Former Capitol riot defendant is convicted of gun charges stemming from his arrest near Obama's home
WASHINGTON (AP) — A military veteran whose Capitol riot case was erased by a presidential proclamation was convicted Tuesday of charges that he illegally possessed guns and ammunition in his van when he was arrested near President Barack Obama's home in the nation's capital.
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols also convicted Taylor Taranto of recording himself making a hoax threat to bomb a government building in Maryland. The judge decided the case without a jury after a bench trial that started last week in Washington, D.C.
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 charged with threatening Obama or Podesta. But the judge convicted him of making a hoax bomb threat directed at the Gaithersburg, Maryland-based National Institute of Standards and Technology, which is part of the U.S. Department of Commerce.
Taranto's lawyers said he didn't have any bomb-making material and wasn't near the institute when he made those statements on a livestreamed video. During the trial's opening statements, 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.
But the judge concluded that a reasonable, objective observer might have believed Taranto's statements on the video. While some viewers may have thought his words were of a "madcap nature," others could have interpreted them as coming from 'an unbalanced narrator willing to follow through on outlandish claims,' Nichols said.
Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, didn't immediately schedule a sentencing hearing for Taranto. He has been jailed for nearly two years since his arrest because a judge concluded that he poses a danger to the public.
After reading his verdict from the bench, the judge said he would entertain a request by defense attorney Carmen Hernandez to release Taranto from custody until his sentencing. Nichols said he intends to rule on that request later this week.
Taranto, a Navy veteran from Pasco, Washington, is one of only a few people charged in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol who remained jailed after President Donald Trump 's sweeping act on clemency in January. Trump pardoned, commuted the prison sentences or ordered the dismissal of charges for all of the more than 1,500 people charged with crimes in the riot.
Before Trump's pardons, Taranto also 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.
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