(WASHINGTON) — A man with a Jan. 6-related warrant was arrested near former President Barack Obama’s Washington, D.C., house, and he had guns and ammunition in his car, multiple law enforcement sources tell ABC News.
Taylor Taranto, 37, was arrested by the Metropolitan Police Department and charged with Fugitive from Justice, pursuant to an arrest warrant, according to a statement from the agency. The officials did not specify what the warrant was for.
Law enforcement sources told ABC News that they were concerned he was coming to the area and had a Be On the Lookout, or BOLO, order out for his arrest. He was livestreaming just before he was arrested at 1 p.m. Thursday afternoon, according to sources.
Authorities who searched his car found multiple firearms, ammunition and material to make at least one Molotov cocktail, according to law enforcement sources.
Taranto wasn’t in the protective bubble of the former president and had not gotten past any checkpoints, law enforcement sources stressed.
Taranto didn’t make any direct threats to the former president or mention him by name, but he did suggest he had weapons in his comments on his livestream, according to law enforcement sources.
There is no active threat to the community, and the incident remains under investigation, according to MPD’s statement.
The story was first reported by CBS News.
Taranto is a defendant named in a civil lawsuit brought by the widow of MPD officer Jeffrey Smith, who died by suicide following the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol.
The complaint, brought by Smith’s widow in August 2021, identified Taranto as having entered the Capitol and alleged that he aided another rioter, David Walls-Kaufman, in attacking Smith as he was trying to remove rioters from the building.
Walls-Kaufman pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor offense after federal prosecutors acknowledged they couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had assaulted Smith, and he was sentenced to two months in jail earlier this month.
It is not clear why Taranto has not been charged. He has claimed in the civil court proceedings, however, that he was in the mob acting as an “established 1st amendment press agent” that covers Antifa and Black Lives Matter “provocateurs.”
He has otherwise denied aiding in Smith’s assault. The civil lawsuit remains active after being assigned to a new judge in February.
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