A former Franklin County Republican Party official accused of a role in the Jan. 6 riots was arrested by the FBI near former President Barack Obama's Washington, D.C., home on Thursday with weapons and material to make an explosive, according to NBC News.
The D.C. Metropolitan Police Department confirmed to the Herald that Taylor Taranto, 37, was arrested outside of a home in the Kalorama neighborhood where the Obamas live.
He was arrested on an outstanding warrant, and his van was searched by MPD's Explosive Ordinance Disposal team, according to an email from an MPD spokesperson.
The spokesperson said there is no active threat to the community, and the incident remains under investigation.
The Obamas bought a home in the exclusive D.C. neighborhood in 2016. According to NBC News reporter Ryan J. Reilly, Taranto had recently been posting messages on the social media app Telegram about conspiracy theories regarding the Obama residence.
A Telegram account associated with Taranto's Facebook and Youtube pages shows a post about the home as recently as 7:50 a.m. Thursday.
Taranto was previously listed as the webmaster for the Franklin County Republican Party, and was being sued by the widow of a D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer who died by suicide after an alleged attack involving Taranto and another man inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
While Taranto was not arrested, David Walls-Kaufman has been and court documents from both his arrest and the civil suit detailed Taranto's alleged involvement.
Kaufman entered a plea deal in his criminal case, and was sentenced to 60 days in jail and a $500 fine and $500 restitution. The plea deal, signed in January, also included an agreement from Kaufman to cooperate with investigators in additional cases before his sentencing.
Reilly was at Kaufman's sentencing hearing on June 13 and posted a video on Twitter of Taranto leaving the courthouse.
Taranto was still volunteering with the Franklin republican party more than a year after the riot, he told the Herald in a January 2022 interview. The U.S. Navy veteran was once a Pasco school board candidate.
According to NBC News, Taranto has been living in his van near the D.C. jail for several weeks.
The Herald has reached out to D.C. Metropolitan Police Department for more information. As of 2 p.m. Thursday, Taranto had not been booked into the D.C. jail. It's unclear what, if any, charges he is facing.
Taranto was sued in late 2021 by the widow of Washington, D.C., Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith for his role in the attack. Erin Smith filed the wrongful death lawsuit against Taranto and Walls-Kaufman.
In December 2021, Taranto, who is representing himself, asked the judge to dismiss the lawsuit and award him $3.5 million, plus a public apology. Smith's attorney told the Herald Thursday that this counterclaim was dismissed.
The case has not seen any movement lately as the judge assigned to it, Florence Y. Pan, was nominated and confirmed to the U.S. Court of Appeals to fill the seat vacated by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Taranto has been accused of handing Walls-Kaufmann a weapon, which was then used to beat a Capitol police officer after rioters breached the building.
Officer Smith died by suicide when he was scheduled to return to work nine days later.
Smith's widow said in a 2022 Op-Ed in the Washington Post that two medical examiners "have testified that post-concussive syndrome and brain injury were the real causes of (her husband's) death" because the concussion he suffered led to severe depression and suicide. The widow is asking for $7 million total in compensatory and punitive damages.
She has been fighting for her husband's death to be recognized as a result of protecting the Capitol, and questions why Walls-Kaufmann and Taranto have not been criminally charged.
"I miss my husband every minute of every day. I long for his death to be recognized as in the line of duty," Smith wrote. "His sacrifice deserves to be remembered and his legacy honored by having his name etched on the Law Enforcement Memorial wall. I hope that his sacrifice can help many other future officers. But, for now, I continue to wait for justice."
Taranto was named in the lawsuit after he reportedly outed himself in a July 15, 2021, Facebook post that included an 18-second, close-up video where he talks about being "in the Capitol building, the legislative building." People can be heard shouting in the background.
A screenshot of the post showed it included the comment: "This is me 'stormin' the capitol' lol I'm only sharing this so someone will report me to the feds and we can get this party rolling!"
A HuffPost Politics story about the initial lawsuit filing says that Taranto was one of two men, identified by online sleuths, who allegedly confronted Smith just inside the Capitol building's second-floor doors.
The sleuths, who call themselves #SeditionHunters, combed through hours of amateur footage to find out what happened to Smith that day, the story said.
They noted that one of the men was wearing a "Make Space Great Again" hat and wielding a black cane with a sharp tip, believed to be a KA-BAR TDI Self-Defense Cane.
