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A convicted US Capitol attacker who was freed from prison by Donald Trump’s decision to pardon essentially every participant in the January 6 uprising must now grapple with an unresolved charge of having solicited a minor.
At the center of the case in question is Andrew Taake, 36, of Houston, Texas, who assailed police with bear spray and a metal whip when a mob of Trump supporters descended on the Capitol in early 2021 in a desperate attempt to keep him in office at the end of his first presidency, according to prosecutors.
Taake later boasted about those crimes while chatting with a woman on the Bumble dating app and he was arrested in July 2021 after she reported him to the FBI.
Taake in December 2023 pleaded guilty in the federal court system to one count of assaulting, resisting or impeding police with a dangerous weapon. And he received a sentence that would have kept him imprisoned until 2027 as well as on supervised release until 2030, as the Houston Chronicle first noted.
Federal prison records show that Taake was released from a correctional center in Fort Worth, Texas, on the first day of Trump’s second presidency – 20 January. Trump gave blanket pardons or commutations to 1,500 people charged or convicted in the attack on Congress after he lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden.
The president’s clemency, however, did not end all of Taake’s legal problems.
Court documents show that state-level prosecutors in Houston charged him in 2016 with going online and soliciting a person he thought was “younger than 17 years of age” while expecting the contact would culminate in a sexual encounter. Taake – then 27 – at a minimum would have committed child molestation had such an encounter occurred, and he ended up being charged with a third-degree felony carrying up to 10 years in prison.
Houston criminal court records show that case was unresolved when Taake – out on $20,000 bail – participated in the attack on the US Capitol on 6 January 2021. According to the Chronicle, local prosecutors confirmed Friday that Taake was now considered a wanted fugitive in connection with the pending charge of solicitation of a minor. But Houston jail records showed he was not in custody as of three days later.
Attempts to contact Taake were not immediately successful. And his attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After retaking the White House by defeating the former vice-president Kamala Harris in November’s election, Trump has faced bipartisan criticism for his decision to pardon people who attacked law enforcement officers on the day of the Capitol insurrection. Such pardons were one of his key promises on the campaign trail as he sought a return to the Oval Office.
Among the decision’s most prominent critics was the US’s largest police union, which endorsed Trump over Harris, a former prosecutor.
“Crimes against law enforcement are not just attacks on individuals or public safety – they are attacks on society and undermine the rule of law,” the Fraternal Order of Police said in a joint statement with the International Association of Chiefs of Police. “Allowing those convicted of these crimes to be released early diminishes accountability and devalues the sacrifices made by courageous law enforcement officers and their families.”
