A Jan. 6 rioter who pardoned by President Donald Trump and released from prison last week is being sought on preexisting charges in Texas of soliciting a minor online.

The district attorney in Harris County, Texas, said Tuesday that his office was searching for Andrew Taake, who at the time of the Capitol riot was awaiting trial on charges brought in 2016 of using a messaging app to pursue a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old.

A few months after the attack at the Capitol, he told a woman on dating app Bumble that he had been involved in the riot, and she turned him in to the FBI.

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Taake Pleaded Guilty to Attacking Police Officer

Taake, 36, later pleaded guilty to attacking police officers outside the Capitol with bear spray and a metal whip and was sentenced in June to more than six years in prison. He was freed from federal prison in Colorado last week, not long after Trump issued a sweeping grant of clemency to all of the nearly 1,600 people charged in connection with the storming of the Capitol.

The man’s release took place despite the fact that the district attorney’s office had sent prison officials a copy of the open warrant for Taake’s arrest in Harris County five days before his pardon was issued.

Sean Teare, the district attorney, said in a statement that his office was searching for Taake to make him face the charges of solicitation of a minor.

“Rearresting individuals, like Taake, who were released with pending state warrants, will require significant resources,” the statement said. “Know that we are already in the process of tracking Taake down, as he must answer” for the 2016 charges.

Taake was not the only pardoned Jan. 6 defendant who was released from custody by Trump and then drew scrutiny for other crimes.

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A Florida man, Daniel Ball, was arrested last week on charges of illegally possessing a firearm as a felon. He had just been pardoned and released from jail in Washington on Jan. 6-related charges, including hurling an explosive device at officers protecting an entrance at the lower west terrace of the Capitol.

An indictment in Florida said that the weapon that Ball had illegally possessed was seized during a search of his home in May 2023 while he was being investigated in his Jan. 6 case.

In other riot cases, however, Trump’s clemency proclamation has created a measure of confusion. Judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers have struggled to determine whether the clemency covered only crimes related directly to the Capitol attack or whether the clemency also extended to crimes emerging from the inquiry into Jan. 6.

Pardon Relates to Events That Occurred at or Near Capitol on Jan. 6

The proclamation said that pardons and sentence reductions were merited for people convicted of crimes “related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.”

On Tuesday, for example, federal prosecutors agreed to drop their efforts to detain Guy Wesley Reffitt — a Jan. 6 defendant who had already been pardoned for crimes related to the Capitol attack — on separate gun charges in Texas. Reffitt was convicted at the first trial arising from Jan. 6 of helping to lead the pro-Trump mob in its attack on the Capitol, and he was subsequently charged with illegally possessing an unregistered suppressor.

Late last week, federal officials sought to send another pardoned rioter, Daniel Wilson, back to prison, saying that even though Trump had granted him clemency on the conspiracy charges arising from the Capitol attack, Wilson had been found guilty in Kentucky on separate firearms offenses.

His lawyers argued that he should not have to return to prison immediately since the firearms charges arose from evidence seized in a search of his home on a warrant issued in connection with the Capitol attack.

On Tuesday, the judge overseeing the case of Wilson in Washington agreed that he could remain free until the issue of whether Trump’s pardons covered the firearms offense was resolved.

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This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

By Alan Feuer/Jason Andrew
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