January 6th: Pipe bomb suspect arrested in Washington, DC
The suspect who planted pipe bombs near the DNC and RNC offices before the January 6 Capitol riot is now in custody.
WASHINGTON – Before joining the Trump administration, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino promoted conspiracy theories about pipe bombs planted in Washington, D.C., ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, going so far as to call it an “inside job.”
The Department of Justice, including the FBI, identified the suspect in the case on December 4 after an investigation that spanned nearly five years.
But several years ago, Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino repeatedly questioned the investigation into pipe bombs found outside the facility, particularly those found at Democratic National Committee headquarters because then-Vice President Kamala Harris was at the facility.
Attorney General Pam Bondi on Dec. 4, along with Mr. Patel and Mr. Bongino, identified Brian Cole Jr., 30, of Woodbridge, Virginia, as a suspect in the investigation into pipe bombs found outside the headquarters of both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee.
Mr. Bondi said at a news conference that Mr. Cole was charged with using an explosive device, as additional search warrants were still being executed on December 4.
“You wouldn’t walk into our capital, put down two explosive devices, and walk away into the sunset. That would never happen. We were going to pursue this person to the ends of the earth,” Bongino said at a Dec. 4 news conference.
Conspiracy theories surrounding the pipe bomb incident
Patel and Bongino praised President Donald Trump’s FBI and Justice Department for finding the pipe bomb suspect. But last year they promoted conspiracy theories about whether the incident actually happened.
In a January 2024 interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, Patel called the incident “very disturbing.”
“If the allegations aren’t true, or if there was a government plot or a corrupt FBI source, then there’s another corruption scandal that they’re promoting during and around the election period,” Patel said.
Bongino claimed on several episodes of his show, The Dan Bongino Show, over several years from 2022 to last year that the pipe bomb incident was “orchestrated” and an “inside job.”
“I have no doubt it was set up. Was it the government? I don’t know. I’m not going to speculate who did it. Someone who hates Donald Trump put a bomb there,” Bongino said on his show in January 2024.
In a September 2024 episode, Bongino claimed that he was told by a whistleblower that a government contractor had planted a pipe bomb “to create a fake assassination plot against Kamala Harris, basically to garner sympathy and shut down people who would question the January 6th vote.”
“There’s a massive cover-up because they don’t want us to know who planted the pipe bomb, because it was an anti-Trump affiliate or it was an inside job,” he said on his show in November 2024.
Patel points finger in pipe bomb investigation
At a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September, Patel, now the FBI director, defended himself and Bongino as “civilians” when the remarks were made.
“All we can do is put aside our personal beliefs and carry out the mission of justice for this country, and we do that every day,” he said.
Shortly after authorities announced the pipe bomb suspect on Dec. 4, Patel immediately appeared on Don Trump Jr.’s podcast “Triggered” and criticized the Biden administration’s FBI for how it handled the incident.
“We said, ‘Hey, let’s let the cops be cops, we’ve got video, let’s step it up, we’ve got cell phone data that wasn’t triaged properly, so let’s triage it, we have the technology and capacity to do it, let’s go back and work with the investigative team and ask where the pitfalls were,'” he said.
“Just to remind everyone, they took four years off,” Patel added. “We put eight months of effort into this.”
Contributors: Natalie Neysa Alund, Bart Jansen, Sarah D. Wire
