Pardoned Jan. 6er in trouble again, ordered out of D.C., back to Tri-Cities
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- Judge ordered Jan. 6 defendant to return to Eastern Washington.
- Taranto livestreamed near Rep. Raskin, Pentagon and Capitol despite bans.
- Taranto was convicted on weapons charges, threats.
A Pasco Jan. 6 defendant ordered to stay away from Washington, D.C., has apparently continued to stay in the area, allegedly harassing a congressman and trying to join the Pentagon press corps.
Taylor Taranto, 39, was previously ordered to stay away from the nation’s capital after his conviction on weapons charges and a threat to blow up a federal building.
On Friday, he was ordered by a federal judge to return to Washington state or risk a probation violation.
While court documents don’t detail what happened at the Friday hearing, a Politico reporter was in the courtroom when U.S. Attorneys told Judge Carl D. Nichols that Taranto apparently was livestreaming near the home of Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Maryland.
The sealed complaint presented in court was a letter from Raskin’s staffers, according to Taranto in the livestream.
Taranto also was banned from the Capitol grounds at the hearing, but went live that evening on his Rumble account in the parking lot across the street from the building.
He showed a copy of the order barring him from being on or near the grounds due to harassing behavior, with the Capitol building clearly visible in the video. A photo of Taranto was printed on the back of the order.
“The Capitol police handed this to me and my lawyer,” Taranto said in the video. “The reason you are being barred – harassing behavior.”
“Yea, he’s officially banned from the Capitol, who gives a s--t?” he said.
Taranto continued for about two hours, playing other videos and claiming he had “won” the hearing.
“Yea, I’ll gladly go home for Christmas,” he said in the video. “I won the battle, you dumb b---h.”
Taranto has livestreamed at least 155 times since his release from the D.C. Metropolitan Jail using the same Rumble account he had previously used to post videos of himself inside the U.S. Capitol building during the Jan. 6 riot.
Rumble is a video platform like YouTube, favored by right-wing commentators due to its perceived lack of moderation. Several of Taranto’s videos have racial slurs in the titles.
Many of the videos show Taranto clearly walking around D.C., including outside of federal buildings. He also livestreamed from the Pentagon, after claiming he had applied for a job there as a news reporter.
Nichols ordered Taranto to report to a probation officer in Eastern Washington by 10 a.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 10.
Harassing Rep. Raskin
It’s not the first time Taranto has targeted Raskin. Taranto believes that the House Committee on Jan. 6, led by Raskin, hid evidence of a cover-up.
In the days before his arrest near former President Barack Obama’s D.C. home, Taranto had been in Raskin’s Takoma Park, Maryland neighborhood allegedly going onto the campus of a nearby school attended by the congressman’s children, according to prosecutors.
Raskin recently brought the incident up at a House Judiciary meeting where he spoke about Jan. 6 defendants committing new crimes.
Raskin described how Taranto showed up at the school and told his livestream viewers that he was headed to the congressman’s home next. Prosecutors have said Taranto went onto school grounds and projected a video onto the walls of the school.
“He said he was near my house, that’s where he was headed next, and he didn’t wanna tell anyone where I lived because he said, ‘I want Raskin all to myself,’” Raskin said in the hearing.
“Fortunately, my wife and I and our kids were not at home when he stopped there on his way to Barack Obama’s house,” Raskin said in the hearing.
Raskin told the committee they may have heard of Taranto because two U.S. Attorneys were recently suspended for describing Jan. 6 as a riot in a sentencing memorandum for Taranto.
It’s unclear what happened during the most recent incident in Raskin’s neighborhood. The Tri-City Herald reached out to his office for more information.
What was he doing in the Capitol?
While Taranto has been ordered to stay away from Washington, D.C., and get mental health treatment from the Department of Veterans Affairs, Taranto has done neither, according to statements on livestreams on his Rumble account and an interview with another channel.
Taranto was angry during the interview, claiming a probation officer had no right to ask him about medical issues and medication while drug testing him. He began swaying back and forth during the conversation.
When the interviewer asked him about getting a lawyer, he said he didn’t need one.
“I don’t need one, just like last time when I got me out of that. Even the f--ing president couldn’t get me out of that,” he said.
He also said the Pentagon denied his press credentials.
“Long story short, the Pentagon is still not letting me in,” he said.
Taranto appears to be on his way back to the Tri-Cities. He has done more than a dozen livestreams since his court hearing Friday.
In a few of those videos he has mentioned that he is traveling, including a plan to stop at Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz’s home to insult him. He said he plans to knock on Walz’s door and call him an ableist slur, after President Trump used the insult toward the former vice presidential candidate.
In the videos, Taranto said he had been living out of his van in the D.C. area and had argued with his probation officer after requesting to go on “vacation” to the Tri-Cities.
Jan. 6 pardon
Taranto is a former webmaster for the Franklin County Republican Party and U.S. Navy veteran. Local Republican Party officials previously told the Herald that they had cut ties with Taranto months before his 2023 arrest due to his erratic behavior.
He was convicted this year of carrying guns without a license, unlawful possession of ammunition and false information or hoaxes after a series of threats to lawmakers and the former president.
He also threatened to use his van as a bomb to blow up a federal building and claimed in private messages that he had a contract to kill former Vice President Kamala Harris, according to court documents.
Taranto was sentenced to time served with three years probation. He was held without bail for nearly two years after Nichols agreed he presented a threat to the community.
Taranto’s 2023 arrest was made using an expedited warrant related to the Jan. 6 charges, which were initially part of the same case.
The Capitol riot charges were dropped after President Donald Trump issued a mass pardon when he returned to office.
He was also a co-defendant in a wrongful death lawsuit for allegedly helping another rioter attack a Capitol police officer, who later died by suicide because of a concussion suffered in the attack.
David Walls-Kaufman admitted to “scuffling” with the officer during his own trial on charges related to the riot.
A review panel ruled that Officer Jeffrey Smith suffered a concussion which led to his suicide after returning to duty. They said the injuries suffered in the riot were the “sole and direct cause” of his death when awarding his widow death benefits.
Walls-Kaufman was later pardoned after being sentenced to two months in jail.
Smith’s widow was awarded $500,000 in damages in the civil suit. Taranto was dropped from the lawsuit during his lengthy criminal trial.
This story was originally published December 8, 2025 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Pardoned Jan. 6er in trouble again, ordered out of D.C., back to Tri-Cities."
