‘Ethically problematic’: Child-sex offender walks free after Trump’s Jan 6 pardon wipes out his jail time

A Texas man who received a pardon from Donald Trump for his violent role in the January 6, Capitol riot has managed to avoid prison for child sex offences, after a judge credited him with the time he served for the riot before the pardon. 37-year-old Andrew Taake pleaded guilty to soliciting what he believed was a 15-year-old girl for sex. The “girl” was actually an undercover police officer on a dating website. Despite the seriousness of the charge, Taake avoided a prison sentence because he had accumulated more than three and a half years of detention time from his earlier federal case. That case involved him attacking officers with bear spray and a metal whip during the Capitol riot. He was convicted for those actions, but his sentence was later wiped out when Trump issued a blanket pardon to more than 1,500 January 6 offenders on Inauguration Day.According to Harris County court records, Taake received 1,306 days of credit, most of which was from the period he spent in custody before he was sentenced for the riot last year. That credit was then applied to his unrelated state child solicitation case, allowing him to walk free with only a requirement to register as a sex offender for ten years.Lawyers told the Daily Beast that using time from a pardoned political crime to erase punishment for child exploitation was “exceptionally rare” and “ethically problematic”. Washington-based attorney Evan Oshan said the situation was especially concerning because it shifted credit “from a political or protest crime to child exploitation”.Taake’s behaviour on January 6 shocked even the judge overseeing his federal case. He sprayed officers in the face with a chemical irritant and carried a whip made of metal. Prosecutors argued that Taake showed no remorse and continued to portray himself as a patriotic hero. Taake had already been facing the solicitation charge before the riot. He was out on bond for sending explicit messages and photos to the undercover officer on Plenty of Fish dating app, continuing even after being told she was underage. His role in the riot only came to light when he bragged about it to a woman he met on Bumble. The woman later told investigators she felt a sense of “civic duty”, but also admitted she was “mostly just mad and thinking, ‘F— these guys’”.After his release on Trump’s pardon, Taake struck a plea deal on the sex case in September.Taake has a history of other criminal offences, including cocaine possession and hitting a person with his vehicle while driving under the influence. He later sued the Trump administration, alleging he had been denied medical care in prison and claimed he had been injected with oestrogen and grew breasts.He is one of at least nine January 6 offenders who have faced fresh legal trouble after being pardoned. Others have been charged with violent crimes, kidnapping, sexual assault, or plotting political assassinations.