Violent Jan 6 rioter pardoned by Donald Trump being sought on charges of child sex solicitation
Violent Jan 6 rioter pardoned by Donald Trump being sought on charges of child sex solicitation
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Andrew Taake, 36, was released from federal prison despite a formal request by Texas prosecutors to keep him in custody to stand trial on. A violent Capitol rioter who was released from prison after being pardoned by Donald Trump is now wanted on separate charges of child sex solicitation.
![[Andrew Taake on the northwest steps of the Capitol building on January 6, 2021]](https://static.independent.co.uk/2025/01/28/00/newFile-1.jpg)
Andrew Taake, 36, from Houston, Texas, pleaded guilty in 2023 to beating officers with a metal whip and dousing them with bear spray while storming the Capitol grounds on January 6, 2021. After being turned in by a woman he chatted with on the dating app Bumble, he was sentenced to six years in federal prison plus three years of post-released supervision.
But now that he's free again, Texas prosecutors are seeking him for trial on charges related to text messages he allegedly sent an undercover cop pretending to be a 15-year-old girl back in 2016. According to court documents, Taake was already awaiting trial for those messages when he journeyed to the Capitol "ready for violence" in January 2021.
Nevertheless, he was freed from federal prison despite a formal request from Texas authorities to keep him in custody so that he could be tried for the 2016 charge, according to Houston officials. A spokesperson for the Harris County district attorney’s office told The Independent that it had first requested Taake’s hold back in 2022 and sent over further paperwork on January 15, five days before Donald Trump’s blanket pardon order. Trump hailed those imprisoned on charges in the Captitol riot as “patriots.”.
