WASHINGTON — The Washington state man accused of unlawfully possessing weapons in a van near the Obama’s home in Kalorama told the government Tuesday he has no interest in a plea and intends to head to trial.
During a status conference in D.C. District Court for Taylor Taranto, a federal prosecutor said he’d been told that day Taranto had no interest in the possibility of a plea offer. Taranto’s attorney, assistant federal public defender Kathryn Guevara, said they were seeking a trial date as early as possible – potentially eyeing the first few weeks in January.
Taranto, 37, faces four misdemeanor counts for his alleged role in the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot, as well as two felony charges alleging he violated D.C. laws against carrying a pistol without a license and possession of a large capacity ammunition feeding device. Taranto has been detained since his arrest in June in D.C.’s Kalorama neighborhood, when police found two firearms and hundreds of rounds of ammunition, as well as a machete, inside the van where he had been living for weeks.
Prosecutors have described his arrest as the culmination in a string of concerning incidents that included an alleged, but uncharged, threat to blow up his van at a federal facility in Gaithersburg, Maryland, and a video he made inside an elementary school near the home of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) in which he referenced the congressman. Prosecutors later walked back some of their claims about the video and acknowledged it was filmed while Taranto was participating in a permitted event at the school.
On Tuesday, Guevara said she intends to file a motion to suppress evidence obtained during the search of Taranto’s van as well as to sever those charges from the ones related to Jan. 6. The result of the latter, if granted, would be two back-to-back trials in January before U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols.
Guevara also asked Nichols to request Taranto be moved out of the D.C. Jail and to a federal facility in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. Guevara said last month Taranto had been assaulted by other detainees in the D.C. Jail’s CTF wing, where Jan. 6 defendants are held. Since that assault, she said Tuesday, he has remained in protective custody that has resulted in near-total isolation.
Nichols gave the Justice Department a week to respond with possible trial dates and set the next status hearing in the case for Oct. 17.