Following the suspension of two career prosecutors, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly revised a sentencing memo in a high-profile case — removing all references to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, and President Donald Trump’s social media post that may have led an armed man to Barack Obama’s home.
The abrupt revision, filed just one day after the original memo, deepens concerns that the Trump-led DOJ is manipulating official court records to rewrite the history of January 6 and punish those who refuse to go along.
The case centers on Taylor Franklin Taranto, a former January 6 defendant pardoned by Trump who was later convicted of weapons and hoax charges after being arrested near the Obamas’ home in 2023 with firearms and ammunition in his van.
Two D.C. prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, filed the first sentencing memo on October 28. Within hours, both were placed on administrative leave and locked out of their DOJ accounts.
The next morning, the filing was replaced by a nearly identical version — this time signed by Assistant U.S. Attorney Travis Wolf for Jeanine Pirro, the former Fox News host now serving as U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia.
The differences between the two filings are narrow but striking.
“On January 6, 2021, 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,” the first memo stated clearly.
It continued, “Taranto was accused of participating in the riot in Washington, D.C., by entering the U.S. Capitol Building. After the riot, Taranto returned to his home in the State of Washington, where he promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.”
Those sentences are gone from the revised version.
The original filing also linked Taranto’s later actions to Trump’s own online post.
“Then-former President Donald Trump published on a social media platform the purported address of former President Barack Obama. Taranto re-posted the address on the same platform and thereafter started livestreaming from his van on his YouTube channel,” the original memo by Valdivia and White read.
That paragraph has been deleted as well.
The new version skips directly to Taranto’s arrival in the Obamas’ neighborhood, noting only that he was “claiming he was searching for ‘tunnels’ … to access the private residences of certain high-profile individuals.”
The earlier memo included a full list of Taranto’s charges, detailing eleven counts in his February 2024 indictment. Among them were offenses directly tied to the Capitol attack, including “Obstruction of an Official Proceeding” and “Disorderly or Disruptive Conduct in a Capitol Building.”
The revised document omits that list entirely, saying only that “several counts were subsequently dismissed.”
Both memos sought a 27-month sentence and include Taranto’s own violent messages, such as “We have to kill everyone who got in my way,” and “Right love bullets.”
The rewriting of the Taranto filing is part of a larger pattern inside the Trump-run DOJ.
Since the president’s return to office, dozens of prosecutors and staff who handled January 6 cases have been dismissed, demoted or reassigned. The administration has pardoned more than 1,500 individuals convicted for their roles in the attack and has described the rioters as “patriots” and “political prisoners.”
Several federal judges and bipartisan investigations have consistently called January 6 a direct assault on democracy and have emphasized Trump’s culpability.
Jacob Knutson contributed to this reporting.