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Trump’s pardon helped keep a confessed child sex offender out of prison
Photo #7650 November 11 2025, 08:15

President Donald Trump’s pardon of everyone arrested during the January 6, 2021 riot at the U.S. Capitol kept one confessed child sex offender out of prison.

Andrew Taake, age 37, pleaded guilty in September for arranging a sexual encounter with an investigator posing as a 15-year-old girl online in 2016, The Daily Beast reported. However, Taake avoided prison for it because of the time he already served for attacking a police officer during the January 2021 riot.

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Had Trump not pardoned Taake, he would’ve served a six-year sentence for the rioting, and then he would have received a separate prison sentence for his child exploitation charges. But since Trump’s pardon essentially declared Taake as innocent of any wrongdoing, the prison time he spent while “innocent” got applied to his child exploitation charge instead.

Multiple attorneys told the aforementioned publication that it’s “ethically problematic” and exceptionally rare to use prison time from a separate, pardoned federal rioting charge to keep someone out of prison for unrelated state child exploitation charges.

Federal prosecutors said Taake used bear spray and a metal whip to assault U.S. Capitol police officers, and then bragged about it to a woman he met through an online dating app, Bumble. The woman then reported him to federal authorities, leading to his arrest and 2023 conviction.

Trump has referred to the hundreds of January 6 rioters that he pardoned “true patriots.”


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