MAGA prosecutor won’t explain scrubbed sentencing memo for rioter who threatened Obama
President Donald Trump's federal prosecutor in Washington, D.C., refused to answer questions from reporters on why the Justice Department whitewashed a sentencing memo for a violent Jan. 6 rioter who was charged for an incident in which he livestreamed himself near former President Barack Obama's house with a stash of illegal guns and ammunition.
Tyler Taranto, during his heavily armed stream in 2023, also made a fake bomb threat against a government building. He separately received a pardon for his involvement in the attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"US Atty Jeanine Pirro was just asked about the scrubbing of sentencing memo (of Jan 6 references) in Taylor Taranto case. Why did it happen? She wouldn't answer directly... and said the 'papers speak for themselves,'" stated CBS News' Scott MacFarlane on Thursday.
Additionally, Pirro, a former far-right Fox News personality who has pushed election conspiracy theories, would not comment on why a pair of prosecutors who worked on the memo were placed on leave.
The redoing of the sentencing memo, which argued Taranto receive 27 months in prison, raised alarm bells among legal experts, as not only did the new version remove all references to him being a January 6 rioter, it also removed references to the fact that Trump posted the location of Obama's home on Truth Social shortly before Taranto's threatening stunt.
On Thursday, a judge sentenced Taranto to 21 months, which works out to "time served," as well as three years' supervised release.
The one official best positioned to stop Trump only has two months left on the job
There's one government agency that the Washington Post says can push back on President Donald Trump, but they don't have long to do it.
Writing Monday, the Post explained that the Government Accountability Office has an appointee whose term expires in two months.
"The agency’s leader, Comptroller General Gene Dodaro, has about two months left in his term, and Trump will nominate his replacement, potentially scuttling some of the Government Accountability Office’s most forceful attempts at oversight — including by taking the White House to court if necessary," the report said.
Already, the agency has retained a law firm to navigate whether the White House is breaking the law over spending issues.
“They are looking at everything,” said a source when speaking to the Post.
Once Trump is able to appoint his own people to the post, the agency will be "defanged," the Post described.
Congress can send Trump a list of who they think should be appointed, but the president can ignore it and pick whomever he wishes.
Office of Management and Budget director Russ Vought has spent his first few months in the post claiming the GAO is illegitimate and that it "shouldn't exist" to begin with. Republicans in Congress already tried to kill funding to the agency so that they couldn't afford to sue the administration on behalf of Congress, the report said.
"But the agency has taken on more prominence in recent months. A federal appeals court in August held that only GAO had the standing to sue over violations of spending laws, cutting out the groups that claimed harm from Trump’s decisions," the report explained.
“If Trump nominates the next comptroller general — I don’t want to make a political thing out of it, but his track record about caring about oversight and independent evaluations is not terribly strong,” said Henry Wray, a former GAO lawyer and ethics counselor. “GAO is really the only truly independent source of executive branch oversight in government.”
The most recent legal example is Trump attempting to kill funding allocated by Congress before he was president. The GAO could step in and say that it violates the Impoundment Control Act.
