Taake was found guilty of assaulting a Capitol police officer with bear spray and a whip during the riot. He was also previously charged in Harris County, Texas, with sending explicit photos and messages to someone he believed to be a 15-year-old girl, and was out on bail when he took part in the riot. The “girl” on the Plenty of Fish dating site Taake was chatting with was an undercover police officer, and he didn’t stop messaging her after finding out her age.
But thanks to the time he served Jan. 6 before Trump's pardon, much of it spent in pretrial detention, Taake accumulated about three years and seven months of “credit” for his previous sex crimes, according to Harris County court documents. Taake was convicted of his crimes at the Capitol just last summer and, thanks to Trump's full pardon, was released from the federal supermax prison ADX Florence in January, just months into his six-year sentence.
Between his arrest and sentencing, Taake was held in custody due to the brutality of his crimes. U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols called his participation in the Capitol insurrection “the furthest thing from expressing the First Amendment.” In a sentencing memorandum last year, prosecutors said Taake “has shown no remorse for his actions or accepted responsibility—going so far as to deny responsibility even after pleading guilty.”
