Trump Pardoned A Jan. 6 Rioter. Now He's 'At Large' For A Crime.

Andrew Taake’s legal troubles might not be over — even though the Texas man was just pardoned by President Donald Trump after being convicted of spraying police with bear spray and using a metal whip to assault them while they defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

According to a review of public court records and confirmed by the Houston district attorney’s office on Monday, Taake is still considered “at large” for the alleged 2016 crime of soliciting a minor online under 17 years old with the expectation that the individual “would engage in sexual contact” with him.

Taake, who was sentenced to six years in prison for assaulting police on Jan. 6, was out on bond for the solicitation charge when he was storming the Capitol.

The Harris County district attorney’s office said Taake was charged with soliciting someone “believed to be younger than 17 years of age” on May 25, 2016, just one day after the solicitation allegedly occurred.

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He received a bond of $20,000; with it secured, he was released from jail. However, his bond was revoked in September 2021.

Today, “he is still at large” for that offense, a spokesperson for the district attorney in Harris County told HuffPost.

Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare also told HuffPost on Monday, “Before Andrew Taake’s release from custody in Florence, Colorado, on January 20, a member of our Harris County Sheriff’s Office Fugitive Warrants Division requested that federal authorities hold him, due to his pending warrant in Harris County. That request was filed back in 2022. The Bureau of Prisons informed our office they must have a certified warrant to prevent Taake’s release. Although a clerk faxed a copy of that warrant on January 15, Taake was released five days later, in accordance with President Trump’s Pardon order.”

“Re-arresting individuals, like Taake, who were released with pending State warrants, will require significant resources,” Teare continued. “Know that we are already in the process of tracking Taake down, as he must answer for [the] 2016 charge of soliciting a minor online.”

An attorney for Taake did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Monday.

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His Jan. 6 activities only came to light thanks to an amateur sting led by a woman using the dating app Bumble. As HuffPost reported in-depth in 2021, the woman said she used the app to connect with men in the Washington area who she thought may have been at the Capitol.

It was her “civic duty” to gain information, and there was “comically minimal ego-stroking” necessary to prompt men to expose themselves, she said.

Taake took the bait. Though in their chats he regurgitated popular right-wing conspiracy theories about the 2020 election and who he believed was responsible for the assault on the Capitol — Taake insisted it was “antifa” — he nonetheless boasted about himself.

When asked if he was “near all the action,” he said he was and “from the very beginning.”

He sent her pictures of himself too, claiming he had just been sprayed with a chemical irritant by police.

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The woman connected with roughly a dozen men who were in Washington on Jan. 6 or had attended Trump’s rally that morning. Just three admitted they were all on Capitol grounds illegally, Taake included.

All the woman had to do was suggest they tell her more, and when she had enough to send to the FBI, that’s exactly what she did, she told HuffPost in July 2021.

After his arrest, Taake ended up pleading guilty to a single count of assaulting, resisting or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon in December 2023.

In the days since Trump doled out pardons to Jan. 6 rioters, another former defendant has been arrested.

Just last week, authorities arrested Daniel Ball, 39, of Florida, on a felony gun charge stemming from May 2023. Ball had been unable to appear in Florida court to face the gun charge since he was already detained for crimes at the Capitol.

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Court records show that the gun charge was filed when the FBI turned up a loaded rifle, ammunition and explosive devices in his possession that, according to prosecutors, were the same kind of devices he admitted to using to attack police.

The federal judge who oversaw Ball’s Jan. 6 case called his conduct on that day “some of the most violent and serious offenses from the Capitol insurrection.”

The devices were thrown toward officers who were packed tightly into a tunnel and caused some police to experience hearing loss for months afterward.

Ball was facing 12 years in prison for nearly a dozen charges related to Jan. 6 before he received a pardon.

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