The White House has put two federal prosecutors on leave after they wrote a court document asking for a 27-month prison sentence for Taylor Taranto. Taranto is a January 6 rioter who got pardoned by President Trump. He was caught with illegal guns and bullets near Barack Obama’s home in 2023.
According to MSNBC, two sources confirmed that prosecutors Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White were suspended from their jobs at the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, D.C. But neither source could explain what exactly upset White House officials about the court filing.
The two prosecutors lost their positions right after they mentioned the January 6 Capitol attack in their court papers about Taranto. By Wednesday evening, other prosecutors had written a replacement document that took out everything about January 6 and also removed a part about Trump sharing Obama’s address online.
Wait, so mentioning Jan. 6 gets you suspended now?
Police arrested Taranto in June 2023 when he was recording a live video near Obama’s home in Washington, D.C. A judge found him guilty in May for having illegal weapons. He also got convicted for making false threats after he posted a video saying he was on a “one-way mission” to blow up a government building in Gaithersburg, Maryland.
Police found two guns, a machete and hundreds of bullets in Taranto’s van when they arrested him. Court papers show that Taranto kept saying he wanted to get a “shot” and needed a “good angle on a shot.”
The first court document written by Valdivia and White said that Taranto’s actions “caused the evacuation of a residential neighborhood and forced law enforcement agents from multiple agencies to respond to his false bomb hoax.” They wrote that “a 27-month sentence reflects the gravity of Taranto’s conduct, his lack of remorse, and the need to deter him and others from engaging in similar threatening conduct.”
Their document talked about January 6 as a day when “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol while a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.”
The papers said Taranto joined the riot by going inside the Capitol building and later spread conspiracy theories about what happened. This situation comes after other Justice Department problems, including a judge disqualifying Trump’s California prosecutor.
Taranto showed up at Obama’s neighborhood on the same day in June 2023 that Trump posted a screenshot with Obama’s Washington address on it.
Prosecutors said Taranto shared what Trump posted and then wrote about being outside Obama’s house, saying, “We got these losers surrounded!” Trump pardoned Taranto along with about 1,500 other January 6 defendants when he started his second term. Trump has also been seeking $230 million from the DOJ for past investigations. The Justice Department said nothing when asked about this situation.
Published: Oct 30, 2025 12:45 pm