But it was only after FBI agents and Mint Hill police officers arrested Daniels at his home on Jan. 6 charges, in November 2023, that Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) opened the phone and reviewed its contents.
In the meantime, a second minor victim accused Daniel of statutory rape, 80 miles north in the Winston-Salem area, prompting the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office to open its own investigation. Now, Daniel faces federal charges related to the production, possession and receipt of child pornography and sexual exploitation of a minor.
HSI's role in delaying that state investigation is being reported for the first time by Raw Story.
‘Evidence is compelling’
Daniel is one of around a half-dozen individuals involved in the Jan. 6 attack and pardoned by President Donald Trump who have faced sex charges, including child exploitation and rape.
- John Emanuel Banuelos, who fired a gun into the air during the Capitol attack, was arrested in Chicago in October 2025 on a warrant from Salt Lake County, Utah, on charges of aggravated kidnapping and aggravated sexual assault. The charges arose when authorities obtained DNA test results linking Banuelos to a 2018 sexual assault, in which he allegedly invited a woman back to his house, punched her in the head and forcibly removed her clothes, according to CBS News.
- Andrew Paul Johnson, who pleaded guilty to violent entry and disorderly conduct inside the Capitol, was charged in Florida with molesting a child as young as 11 years old, and allegedly tried to buy his victim’s silence by promising a portion of reparations he claimed were due to him for his Jan. 6 prosecution, according to The Intercept. Trump said last March there was “talk” about compensating Jan. 6 defendants, but nothing has come of the idea.
- Dillon Herrington, an Army veteran, was indicted on a first-degree rape charge in Alabama in 2023, shortly after pleading guilty to assaulting federal law enforcement after hurling a 4x4 piece of lumber at police officers at the Capitol. Sentenced to 37 months in prison, Herrington was set free by Trump but is currently being held without bond in the Limestone County Jail.
- Theodore Middendorf, who pleaded guilty to destruction of government property for his role in the Jan. 6 attack, is serving a 19-year prison sentence at Danville Correctional Center in Illinois for predatory criminal sexual assault of a victim less than 13 years old, according to the Illinois Department of Corrections website.
Other J6-ers have completed prison time for child sex offenses.
- Andrew Taake was serving a federal prison sentence in Colorado for attacking police with bear spray and a metal whip at the Capitol, when he received a pardon from President Trump. Prosecutors in Harris County, Texas were at the time seeking Taake on a 2016 charge of soliciting a minor online, but federal officials refused to hold him. Taake pleaded guilty in September, and received a three-year sentence. The sentence was suspended in recognition that he had served at least that amount of time for his Jan. 6 offenses, the Houston Chronicle reported.
- Andrew Kyle Grigsby, who was accused of using bear spray against officers at the Capitol, was serving time in Kentucky prison for possession of child sexual abuse material when he received his pardon from President Trump.
- Sean McHugh, a California man who used a bullhorn to accuse officers at the Capitol of “protecting pedophiles” on Jan. 6, had served jail time for statutory rape of a 14-year-old.
Daniel is unique in arguing that he was only charged for sex crimes as a result of the FBI’s massive Jan. 6 investigation.
Prosecutors disagree. Daniel has pleaded not guilty, but a U.S. magistrate judge ordered him detained last September, writing that “the government’s forecast of evidence is compelling and suggests defendant engaged in sexual acts with two young girls in his own family.”
The magistrate noted that Daniel’s ex-wife “appeared in court to request that defendant not be released.”
‘One significant difference’
In other cases, the Trump Department of Justice has dismissed separate charges that arose as a result of the Jan. 6 investigation. They include:
- Jeremy Brown, a Florida man serving a seven-year sentence for possession of grenades, a modified AR-15 style rifle, sawed off shotgun and classified materials in his home.
- Daniel Ball, also of Florida, charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.
- Elias Costianes Jr., of Maryland, then serving time for possession of a firearm by an unlawful user of or addict to a controlled substance.
In Daniel's case, his court-appointed lawyer argued in a federal filing in October that the “one significant difference” between those cases and his client’s case is that Daniel’s “involves the politically unsavory charge of child exploitation.”
“Politically, and quite reasonably, the pardon cannot be regarded as encompassing child exploitation,” the filing states.
As Daniel seeks an evidentiary hearing on a motion to dismiss, the DOJ continues to release a millions of documents from the case against the late financier and convicted child trafficker Jeffrey Epstein, in response to an act of Congress.
President Trump has struggled to overcome persistent public scrutiny of his friendship with Epstein, although there is no evidence the president was involved in Epstein’s crimes.
In a footnote to Daniel’s Oct. 27 filing, his lawyer states that his client “is informed and believes” that the decision by the government to go forward with prosecution “is institutional, occurring at an elevated level within the Department of Justice.”
The DOJ did not respond to a request for comment.
A spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina told Raw Story the office does “not discuss charging decisions,” adding that such decisions “are made by the U.S. Attorney, often in consultation with others at the Department of Justice.”
Russ Ferguson, a former white collar criminal defense and business litigation attorney, has led the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Western District of North Carolina since his appointment last March. He took the oath of office on Christmas Eve, following Senate confirmation.
Daniel’s lawyer argues in the Oct. 27 filing that “there never would have been a federal prosecution of Mr. Daniel for child exploitation charges unless the pardoned January 6 investigation had prompted the government to obtain the J6 search warrant and search Mr. Daniel’s home.”
During the search, FBI agents seized devices, and after obtaining a warrant to search the devices, uncovered images used as evidence to support the child exploitation charges.
Daniel’s filing goes on to say that “the government was not aware of the abandoned state investigation until it began to pursue the January 6 search warrant.”
But an affidavit in support of the arrest warrant by Chase Bannister, a special agent with the FBI Charlotte Field Office, undercuts the claim that Mint Hill police abandoned their investigation.
Instead, the Mint Hill investigation appears to have languished as a seized iPhone sat at the Homeland Security Investigations office in Charlotte from March 2021 through December 2023 without anyone reviewing its contents.
“During operational coordination leading up to the arrest and search of Daniel, and his residence, investigators were made aware that MHPD had an open investigation regarding the allegation of sexual assault of a minor by Daniel,” the FBI affidavit said.
The victim told Mint Hill police investigators that from 2015 to 2019, Daniel “sexually assaulted her on multiple occasions,” took pictures of her naked, and “had her perform oral sex on him,” according to the affidavit.
Calls to the Mint Hill Police Department for this story went unreturned.
A second girl
While the Mint Hill police investigators waited for Homeland Security Investigations to review the phone, the mother of a second girl reported to the Forsyth County Sheriff’s Office that Daniel “had been involved sexually” with the girl in summer 2022.
When interviewed in May 2023, the second girl told investigators “Daniel had committed sexual acts with her on multiple occasions,” according to the affidavit.
“HSI was not able to access the cellphone until Dec. 13, 2023,” the affidavit states.
That shows that officials didn’t look at the phone until almost two weeks after FBI agents executed an arrest warrant at Daniel’s home, and detained him on Jan. 6 charges.
HSI Charlotte could not be reached for comment. Emails to the U.S. Department of Homeland Security went unreturned.
Krista Karcher, the public relations manager for the Forsyth County Sheriff's Office, declined to make Sheriff Bobby Kimbrough available for comment for this story.
The FBI affidavit does not disclose whether the review of the phone seized in 2021 yielded evidence of child sexual abuse material.
But a review of the phone seized from Daniel’s home at the time of his November 2023 arrest on Jan. 6 charges includes photos of the second alleged victim that reveal her graphically posed with the lower portion of her body exposed, according to the FBI.
