A Texas man who bragged about attacking police during the Jan. 6 insurrection has now admitted to soliciting sex from what he thought was a 15-year-old girl — yet somehow managed to walk free.
Andrew Taake, 37, pleaded guilty in September to child sex charges after exchanging explicit messages and photos with an undercover officer posing as a teenage girl on the dating site Plenty of Fish. But instead of going to prison, Taake got off with a slap on the wrist — largely thanks to the “credit” he received for time spent behind bars for his role in the Capitol riot.
According to The Daily Beast, “Legal experts branded the decision ‘exceptionally rare.’ Multiple attorneys told the Daily Beast that using ‘credit’ from a pardoned federal case for separate crimes to keep Taake out of prison on unrelated state charges was also ‘ethically problematic.’”
“Especially moving from a political/protest crime to child exploitation,” said Washington-based trial attorney Evan Oshan.
Taake’s story is as disturbing as it is baffling. He was already out on bond for the solicitation charges when he stormed the U.S. Capitol in 2021, where he attacked police with bear spray and a metal whip. Court records show he racked up 1,306 days — about three years and seven months — in pretrial detention before being sentenced for the riot.
But in a stunning twist, Taake’s prison time ended up counting toward his punishment for the sex crime after he was granted a presidential pardon by Donald Trump. Taake was one of more than 1,500 people pardoned by Trump for their roles in the Capitol attack after the president returned to the White House in January.
Prosecutors in Harris County, Texas, agreed to a plea deal that required Taake to register as a sex offender for 10 years. Still, the time he’d already served — tied to the riot — effectively erased any additional prison time for trying to have sex with a child.
Taake’s digital trail led authorities straight to him. He was identified as a Capitol rioter after bragging to a woman he met on Bumble about storming the Capitol. Disturbed by his confession, she turned him in to the FBI.
“I felt a bit of ‘civic duty,’ I guess, but truthfully, I was mostly just mad,” the woman said last year.
For legal experts, the outcome is deeply troubling — not just because of what Taake did, but because of how he managed to escape accountability. A man who attacked police officers and pursued what he believed was a 15-year-old girl won’t serve another day behind bars. And it’s all because of a presidential pardon meant for “political” crimes that somehow shielded a convicted sex offender.
It’s the kind of loophole that leaves justice looking less like a system — and more like a joke.
