Taylor Taranto biography: 13 things about US Capitol riot suspect from Pasco, Washington

Taylor Franklin Taranto was born and raised in Washington, United States. He is a U.S. Navy veteran and is a former Republican Party official in Franklin County.

A resident of Pasco, Franklin County, Washington, Taranto studied engineering at Washington State University in Pullman, Whitman County, Washington. Aside from Pasco, he has lived in other parts of Washington including Kennewick and Seattle.

After working as chemical technician and grounds maintenance worker, Taranto became a TFT Ind research analyst. Here are 13 more things about him:

1. From 2004 to 2010, he served in the U.S. Navy. He was deployed to Iraq.
2. On August 6, 2013, as a candidate for the Position 4 seat on the Pasco Board of Education in Pasco, he placed third in the primary election, losing to Sherry Lancon and Javier Ruiz.
3. In 2018, he attended a Republic Party dinner in Franklin County where he was photographed posing with a cutout of 45th U.S. president Donald Trump.
4. On December 4, 2019, while employed by TFT Ind, he donated $500 to Washington Patriots political action committee (PAC).
5. On January 6, 2021, he went to the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. That day, Trump’s supporters breached the building while a joint session of Congress was certifying the vote of the Electoral College and affirming Joe Biden‘s victory in the 2020 presidential election. During the riot, he and Dr. David Walls Kaufman, then 64, assaulted Metropolitan Police Department officer Jeffrey L. Smith. On January 15, 2021, Smith fatally shot himself after suffering from severe depression and brain injury.
6. On July 15, 2021, he took to Facebook to share an 18-second, close-up video where he talks about being “in the Capitol building, the legislative building.”
7. On August 13, 2021, Smith’s widow Erin Smith sued him and Kaufman for assault and battery and wrongful death. The lawsuit seeks $2 million in compensatory damages and $5 million in punitive damages.
8. In December 2021, he asked a judge to dismiss Erin’s lawsuit against him and Kaufman and award him $1 million in judgment from Erin, punitive damages in the amount of $2.5 million plus court costs and a public apology. His counterclaim was dismissed.
9. In 2022, he was officially removed from the Franklin County Republican Central Committee by party leadership as webmaster and as an active member for his radical and erratic social media posts that did not align with the committee’s values.
10. On April 9, 2023, he participated in a protest against an Easter Day drag show brunch at a restaurant in Richland, Benton County, Washington.
11. On June 28, 2023, while streaming live on his public YouTube channel, he said he was headed with a detonator to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), an agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce headquartered in Gaithersburg, Montgomery County, Maryland, USA. 
12. On June 29, 2023, U.S. Secret Service agents spotted him within blocks of 44th U.S. president Barack Obama‘s residence in Kalorama, Northwest, Washington, D.C. and found a machete, two guns and 400 rounds of ammunition in his van. Before entering a restricted security zone around the residence, he was arrested as a fugitive from justice and booked into the D.C. Metropolitan Jail in Washington, D.C. On June 30, 2023, he appeared in court before Magistrate Judge G. Michael Harvey in Washington, D.C.
13. He was 37 years old when he appeared in court again on July 5, 2023 before Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui. The hearing will continue on July 6, 2023. 

(This is a developing story. More details are being added.)

If you have information about someone who participated in the U.S. Capitol riot on January 6, 2021, call 1-800-CALL-FBI or submit relevant photos and videos to the FBI.