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Jan. 6 suspect arrested near Obama's house after Trump posts the address [1]

['Daily Kos Staff']

Date: 2023-06-30  

“I’m outside Barack Obama’s house,” Jan. 6 suspect Taylor Taranto said on Thursday in a livestream as he drove around a Washington, D.C., neighborhood and talked to a Secret Service agent, not long before he was arrested on an outstanding U.S. Capitol Police warrant. How did Taranto end up outside former President Obama’s house? Ryan Reilly reports at NBC News:

Earlier Thursday, a Truth Social account that uses the same screen name that Taranto uses on other social media accounts re-posted a Trump post that included what is alleged to be the address of Obama’s home in Washington and noted that the home is near a mosque. “Got them surrounded!” the Truth Social account wrote.

Police found weapons, ammunition, and possible explosives components in the van where Taranto has been living.

So Donald Trump effectively sent a heavily armed Jan. 6 participant to Obama’s house. Did he directly ask that particular guy to go? Of course not. But when he posted a screenshot of Obama’s purported address, he knew he was publicizing that address to people who might want to do harm. Once again, Trump is inciting violence among his supporters.

There’s also the question of why Taranto was free to drive around Washington, D.C., anyway, nearly two years after he was identified as a Jan. 6 participant. He is being sued by the widow of Officer Jeffrey Smith, who died by suicide following the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Taranto allegedly handed a weapon to another man who used it to assault Smith. That other man has already been arrested and sentenced, but Taranto wasn’t arrested until this week, despite making his whereabouts regularly known on social media. In fact, Reilly reports, he had been living in his van near the Washington jail—talk about making it convenient for law enforcement to arrest him—and had wondered in social media posts why he hadn’t been arrested yet.

x Taylor Taranto has been actively asking to be arrested since August 2021, but he had to go to Obama’s house to make it happen. https://t.co/LOX5Naj3Jf — Ryan J. Reilly (@ryanjreilly) June 30, 2023

Taylor Taranto sounds unwell: On his livestream he also talked about Obama’s neighborhood being filled with secret tunnels and said he wanted an interview with John Podesta, the Democratic strategist who has been a frequent target of conspiracy theories. Regardless of what mental health intervention Taranto needs, his violent involvement in Jan. 6 means he shouldn’t have been able to show up near Obama’s house with a van loaded with weapons.

And Donald Trump, currently under investigation for his role in efforts to overturn the 2020 election, including his role in inciting the violence on Jan. 6, is still using his social media presence to incite violence.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/6/30/2178529/-Jan-6-suspect-arrested-near-Obama-s-house-after-Trump-posts-the-address

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