Left: Andrew Taake. Right: Taake seen holding a whip during a confrontation at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 (images via FBI court filing).
A Texas man who admitted to using a metal whip and unloading a can of bear spray on officers during the Jan. 6 riots and was turned in by a would-be date on the Bumble app has been sentenced to prison.
Andrew Quentin Taake, 35, was sentenced to 74 months in prison, 36 months of supervised release, and ordered to pay $2,000 in restitution, the U.S. Attorney's Office announced in a news release.
NBC News' Ryan J. Reilly reported that U.S. District Judge Carl J. Nichols — a Donald Trump appointee — said Taake's crimes were "as serious as any other Jan. 6 defendant I sentenced" and said his actions were "the farthest thing from First Amendment expression."
As Law&Crime reported, Taake pleaded guilty to one count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding certain officers using a dangerous weapon in 2023. He had been on pretrial release for a pending child solicitation case in Texas when he went to the Capitol ready for violence, armed with bear spray and a metal whip, prosecutors said.
He sprayed officers trying to hold the line with "bear-attack repellent spray" four times. He attacked an officer with a metal whip and threw a water bottle at the police line before scaling a wall, authorities said. He entered the Capitol through the Senate Wing Door soon after its initial breach and wandered around the building for 20 minutes, brandishing his metal whip, prosecutors said.
In the days following the riot, a witness who was messaging Taake on the Bumble dating app while he was in Washington alerted the FBI to Taake's role in the chaos. According to court documents, this witness "said Taake admitted to being inside the U.S. Capitol for approximately 30 minutes."
Court filings show that Taake portrayed himself to his would-be paramour as little more than an innocent bystander.
"I was pepper sprayed, tear gassed, had flash bangs thrown at me, and hit with batons for peacefully standing there," he wrote in a text to the potential match. He then sent a picture of himself with a scarf or gaiter covering the lower half of his face, which he indicated was taken around "30 minutes after being sprayed."
"Safe to say I was the very first person to be sprayed that day … all while just standing there," he added.
The witness and Taake never met in person, court documents said.
When he was arrested in January 2021, the FBI recovered three loaded guns from Taake's residence even though he was barred from having them due to his status as a felon, authorities said.
He pleaded guilty in December 2023 to one count of assaulting, resisting, or impeding officers using a dangerous weapon.
After Taake pleaded guilty, the Bumble user who tipped off the FBI to him reacted to NBC's Reilly, saying, "FINALLY."
"It's been wild to see him still defend that attack all this time and makes me even more glad he was caught for it," she said, Reilly reported.
Prosecutors said in court documents that ever since, "Taake has continually shifted blame for his criminal actions on January 6 to the victim officers, members of Congress, and the media."
"His enduring narrative is that he and other 'patriots' were heroes and that he is a wrongfully detained victim of 'selective persecution,'" prosecutors said. "He has not exhibited an ounce of remorse for his actions, nor accepted responsibility — going so far as to deny responsibility even after his guilty plea."
They said that based on reports from his pretrial detention, he has "taken to using violence against other inmates to relieve his frustrations with his self-inflicted predicament."
In April, Taake's initial sentencing hearing went haywire after the judge wanted to add an enhancement that hadn't been in the plea agreement.
In the 40 months since Jan. 6, 2021, more than 1,424 people have been charged with crimes related to the Capitol breach, authorities said.
Marisa Sarnoff contributed to this report.