DOJ puts 2 federal prosecutors on leave after they described ‘mob of rioters’ on Jan. 6

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has placed two federal prosecutors on administrative leave after describing defendants pardoned Jan. 6 by President Donald Trump as a “rioting mob,” five people familiar with the matter told NBC News.

Prosecutors Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White used the phrase in a sentencing memo filed Tuesday in the case of Taylor Taranto, a MAGA enthusiast who prosecutors say stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 and was involved in a “fight” with police trying to force the crowd to leave the building.

While Trump pardoned Taranto and about 1,500 other Jan. 6 rioters, the pardon did not cover Taranto’s other actions in 2023, when, prosecutors say, he carried out a bomb hoax and then showed up in former President Barack Obama’s neighborhood with guns and ammunition in his pickup truck. Taranto was convicted in May of “unlawfully carrying two firearms without a license, illegal possession of ammunition, false information and hoaxes.”

Taranto, 39, is scheduled to be sentenced Thursday, and it is unclear who will appear in court on behalf of the government. The government requested 27 months of incarceration, but Taranto will likely be released because he has already served his sentence while in pretrial detention.

In describing Taranto’s background, prosecutors wrote in the memo that “thousands of people, including a mob of rioters, attacked the U.S. Capitol as a joint session of Congress met to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election,” and that “Tarente was charged with participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol building.”

They added that Taranto “promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.”

The memo also stated that on June 29, 2023, “former President Donald Trump posted former President Barack Obama’s purported speech on a social media platform,” just before Taranto appeared in his neighborhood looking for “tunnels” and claiming he “would stop at nothing to get shot” and that he had them “surrounded.”

Valdivia and White were told they would be placed on leave some time after filing the sentencing memo, the sources told NBC News. ABC News was first to report the news.

Efforts to reach the two prosecutors were unsuccessful.

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeannie Pirro issued a statement that did not directly address the furloughing of Valdivia and White.

“While we do not comment on personnel decisions, we want to make very clear that we take violence and threats of violence against current or former law enforcement and government officials extremely seriously,” Pirro said.

Pirro added that the office “will continue to vigorously prosecute those who commit or threaten violence, without regard to the political party of the offender or target.”

Taranto was first identified in 2021 by online “sedition hunters” who have assisted the FBI in hundreds of investigations into the January 6 rioters.

Among the hundreds of defendants pardoned on January 6 by Trump, many were charged with separate crimes, including child pornography charges stemming from searches of their homes on January 6. Earlier this month, another Jan. 6 rioter was accused of threatening House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y.