The accused Jan. 6 rioter who was arrested last week near the home of former President Barack Obama showed up at the residence the same day former President Donald Trump posted what he claimed to be the Obamas' address on his social media platform, federal prosecutors said Wednesday while revealing more details about the case. Taylor Taranto, 37, kept two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition in the van he had driven across the country and was living in, according to a motion from the Department of Justice aiming to keep him in custody.
According to The Associated Press, prosecutors said that on the day of his arrest — June 29 — Taranto reposted the post from Trump on Truth Social. "We got these losers surrounded! See you in hell, Podesta's and Obama's," Taranto wrote in a later post to Telegram, referencing the former chair of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign, John Podesta. Prosecutors added that Taranto had also told viewers of his YouTube livestream that he was hoping to get a "good angle on a shot." A federal defender for Taranto did not immediately return AP's request for comment, but in a motion to have him released pending trial, the lawyer argued that Taranto was not a flight risk. The DOJ's detention memo indicates that Taranto's wife had told prosecutors that he had most recently come to Washington, D.C. because of House Speaker Kevin McCarthy's, R-Calif., offer to produce unseen video of the Capitol attack, which Taranto faces four misdemeanor charges in relation to. Since the riot, Taranto has been active online posting a Facebook video of himself in the Capitol that day and sharing a conspiracy theory that the death of Ashli Babbitt — who was fatally shot by police when attempting to climb into the Speaker's Lobby — was a hoax, prosecutors said
"Donald Trump, as I've been saying for many years, knows exactly what he is doing," CNN National Security Analyst Juliette Kayyem said Wednesday about Trump posting an address in Obama's neighborhood during a Wednesday appearance on the network, adding, "He's not doing that for neighborly brotherhood. He's doing that because his followers will do something with it. Most will ignore it. Most Trump supporters do not support violence, but he knows there's some group of them that will do something."
