Law enforcement arrested a pardoned Houston man who participated in the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 for a pending 2016 child sex crime charge.
Andrew Taake, 36, had been a fugitive for about two weeks before he was arrested, the Texas Tribune reported on Thursday.
President Donald Trump’s pardon of the more than 1,500 people who had been charged or convicted of crimes related to the violent attack on the democratic process freed Taake from serving the remainder of his six-year prison sentence for the riot.
FBI agents arrested Taake in July of 2021 for assaulting law enforcement officers with a metal whip and bear spray during the far-right attempt to prevent Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory over Trump. A woman who matched with Taake on a dating app turned him in to federal officials.
In 2023, he pleaded guilty to one count of assaulting, resisting or impeding law enforcement officers with a weapon, a felony.
But Trump’s pardons did not wipe the records of the dozens of participants who, like Taake, previously had been charged with other crimes, NPR reported, including sexual abuse of a minor, domestic violence, manslaughter and production of child sexual abuse material.
In 2016, Taake was charged with soliciting a minor online, a case that still was pending when he was arrested by the FBI in 2021. When he was 27, he allegedly tried to arrange a sexual encounter with a police officer who was posing as a 15-year-old online, a third-degree felony that is punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare had attempted to avoid arresting Taake again by faxing a copy of his outstanding arrest warrant to the Federal Bureau of Prisons five days before Trump’s pardon, according to the Tribune.
Texans played a crucial role in organizing, executing and downplaying the severity of the Jan. 6 insurrection. Stewart Rhodes, a former resident of Granbury and the leader of the far-right militia group the Oath Keepers, was the first of 14 people named specifically for pardons in Trump’s proclamation. In 2023, a jury found him guilty of seditious conspiracy, while also acquitting him of other counts. He had been sentenced to 18 years in federal prison.
