Two Men Caused the Death of a Capitol Police Officer. Nearly Six Months After Being Identified, They Haven't Been Arrested.

     David Walls-Kaufman is a prominent man. A Washington, D.C., resident, he attended Palmer College of Chiropractic Medicine from 1977 to 1980 and worked as chiropractor at Capitol Hill Chiropractic from 1994 to 2004. Since then, he has continued to work as a chiropractor just blocks away from the United States Capitol, publishing works of fiction and nonfiction that incorporate politics and spiritualism and speaking at public events around the country; he even has a website. So too is Taylor F. Taranto, a Navy veteran from Washington state who is the webmaster for the Franklin County Republican Party and run an unsuccessful campaign for school board in the county seat of Pasco in 2018. That year, he was featured in a photo with then-President Trump at a Lincoln Day celebration. 

     On January 6th, 2021, during the Capitol insurrection, Taranto handed a black self-defense cane to Walls-Kaufman, who used it to repeatedly strike Capitol Police Officer Jeffrey Smith in the head, continuing to target him as he battled rioters on the Capitol's East just outside the Speaker's Lobby because they saw him as vulnerable. David P. Weber, a forensic professor at Maryland's Perdue School of Business, partnered with cybersleuth groups like Deep State Dogs and Sedition Hunters to find the perpetrators. Using video from the day, they located Officer Smith by his helmet number, 4626, and witnessed the assault unfold.

     As reported to HuffPost in August 2021, Officer Smith, a 12-year veteran of the Capitol Police, killed himself with a shot to the head when he was forced to come back to work on January 15th. The autopsy reported his cause of death as being attributed to post-concussion syndrome: the actions of these two men caused Smith to kill himself. As a result, Smith's widow, Erin, with Weber as her lawyer, filed a $7 million lawsuit against the men in July for costs incurred as well as punitive damages for the loss of her husband.

     In a July 2021 Facebook post, Taranto bragged about his actions and posting a video, daring the federal authorities to arrest him so they could "get this party going." When contacted for comment in August, both the MPD and FBI stated that they were aware of the case. In spite of that; in spite of the men being clearly identified by private citizens, Walls-Kaufman in his trademark motorcycle jacket; and in spite of the fact that 35-year-old Jeffrey Smith died because of what they did to him; and in spite of the fact that they have access to Smith's body-worn camera footage; nothing. In the nearly six months since some of the most violent, despicable offenders were identified, nothing. Please contact your FBI and U.S. Attorneys' Offices in Washington, D.C., and Washington state and ask them why the men who worked together to murder a U.S. Capitol police officer are not behind bars.