A Navy veteran arrested with guns near former president Barack Obama’s house in Washington had recently recorded himself making threatening statements regarding House Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), Rep. Jamie B. Raskin (D-Md.) and a federal facility housing a nuclear research reactor in suburban Maryland, prosecutors said Wednesday.
U.S. prosecutors asked a judge to jail Taylor Taranto, 37, pending trial, saying that the QAnon conspiracy theorist showed up near Obama’s home shortly after Donald Trump posted on his social media platform what he claimed was Obama’s address. Taranto was armed, dangerous and in the grip of delusional thinking, prosecutors said, and had successfully eluded law enforcement for nearly a day before his arrest June 29 in a wooded area near Washington’s exclusive Kalorama neighborhood.
“Taranto is a direct and serious threat to the public. Taranto’s own words and actions demonstrate that he is a direct threat to multiple political figures as well as the public at large,” Assistant U.S. Attorneys Allison K. Ethen and Colin Cloherty wrote in a 26-page detention memo. “The risk that Taranto poses if released is high, and the severity of the consequences that could result are catastrophic.”
Authorities searched for Taranto before June 28, but he was living in his van, and his lack of a fixed address frustrated efforts to find him, prosecutors said. Law enforcement “escalated efforts to locate Taranto and increased resources to assist in the search” after his alleged threats that day, but were unsuccessful before he turned up near Obama’s residence.
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Assistant Federal Public Defender Katie Guevara said that while Taranto may have been guilty of “hyperbole” and making “inflammatory statements to get attention,” he made no specific threat, had no criminal history, and was charged only with four misdemeanor counts of trespassing and disorderly conduct related to the Capitol siege more than two years ago.
Guevara said at an afternoon detention hearing that Taranto had lived since 2008 in Washington state with his wife and had come to D.C. this year to pursue McCarthy’s public offer to Jan. 6 defendants to review footage of Capitol security video. Guevara said his wife was in court ready to testify about her willingness to house Taranto pending trial.
Guevara argued that her client’s remarks were protected First Amendment speech and that if prosecutors were “truly as concerned about his conduct” as they claimed, he would have been arrested sooner and charged with more serious offenses, such as threatening federal officials.
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U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui held the detention hearing Wednesday but did not make a decision. Instead, he told prosecutors to return to court Thursday and answer whether the government had to clear a legal hurdle showing the court could rely even on “clear convincing evidence” of Taranto’s dangerousness, given that it initially cited Taranto’s potential risk of flight.
“If I find the defendant not to be a serious risk of flight, can I detain him?” Faruqui asked, saying he could instead order Taranto released to home confinement. He also lamented that Taranto was experiencing mental health problems arising from his military service during the Iraq War, while noting that his apparent denial of objective facts and delusional thinking potentially made him a greater danger.
In court filings and arguments, prosecutors said the FBI had been monitoring Taranto’s online activities because of his participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol when the agency discovered his live stream June 28 as he apparently was driving to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), a Commerce Department agency in Gaithersburg, Md., about 15 miles north of Washington. In the live stream, Taranto allegedly made several statements indicating he intended to blow up his van at the facility, claimed that he had a detonator, was on a “one way mission” and that his vehicle was self-driving so he could be far away when it “went off.”
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The FBI immediately began searching for Taranto, and prosecutors the next day obtained a warrant for his arrest on four misdemeanor counts of trespassing and disorderly conduct at the Capitol more than two years ago, the government said. But the agency had not found Taranto or his 2000 black Chevrolet van before he began another live stream near Obama’s house that same day, June 29, the government said.
Taranto allegedly recorded himself walking in the neighborhood saying he was looking for “entrance points” and “tunnels underneath their houses,” according to prosecutors, referring to Obama’s and “the Podestas’ house” — apparently John Podesta, former chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign who lives nearby. Taranto also said he had “control” of the block and repeatedly stated that he was trying to get a “shot” and a “good angle on a shot,” prosecutors claimed.
Taranto was monitored in the area by Secret Service agents and was taken into custody shortly after, the government said. Because of his earlier threats, an FBI bomb squad and D.C. police K-9 officers were deployed to his van, where a police dog alerted to the presence of gunpowder, prosecutors said. A search revealed a machete, 400 rounds of ammunition and two handguns, prosecutors said. Government records indicate that the two 9mm pistols were among 20 firearms registered to Taranto, prosecutors said, but the locations of the 18 others are unknown.
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Taranto claimed he had been living in his van and participating with demonstrators supporting Jan. 6 defendants outside the D.C. jail. The protesters kicked him out late last month after they said he acted erratically and tried to play a video that showed the death of Ashli Babbitt in front of her mother.
According to the government’s detention memo, Taranto in a video posted about a week earlier endorsed a conspiracy theory that Babbitt’s death during the Capitol attack was a hoax and that those around her at the time the Air Force veteran was shot breaching the barricaded House Speaker’s Lobby door were actors. On social media accounts, Taranto also espoused claims that the 2020 presidential election was fraudulent, endorsed QAnon conspiracy theories and made sovereign citizen-style claims, denying the authority of federal, Washington state and local government over his land, the government said.
Separately, prosecutors said that on June 18, Taranto live-streamed himself and several others entering a gymnasium and displaying a Jan. 6-related film at Piney Branch Elementary School in Takoma Park, just north of Washington. Prosecutors said Taranto said he chose the school because it was close to the home of Raskin, a four-term Democrat who has been a leading congressional critic of Donald Trump.
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Taranto, according to the bond memo, recorded himself saying he targeted Raskin because “he’s one of the guys that hates January 6 people, or more like Trump supporters, and it’s kind of like sending a shock wave through him because I did nothing wrong and he’s probably freaking out … and saying s--t like, ‘Well he’s stalking me.’”
Nine days later, Taranto’s YouTube channel posted a video of him playing an audio recording on his phone, purportedly asking McCarthy’s office repeatedly to be given access to Capitol riot security camera footage. During his live stream apparently driving to NIST the next day, Taranto also “made ominous comments referencing Speaker McCarthy,” prosecutors alleged, including, “Coming at you McCarthy. Can’t stop what’s coming. Nothing can stop what’s coming.”
Prosecutors said that while Taranto has been in custody, his YouTube account appears to have been deleted by an unknown person.
Ethen said the investigation is ongoing, including into possible destruction of evidence and obstruction of justice. Faruqui added that any release decision by him could be appealed by the government.
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