The official explanation for the government, by Jonathan Hornok, chief of the criminal division of the DC U.S. attorney’s office, withdrawing the sentencing memo for Taylor Taranto was that it had been “entered in error.” That is a lie.

In their sentencing papers, Mr. Valdivia and Mr. White wrote that Mr. Taranto had been among the “mob of rioters” on Jan. 6 and that he had promoted conspiracy theories concerning the attack. Mr. Taranto was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct for his role in the Capitol attack, but those charges were dismissed as part of the blanket clemency that President Trump granted to all of the nearly 1,600 people accused of taking part in the riot.

In an extraordinary move, the Justice Department withdrew the sentencing papers on Wednesday afternoon, noting in a federal court database that they had been “entered in error.” Hours later, new sentencing papers were submitted that kept the same recommendation for a 27-month sentence but expunged all references to Jan. 6.

Taranto was pardoned, like almost everyone else who participated in the failed insurrection of January 6th, but that didn’t wipe the date from the calendar, make the beatings of Capital Police vanish or turn it into Trump’s fantasy “day of love.” But in Jeanine Pirro’s office, the fantasy prevails and prosecutors mention reality at their peril.

The prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, asked a federal judge on Tuesday to sentence the man granted clemency, Taylor Taranto, to 27 months in prison after he was found guilty at a bench trial of showing up near Mr. Obama’s house in Washington with two firearms and ammunition in June 2023.

The two assistant United States Attorneys, Valdivia and White, were placed on leave and their sentencing memo was replaced with a sanitized version that removed all mention of January 6.

That Taranto, like many of the January 6th insurrectionists, turned out to be dangerously mentally ill individual, comes as little surprise. That’s the nature of the sort of people who would believe the laughably nonsensical lie that the election was “rigged” and lay siege on the Capital to try to prevent Congress from certifying the electoral college results. So it comes as no surprise that Taranto followed it up when he learned of Obama’s address.

In the original sentencing papers, Mr. Valdivia and Mr. White had said that Mr. Taranto had apparently discovered Mr. Obama’s address in a social media message posted by Mr. Trump. Mr. Taranto reposted the address, the prosecutors said, and then broadcast footage of himself driving through Mr. Obama’s neighborhood, Kalorama in Northwest Washington, claiming he was searching for “tunnels.”

That detail, as well, was scrubbed from the memo.

But the new court papers made no mention of Mr. Trump’s post.

Taranto’s prior conduct, his prior engagement in violent and criminal conduct, is certainly relevant to his sentencing now. And it’s the duty of the assistants to inform the court of information relevant to his sentencing. Or at least it used to be.

Prosecutors who have worked on Jan. 6-related cases have been targeted for months as part of Mr. Trump’s broader effort to root out people in the Justice Department he believes to be disloyal.

If the president says January 6 was a day of love, and pardons the cop beaters, window breakers, podium stealers and desk crappers, would it not be disloyal to mention otherwise? And to suggest that it was a by-product of Trump’s revealing the Obama’s new address that a dangerously mentally ill Trump sycophant would return to DC to murder a former president was heresy of the worst order.

Here’s the second: (Not positive yet if there’s more.) pic.twitter.com/VUCirTuLb6

— Roger Parloff (@rparloff) October 29, 2025

What’s curious is that while Valdivia and White were put on leave for it, and their papers withdrawn and scrubbed of any reference that was inconsistent with the Trumpian fantasy of January 6, the head of the criminal division of the office was happy to sign off on the “new and improved” fantasy memo.

Neither the duty of candor nor the duty to do justice remain as guiding principles in the Department of Justice. Instead, as Anna Bower sadly notes, “The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became the truth.” In the Trump administration, reality is whatever the president says it is, and no loyal prosecutor would argue otherwise. There is no place in a sentencing memo for a dangerous J6 insurrectionist or any unpleasant words about January 6th.