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Widow sues Tri-Cities veteran for attacking officer in DC riot. Her husband died by suicide

Tri-City Herald - 8/24/2021

Aug. 24—PASCO, Wa. — A Pasco father who ran an unsuccessful campaign for school board is believed to have stormed the U.S. Capitol in January in an attempt to overturn the presidential election.

Taylor F. Taranto, 35, was named as a suspect in an Aug. 23 story published on HuffPost.com.

While the Navy veteran has not been criminally charged or indicted for his alleged actions on Jan. 6, he is the focus of a new lawsuit being brought by the widow of a police officer who died by suicide nine days after the insurrection.

The suit says the officer "was killed in the line of duty" by Taranto and another man because the concussion the officer suffered led to severe depression and suicide. The widow is asking for $7 million total in compensatory and punitive damages.

Taranto is the first Mid-Columbia resident to be linked to the violent attack while Congress was in session, about to certify the 2020 Electoral College vote.

Two Oregon brothers — one of whom was released to live in Pendleton, just south of the Tri-Cities — were the first residents of that state to be charged in the Capitol riot.

Taranto reportedly outed himself in a July 15 Facebook post that includes an 18-second, close-up video where he talks about being "in the Capitol building, the legislative building." People can be heard shouting in the background.

A screenshot of the recent post shows it included the comment: "This is me 'stormin' the capitol' lol I'm only sharing this so someone will report me to the feds and we can get this party rolling!"

The HuffPost Politics story says that Taranto was one of two men, identified by online sleuths, who allegedly confronted Washington D.C. Metropolitan Police Officer Jeffrey Smith just inside the Capitol building's second-floor doors.

The sleuths, who call themselves #SeditionHunters, combed through hours of amateur footage to find out what happened to Smith that day, the story said. They noted that one of the men was wearing a "Make Space Great Again" hat and wielding a black cane with a sharp tip, believed to be a KA-BAR TDI Self-Defense Cane.

Franklin Republicans website

A facial recognition search in the early hours of Aug. 14 confirmed that man was Taranto after comparing the riot footage to public pictures of Taranto on the Franklin County Republican Party's website, according to the HuffPost.

Taranto is the local party's webmaster.

One picture on the site shows him in a tie, holding a glass of red wine, with his arm around a cardboard cutout of then-President Donald Trump. It is included in a picture gallery from the 2018 Lincoln Day Dinner in Pasco.

Members of the party's executive committee are featured on the website with their mugshots. Taranto's mugshot has been tweaked to look like pop art.

Clint Dider — chairman of the Franklin County Republican Party's executive committee and chairman of the Franklin County Commission — told the HuffPost in a phone interview that Taranto had said he witnessed "a bunch of buses coming in posing as Trump supporters who orchestrated this whole damn thing."

"They had buses full of these 'antifa' people posing as being Donald Trump supporters," Dider told the HuffPost.

He abruptly ended that interview because he was working on his farm, but later clarified for the reporter that he could not recall if it was Taranto or another person who had told him about that antifa plot on Jan. 6.

Didier added that Taranto is "a fine man" who "has some issues with PTSD," the story said.

A native of the Tri-Cities, Taranto served six years in the U.S. Navy after graduating from Kennewick'sSouthridge High School in 2004.

He then moved to Pasco, where he and his wife are homeschooling their children.

Taranto, in his Republican Party biography, described himself as a "computational biophysicist" currently developing "treatments for human diseases."

He says he enjoys making memes in his free time, "that is when I'm not helping the President (Trump) take down the deep state."

Taranto tried to unseat incumbent Sherry Lancon from the Pasco School Board in 2013, but lost in the primary election with only 8 percent of the vote. At the time, he said he was a small-business owner and student at Columbia Basin College.

He has been elected within the Franklin County Republican Party to serve as the 16th Legislative District Committee member.

Federal lawsuit

The lawsuit was filed against Taranto and David Walls-Kaufman in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.

Walls-Kaufman is a chiropractor in D.C., the HuffPost story said.

Erin Smith, as both the widow and the personal representative of her late husband's estate, said Officer Smith and other law enforcement officers were trying to push the insurrectionists out of the Capitol building at about 5 p.m. on Jan. 6.

Walls-Kaufman was part of the "insurrectionist mob" being escorted out when Taranto handed him the cane. Walls-Kaufman "violently swung the can and struck Officer Smith in the face/head," according to the lawsuit.

Smith's face shield was up at the time, exposing his face and eyes.

"It appears that Walls-Kaufman and Taranto specifically and maliciously targeted Officer Smith because his visor was in the upright position, making him more vulnerable to this brutal and vicious attack," the suit states.

The entire attack of Smith was allegedly captured on video and has been uploaded to YouTube.

Suicide 9 days later

Officer Smith died Jan. 15. The lawsuit says his cause of death was severe depression and a brain injury from the concussion.

He reportedly is one of four officers, who responded on Jan. 6, to have since died by suicide.

"The actions of (Taranto and Walls-Kaufman) in carrying out the assault were intentional wanton, malicious, depraved, and were made with a black heart," the lawsuit states.

It accuses the two suspects of assault and battery, and wrongful death, and Taranto specifically of aiding and abetting.

David Weber, Erin Smith's attorney, told the HuffPost that he turned to the Deep State Dogs for help on the Smith case.

The Deep State Dogs is "one of the volunteer open-source research organizations that popped up after the Capitol attack," and has identified several violent Capitol rioters, the story said.

They worked to trace Officer Smith's movements that day by certain details of his uniform, then reportedly compiled information on the rioters who had contact with him.

Smith, before his death, had shared that he was struck by a metal object outside the Capitol, but the online sleuths uncovered the inside assault not far from the Speaker's Lobby, the HuffPost reported.

It was footage showing Smith going down in the middle of a mob inside the Capitol that led a former chief medical examiner to find that the officer suffered a concussion.

After the HuffPost published a story Aug. 13 about "how members of the Sedition Hunters community uncovered a moment where Officer Smith collapsed in a heap during a battle," the movement widened to track down the man wearing the "Make Space Great Again" ball cap.

That man — Taranto — was dubbed #AstroNOT by the online sleuths.

"When I saw him grinning with the Trump cutout (on the Franklin County Republican Party website), that's when I figured we probably had a good lead," a sleuth who helped identify Taranto told HuffPost.

Weber, the lawyer, told the HuffPost that once the Sedition Hunters were done with their investigation, he did his own independent analysis of the video to support the allegations in the lawsuit,

The publication says Taranto and Walls-Kaufman were both served with the lawsuit last week.

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