Is Justice Done?
Oct 30, 2025
You’ve probably seen or read at least
something about the story that is the subject of tonight’s post. If you
appreciate having access to an explanation of the federal sentencing process
and the kind of context for situations like this that I provide based on 25
years of experience at DOJ as a line prosecutor, an appellate chief, and a
political appointee, the U.S. Attorney in North Alabama during the Obama
administration, I hope you’ll support my work with a subscription to Civil
Discourse.
On July 14, 2023, Taylor Taranto, 37,
of Pasco, Washington, was charged in a federal indictment with carrying a
firearm without a license and possessing an illegal device designed to feed
large quantities of ammunition to a firearm. He was also charged with four
misdemeanors related to his involvement with events on January 6. The
government’s evidence against Taranto included a video that captures him
saying, “So we’re in the Capitol Building … legislative building … we just
stormed it.” The caption reads: “This is me ‘stormin’ the capitol’ lol I’m only
sharing this so someone will report me to the feds and we can get this party
rolling!”
The charges related to January 6 were
wiped out by Donald Trump. But Taranto was convicted on the gun charges in May of
this year. Those charges stemmed from an arrest near former President Barack
Obama’s home in the District of Columbia. The charges don’t mention President
Obama. The Justice Department’s official release indicated that “Prior to his arrest,
court documents say that Taranto made several concerning statements regarding
the residences in the area and desires to commit acts of violence against a
federal facility.”
Taranto’s van was searched pursuant to
his arrest. He had quite an arsenal with him, including the two weapons circled
in yellow below. All told, investigators said they found two guns, a machete
and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in Taranto’s van.
Photo from the government’s sentencing memo
How did Taranto know where Obama
lived? Donald Trump posted it on social media in
June of 2023. Taranto was arrested in Obama’s neighborhood the
same day. The government moved to detain Taranto, explaining in their memo to the Judge that he was live
streaming on YouTube, saying he was looking for an “entrance points” to
underground tunnels and was trying to line up a “good angle on a shot.” 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,” a reference to
Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager.
The case has been in the news this
week because Taranto was due back in court to be sentenced. The prosecutors
filed a sentencing memo for the Judge that accurately reflected the defendant’s
conduct. This is what prosecutors do in every case.
Federal law requires judges
to impose a sentence that is “sufficient, but not greater than necessary” to
reflect the seriousness of the offense, promote respect for the law, and
provide just punishment, while also deterring future crimes, protecting the
public from the defendant, and affording the defendant rehabilitation
opportunities. Judges are required by law to consider a number of factors,
including the nature and circumstances of the offense and the history and
characteristics of the defendant. So prosecutors write to those issues in their
sentencing memo, analyzing the evidence to advocate for the sentence they
believe the judge should impose. It’s literally their job. You don’t leave key
details, like a defendant threatening to send a former president to hell, out
of the equation.
But in this case, simply doing their
jobs resulted in the removal of the prosecutors. ABC’s Katherine Fauders was
the first to report that “Two federal
prosecutors were informed Wednesday they will be put on leave after filing a
legal brief that described the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as being
carried out by ‘thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters,’ sources tell
me.” She continued, “The two prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White,
were locked out of their government devices and informed Wednesday morning they
will be placed on leave just hours after filing a sentencing memorandum in the
case of Taylor Taranto.” Already furloughed because of the government shutdown,
the prosecutors were told they’d be placed on administrative leave when
government reopened. Putting the prosecutors on leave could be a prelude to
firing them, unless the public spotlight forces DOJ to walk the personnel
action back.
Subsequently, the Washington
Post reported that “By Wednesday afternoon,
the filing had been removed from public court dockets and replaced by a new
sentencing memo. All references to Jan. 6, Trump’s social media post, Valdivia
or White [the two prosecutors] had been removed. Two new prosecutors signed the
replacement filing.”
