WASHINGTON — A federal judge appointed to the bench by President Donald Trump heaped praise Thursday on two federal prosecutors who were placed on administrative leave after they described those who stormed the Capitol in 2021 as a "mob of rioters."
U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols said at a sentencing hearing that the prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, were among the best attorneys who have appeared before him.
“In my view, both Mr. Valdivia and Mr. White did a truly excellent job in this case,” Nichols said at the hearing for Taylor Taranto, a Jan. 6 defendant who was also convicted on gun and other charges stemming from an incident in 2023.
Valdivia and White had filed a sentencing memo Tuesday that noted Taranto's involvement in the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
In describing Taranto’s background, the prosecutors wrote in the memo that “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,” and that “Taranto was accused of participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol Building.”
In the hours after they filed the memo, the two prosecutors were told they were being placed on leave, multiple sources told NBC News on Wednesday.
While Trump pardoned Taranto and about 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants for their conduct at the Capitol, that pardon did not apply to Taranto’s conduct in 2023, when he was arrested near Barack Obama’s home in Washington, D.C., with guns and ammunition in his vehicle.
Taranto, who has endorsed conspiracy theories about Jan. 6, had come to Washington after House Republicans said they would make CCTV footage from Jan. 6 available for viewing.
He was convicted in May of "illegally carrying two firearms without a license, unlawfully possessing ammunition, and false information and hoaxes," according to the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia.
Following the suspensions of Valdivia and White, Jonathan R. Hornok, the head of the criminal division in the D.C. U.S. attorney's office, stepped in to handle the case alongside another federal prosecutor.
The original sentencing memo was placed under seal, and a new sentencing memo was filed that struck references to Jan. 6, including a line that mentioned how Taranto posted “conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.” Hornok declined to comment to reporters after the hearing.
Nichols said it was "not clear" how the original memo was placed under seal, and that he was inclined to unseal the original memo unless the government justified its sealing in writing or asked for it to be stricken from the record.
Nichols sentenced Taranto to 21 months, which amounted to time served since the defendant had spent more time than that in pretrial custody. Nichols imposed an additional sentence of 36 months of supervised release and ordered drug testing and a mental health assessment.
Valdivia and White were both in the courtroom as spectators but declined to comment to reporters after the hearing.
