‘Orwellian’: Current and former prosecutors alarmed after DOJ scrubs mentions of Trump and January 6 from court records
By Katelyn Polantz, Holmes Lybrand, CNN
(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.
Politico reporter Kyle Cheney highlighted the filing and mentioned it also included Taranto taking part in the January 6 riot, on the social media platform X late Tuesday night. Within 24 hours, the court filing was no longer available in the court record and the two prosecutors who had signed it were suspended from their jobs.
In the original memo, Valdivia and White wrote that “Taranto was accused of participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol Building” and “after the riot, Taranto returned to his home in the State of Washington, where he promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.”
Two new prosecutors then filed an amended version of the sentencing memo to the court on Wednesday.
That new memo scrubbed all references to Trump and him posting Obama’s supposed address – which Taranto had reposted – as well as Taranto’s participation and conviction related to the January 6, 2021, US Capitol attack.
“It’s shocking that prosecutors could be put on leave for accurately stating the court record in a sentencing memo, and it’s just as shocking that those truthful statements have been whitewashed in a revised filing,” said Stacey Young, a former Justice Department attorney and now executive director and founder of Justice Connection, which works to represent the viewpoints of former federal prosecutors, especially those who have been fired by the Trump administration.
“These prosecutors did their job and upheld their duty of candor by informing the court of clearly established facts relevant to their case,” Young added.
Jeanine Pirro, the US Attorney in Washington, DC, did not comment on the suspensions and filing changes when asked about it during a news conference Thursday.
“I think the papers speak for themselves, and what goes on in this office is not something that I’m going to comment on. Thank you,” Pirro said.
‘Orwellian’
On Wednesday, the moves made by the Justice Department had employees reeling within the US Attorney’s Office in DC and the FBI, which had investigated and caught Taranto, believing he was a danger to the public in 2023, people familiar with the office told CNN on Thursday.
One source called the sentencing memo change “Orwellian.”
Valdivia had no indication he may have employment issues — especially given that on Tuesday, the day before his suspension, he helped to secure a guilty verdict from a jury in a fraud case where he was on the trial team, according to two people familiar with the US Attorney’s Office.
Separately, White is a supervisor on Superior Court cases and was a US Marine.
A Justice Department spokesperson told CNN on Wednesday following the suspensions: “While we don’t comment on personnel decisions, we want to make very clear that we take violence and threats of violence against law enforcement, current or former government officials extremely seriously. We have and will continue to vigorously pursue justice against those who commit or threaten violence without regard to the political party of the offender or the target.”
The spokesperson declined to clarify if the comments were about Taranto’s 2023 actions toward Obama, or his participation in the Capitol riot in 2021, in which a mob of Trump supporters injured multiple people, including many police protecting the federal building.
The move by Justice Department officials to place the two attorneys on leave and erase all mention of Trump posting Obama’s address or Taranto’s participation in the events of January 6 comes at a time when administration officials have already worked to fire scores of federal prosecutors and officers they see as potential roadblocks in their efforts to use the DOJ against political opponents.
Prosecutors in the Eastern District of Virginia were recently pushed out of the Justice Department after failing to indict New York Attorney General Letitia James and many prosecutors who worked on January 6 cases were removed from the DC US Attorney’s office earlier this year.
Taranto sentenced to 21 months
When Taranto was initially investigated, one source said, he had been on federal law enforcement radar because he had been at the January 6 riot. But federal authorities focused on him after he livestreamed a video in 2023 where he threatened bombing federal facilities, and law enforcement then arrested him near Obama’s Washington address.
Taranto was arrested that day and law enforcement officials found guns and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in his van. He was later found guilty by Nichols of several gun related charges and making false threats that he would drive a car bomb into a federal building.
The DOJ continued to seek the 27-month sentence originally sought by White and Valdivia, who said in court documents that Taranto has also made threats against former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Taranto’s attorney asked the court to sentence him to time served in jail already, with no further detention. The defense attorney, Carmen Hernandez, has asked for rehabilitation that the court could order, noting Taranto’s past military service and post-traumatic stress disorder diagnosis, according to a filing on Thursday.
Typically, a defendant’s history and characteristics become part of court arguments for or against leniency when a judge decides a sentence.
At a hearing Thursday, Nichols sentenced Taranto to 21 months in prison, essentially covered by time served.
Nichols found that Taranto “made troubling statements” in his online livestream but noted he had no criminal history and his conduct “was far from egregious.”
Taranto spoke briefly during Thursday’s hearing, not to apologize for his conduct but to highlight a book on the 1787 constitutional convention and mention that some people questioned the results of the 2020 election.
“I would like to keep people’s minds open,” he concluded.
The judge also said he thought the two prosecutors placed on leave “upheld the highest standard” throughout the case.
“My view is that they did a commendable and exceptional job,” Nichols said of the prosecutors, adding that he felt “they did a truly excellent job in this case.”
White and Valdivia attended Taranto’s sentencing and declined to comment.
CNN’s Hannah Rabinowitz and Casey Gannon contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional developments.
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