It’s hard to overstate how serious
this is. We’ve now seen revenge prosecutions, like those against former FBI
Director Jim Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James. We have seen
prosecution withheld for cronies of the president, like the pass border czar
Tom Homan got for allegedly taking $50,000 in exchange for a promise to steer
government contracts to the people who paid him. We saw agents and prosecutors
fired for doing their duty and working on investigations assigned to them, like
the January 6 cases and the Trump investigations, at the start of this
administration. And now we are seeing prosecutors being disciplined for telling
the courts the truth—in an era where this administration has increasingly
withheld it from the courts.
The assassination attempts against
Donald Trump were taken seriously and swiftly investigated and prosecuted by the Biden administration.
Any attack on a former federal official is a serious matter. Apparently, in
this Justice Department, that is no longer the case. Whether it was the mention
of President Obama or of Donald Trump’s role in making his address public that
triggered this situation, it’s utterly appalling. It completes the corruption
of the Justice Department.
MSNBC’s Ken Dilanian reported that the action against the
prosecutors came “at the direction of the White House.” Pam Bondi and other
political appointees should have prevented this from happening.
Instead—although we don’t know exactly what happened internally—they
facilitated or initiated it. They certainly didn’t interfere with it. CBS
Justice Correspondent Scott MacFarlane reported that when District of Columbia
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro was asked about removing any reference to January 6
from the sentencing memo and asked why it had happened, she declined to answer
beyond saying the “papers speak for themselves.” She also refused to discuss
the action taken against the case prosecutors.
If the direction to do this came from
the White House, officials like Bondi and Pirro should have resigned rather
than letting it happen. They should have protected the prosecutors and the
integrity of the case. They should have stood for the rule of law. Not doing so
reveals who they are in an undeniable fashion. This isn’t hard. It’s easy. And
they got it wrong.
Near the end of the first Trump
administration, acting DOJ officials who were in place as Republican appointees
refused Trump’s direction to support his lies about election fraud. They walked
away with their heads held high and their reputations intact. This group has
not learned that lesson.
The prosecution’s sentencing memo asked the Judge to impose
a 27-month sentence to reflect the gravity of Taranto’s conduct, his lack of
remorse, and the need to deter him and others from engaging in similar
threatening conduct. It’s a reasonable request, one that is within the sentencing
guidelines for the offense.
But Donald Trump is intent on
whitewashing history to improve his own position in it. I write about it
in my book as a “new lost cause,” a parallel
to the post-Civil War narrative that romanticized “the old South” and slavery,
giving rise to narratives that shaped themselves into today’s Christian
Nationalism. Trump has rebranded January 6 criminals as patriots and attempted
to restore them to the American mainstream. It’s a
story about a new “lost cause,” transforming disloyal criminals into an
idealized version of the story. Trump’s Justice Department is aiding and
abetting in that Orwellian task. “And if all others accepted the lie which the
Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into
history and became truth,” Orwell wrote in 1984. “The past was
erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” His main
character, Winston, muses about whether, “Within twenty years at the most … the
huge and simple question, ‘Was life better before the Revolution than it is
now?’ would have ceased once and for all to be answerable.”
Trump is so intent on rewriting his
own history that he wants prosecutors to erase it even in a criminal case where
facts are being presented to a Judge. That Judge was not impressed. In today’s sentencing
hearing, he questioned DOJ about the substitute second sentencing memo, which
removed references to January 6 and Trump’s post of Obama’s address. Taranto
was sentenced to 21 months, and since he has already served more than that while
awaiting trial, he’ll be released, but will remain under supervision by U.S.
Probation for three years. The President who set him on his path has faced no
consequences. Fixing that will be up to us, to the voters, who have work ahead
of us when we vote to see to it that this president is finally held accountable
and that a new Congress that will return to performing its constitutional
duties is seated after the midterms. It’s a sorry state of affairs at the
Justice Department. Our work is cut out for us.
We’re in this together,
Joyce
