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 Taylor 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., where he was living, 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.
At the Thursday hearing, 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.
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