The man accused of placing pipe bombs outside the DNC and RNC headquarters on the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol said he targeted both parties because “they were in charge,” federal investigators said Sunday.
Brian Cole Jr., a 30-year-old Virginia man, told the FBI he was inspired by President Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election had been rigged, and he believed someone had to do something about it.
Cole told the feds if “something as important as voting in the federal election is being tampered with” and being “relegated null and void” then “someone needs to speak up,” according to documents released Sunday.
In the docs, the feds argue for Cole to remain held in jail until his trial. Cole’s attorneys have not yet filed their own argument ahead of a detention hearing scheduled for Tuesday.
After initially denying he was the man seen on video planting the bombs on the night of Jan. 5, 2021, outside both parties’ national headquarters in Washington, D.C., Cole eventually confessed to the scheme in a lengthy interview with FBI agents, the feds said.
Cole claimed “no one” knew his political views and that he told his family he drove 20 miles north from Woodbridge, Va., to the nation’s capital to attend a protest in support of Trump, according to prosecutors.
But instead, he placed the two improvised pipe bombs in a shoebox, then set them outside the DNC and RNC headquarters with 60-minute timers, investigators said. Neither bomb actually exploded, and no one was injured. Cole claimed he was “relieved” the devices didn’t detonate.
The investigation baffled the FBI for nearly five years, before a breakthrough in the case led to Cole’s arrest on Dec. 4. In his five years in hiding, Cole reset his phone to factory settings 943 times, the feds said Sunday.
Cole’s plot came hours before hundreds of Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s victory in the presidential election. Trump pardoned everyone convicted and accused of those crimes upon his return to office in 2025.
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