'Excellent job': Trump-appointed judge gushes over DOJ prosecutors sidelined over J6 memo

A Trump-appointed federal district judge in Washington, D.C., went out of his way on Thursday to praise a pair of Justice Department prosecutors who were put on leave shortly after writing a harsh sentencing memo against a pardoned Jan. 6 defendant and described that event as a "mob of rioters," Politico reported.

The rioter in question, Taylor Taranto, was separately convicted in a bench trial for livestreaming himself near former President Barack Obama's house with a huge cache of illegal weapons, and issuing a fake threat to bomb a government building.

U.S. District Judge Carl Nichols, who presided over the bench trial and issued the convictions, made his statement on the matter as Assistant U.S. Attorneys Carlos Valdivia and Samuel White, the two attorneys placed on leave, "looked on from the gallery as the chief of the criminal section of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in D.C., Jonathan Hornok, and another prosecutor, Travis Wolf, took their places."

Valdivia and White, said Nichols, “upheld the highest standards of professionalism” through the trial and “In my view, both ... did a truly excellent job in this case.”

After Valdivia and White were removed, their sentencing memo recommending 27 months in prison vanished from the court docket, and was replaced with a new one that erased all references to Taranto being a January 6 rioter or to the fact that President Donald Trump posted the address of Obama's house on his Truth Social platform shortly before Taranto went there.

Taranto was ultimately sentenced to 21 months, which is less than the current amount of time he's been held through the trial process, meaning he will be released on time served. He additionally faces three years of supervised release.