the day before, law enforcement officials told CNN at the time, and was searching for underground tunnels that led inside Obama and others’ homes.
He had also been present at the Capitol riot and charged with related crimes, though he was never convicted because Trump pardoned him before a trial. He has already spent 23 months behind bars and hasn’t been detained since he was pardoned.
Judge Carl Nichols, a 2019 Trump appointee, had found him guilty at trial in May of the gun crimes and for making a false threat to use a car bomb against a federal building.
In a sentencing memo for Taranto filed Tuesday, prosecutors Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White wrote that after “then-former President Donald Trump published on a social media platform the purported address of former President Barack Obama,” Taranto had re-posted Trump “and thereafter started livestreaming from his van” as he drove through Obama’s neighborhood.
Trump’s original post – which included the Obama address – was itself a repost of a blog article.
Page three of the original sentencing memo for Taylor Franklin Taranto. The highlighted portion shows text that was removed when the memo was re-filed.
Page two of the original sentencing memo for Taylor Franklin Taranto. The highlighted portion shows text that was removed when the memo was re-filed.