2 federal prosecutors placed on leave after describing January 6 attack as ‘a mob of rioters’ in court document

By Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand, CNN

(CNN) — Two federal prosecutors in Washington, DC, were placed on leave after describing the January 6, 2021 attack at the US Capitol as stemming from a “mob of rioters” in a sentencing memo Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the matter.

The two prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, were notified of their suspension hours after they submitted a sentencing request for Taylor Taranto, the person said.

Trump pardoned Taranto for charges related to his participation in January 6, but the Washington man still faces gun charges stemming from his arrest in the summer of 2023, when he was detained nearby President Barack Obama’s Washington, DC, home.

When describing Taranto’s history, prosecutors wrote that, “On January 6, 2021, 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 sentencing memo, dated Tuesday, was missing from the court docket as of Wednesday afternoon at 2:20 p.m. ET.

Valdivia and White added 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.” They asked the judge to sentence him to 27 months behind bars.

Taranto was arrested in June, 2023 in Obama’s Washington, DC, neighborhood after claiming on an internet livestream that he had a detonator, law enforcement officials told CNN at the time, and was searching for underground tunnels that led inside Obama and other’s homes.

Valdivia and White wrote in Tuesday’s memo 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.

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 a federal judge of several gun related charges and making false threats that he would drive a car bomb into a federal building.

Prosecutors have said in court documents that Taranto has also made threats against former House Speaker Kevin McCarthy and Maryland Democratic Rep. Jamie Raskin.

The move to place federal prosecutors on leave follows a list of other firings in US Attorney’s offices.

The Trump administration fired the top national security prosecutor in the nearby US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Virginia, Michael Ben’Ary, earlier this month after a social media post by a right-wing activist and writer falsely tied him to the case of FBI Director James Comey.

The former US Attorney of the same Eastern District, Erik Siebert, resigned in September after mounting pressure to bring charges against New York Attorney General Letitia James, and was replaced by a White House advisor who lacked prosecutorial experience.

Another prosecutor in the Alexandria, Beth Yusi, was dismissed earlier this month after drafting a memo outlining why prosecutors believed there was not enough evidence to bring charges against James. People familiar with her termination told CNN she was fired after mishandling FBI documents containing James’s personal information.

The Justice Department didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment for this story.

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