Trial opens for former Capitol riot defendant who was arrested near Obama's DC home in 2023

WASHINGTON: Only a fewer Capitol riot defendants remained jailed aft President Donald Trump issued wide pardons to supporters who joined a mob's onslaught connected Jan. 6, 2021. A proceedings for 1 of them, a subject seasoned charged with national firearms offenses and a hoax weaponry threat, began Tuesday with grounds astir his 2023 apprehension adjacent erstwhile President Barack Obama's Washington home. Taylor Taranto was arrested successful Obama's vicinity connected the aforesaid time successful June 2023 that Trump posted connected societal media what helium claimed was the erstwhile president's address. Investigators said they recovered 2 guns, astir 500 rounds of ammunition and a machete successful Taranto's van. Taranto was unrecorded streaming video connected YouTube successful which helium said helium was looking for "entrance points" to underground tunnels and wanted to get a "good space connected a shot," according to prosecutors.

He reposted Trump's connection astir Obama's location code and wrote, "We got these losers surrounded! See you successful hell, Podesta's and Obama's." He was referring to John Podesta, who chaired Hillary Clinton's 2016 Democratic statesmanlike campaign. Taranto wasn't the lone Jan. 6 suspect whose transgression lawsuit didn't extremity erstwhile Trump provided clemency to each of the much than 1,500 radical charged successful the riot. In immoderate cases, Trump's Justice Department concluded that the pardons covered abstracted offenses, specified arsenic charges for guns seized from homes during Capitol riot investigations.

In Taranto's case, however, prosecutors said the firearms offenses helium faces are "wholly unrelated to the pardon." Taranto, a Navy seasoned from Pasco, Washington, is charged with carrying firearms without a license, with illegally possessing large-capacity magazines and ammunition and with making a hoax weaponry threat. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who was nominated by Trump, is proceeding grounds and volition determine the lawsuit without a jury.

The government's archetypal proceedings witnesser was an FBI cause who led the frantic hunt for Taranto aft Capitol constabulary investigators watched his livestreamed video and heard what they believed to beryllium a weaponry threat. A prosecutor, Samuel White, told the justice that th...