Federal prosecutors placed on leave hours after calling J6 ‘a mob of rioters’
Two federal prosecutors have been put on an administrative leave only hours after they filed a court document where they editorialized about how the Jan. 6, 2021, events in Washington were carried out by a “mob of rioters.”
That’s when thousands of protesters challenging the validity of Joe Biden’s election to the Oval Office gathered. A few hundred did violate the law by going into the Capitol without permission, and a fraction of those vandalized it.
It turns out that the election was influenced by several outside and unique factors, including Mark Zuckerberg’s handouts of $400 million plus to local election officials who often used it to recruit voters in Democrat districts, and the FBI’s interference when it described accurate accounts of Biden family scandals as Russian disinformation. President Donald Trump later issued a pardon for most of the offenses from that day.
Earlier, a number of the prosecutors who pursued extreme charging and sentencing standards for offenders were dismissed or demoted.
But now two others, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, both assistant U.S. attorneys, have been assigned a leave after editorializing in a statement to the court in a case involving Taylor Taranto. He was a recipient of Trump’s pardon for J6, but later involved himself in situations that generated other charges.
A report at Politico said Valdivia and White claimed the J6 events were done by “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters,” the report said.
It came in a sentencing recommendation for Taranto, where the prosecutors called for a term of more than two years for a hoax threat against a federal bureaucracy, and for driving in a neighborhood where Barack Obama’s owns an expensive home while having firearms in his vehicle.
The prosecutors also alleged that Taranto was involved in having “promoted conspiracy theories about the events of January 6, 2021.”
NEWS – Two federal prosecutors were informed Wednesday they will be put on leave after filing a legal brief that described the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol as being carried out by “thousands of people comprising a mob of rioters,” sources tell me & @alex_mallin
— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) October 29, 2025
U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, who leads the Washington, D.C., office prosecuting Taranto, said, “While we don’t comment on personnel decisions, we want to make very clear that we take violence and threats of violence against law enforcement, current or former government officials extremely seriously.”
Politico’s report said Valdivia and White claimed Taranto returned to Washington in 2023 and “made livestreamed threats to blow up his van outside the National Institute of Standards and Technology,” then drove his van, carrying weapons, through Obama’s Kalorama neighborhood.
The two prosecutors, Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, were locked out of their government devices and informed Wednesday morning they will be placed on leave just hours after filing a sentencing memorandum in the case of Taylor Taranto, the sources said. https://t.co/WLedmQ0NXk
— Katherine Faulders (@KFaulders) October 29, 2025
Politico explained, “It’s unclear which portion of the memo triggered the move by Justice Department officials to place Valdivia and White on leave. However, they’re the latest Jan. 6 prosecutors to face punishment for their involvement in related cases. Dozens of others were either terminated or demoted. One of them, former Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon, is suing over his termination.”