Oh, this is curioser and curioser.
The pipe-bomber thing is such a bag of worms, and I wonder if it has any connection to those hidden, secret-room burn bags of goodies Kash Patel said he found when he took over the Bureau.
When word first broke of that discovery in July, Patel said the documents appeared to be RussiaGate-related. Then again, he also said there were 'thousands,' so maybe some clues or answers to other questions that have been pestering people for a while have surfaced as they dig?
If you read what Kash Patel said at the press conference announcing the arrest of Cole for placing the pipe bombs on the evening of January 5, 2021, it does sound like the 'old-fashioned' gumshoe work the FBI used to be famous for. Only with some New Age twists, and I guess the huge advantage of a new set of eyes that actually wanted to solve the crime.
... "Today's actions underscore the long memory and reach of the FBI," said FBI’s Cox, the Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington Field Office. "The FBI and our partners do not forget. We do not give up. We do not relent. For nearly five years, the investigative team combed through a massive amount of data and leads to identify the suspect arrested today."
According to the complaint, during 2019 and 2020, Cole purchased multiple components consistent with those used to manufacture the two IEDs at several retailers in northern Virginia.
At approximately 1 p.m. on Jan. 6, 2021, multiple law enforcement agencies received reports of a suspected IEDs near the headquarters of the RNC in Washington, D.C. About 1:15 p.m. the same day, a second suspected IED was reported just a few blocks away near the headquarters of the DNC.
The Hazardous Devices Section of the United States Capitol Police (USCP) neutralized both devices. Subsequently, the FBI assessed that the two devices contained a main explosive charge, a fuzing system, and a container.
Video surveillance determined that the same individual placed the devices on the evening of January 5, 2021. The suspect had been wearing dark pants, a grey hooded sweatshirt, dark gloves, Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes, and a facemask that obscured the person’s face. The video showed the individual adjusting eyeglasses and carrying a backpack.
On January 5, 2021, about 7:10 p.m., Cole’s Nissan Sentra was observed driving past a License Plate Reader at the South Capitol Street exit from I-395 South, which is less than one-half mile from the location where the individual who placed the devices was first observed on foot near North Carolina and New Jersey Avenues, Southeast.
Cell phone records further show that Cole’s cell phone communicated with cell towers in the area of the RNC and DNC on January 5, 2021, between 7:39 p.m. and 8:24 p.m. The FBI’s Cellular Analysis and Survey Team determined that the location of Cole’s cell phone during this period corresponded with the path of the suspect identified by the FBI through analysis of video from that day.
So they had more than just the videos we had all seen. They also had a license plate camera capture and, most importantly, sufficient cell phone records to track Cole as he wandered around the RNC and DNC area.
Didn't they always have that information?
There were already questions about just how hard Wray's Bureau was looking for the wannabe bomber by March of that next year, 2022, when an FBI whistleblower came forward to the Republicans on the Judiciary Committee, saying agents got the weirdest all-hands request from headquarters.
Why, the agent wondered, are they only beginning to ask for this information now?
Today, Ranking Member Jim Jordan (R-OH) sent a letter to FBI Director Christopher Wray following a new whistleblower disclosure from a senior FBI special agent concerning the investigation into the pipe bombs placed near the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee on January 5, 2021.
According to the special agent, on February 7, 2022—over a year after the placement of the bombs—the FBI’s Washington Field Office asked FBI field offices to canvass all confidential human sources nationwide for information about the individual and the crime. In part, the message asked that the canvass “include sources reporting on all [types of] threats” because the suspect’s “motive and ideology remain unknown.” The special agent explained that the WFO request was “unusual” because it was transmitted more than a year after the FBI had begun the investigation, and it raises questions about the progress and extent of the FBI’s investigation.
And it certainly seemed as if they should have had some sort of cell phone pings to go by, because the figure identified as the bomber was on their cell phone quite a bit.
YAK YAKYAK YAKYAK
Between 7:39pm and 8:24pm the alleged J6 pipe bomber was on the phone with someone.
— C3 (@C_3C_3) December 4, 2025
Who?
Wray knew all along.
Wray belongs in prison.pic.twitter.com/9LTYSLfPlJ
This was an almost an hour-long conversation.
No one seemed to be in any great hurry in the Hoover building to find the bomber, or at least nowhere near the hurry they were to snatch up people who'd wandered through the Capitol rotunda after the Capitol police had let them in.
According to FBI director Wray, whose department could seemingly scoop up grandmothers in Podunk thanks to isolating their ten-second Jan 6 cell phone call home in the midst of thousands of cell phones, this one lone individual was untrackable.
November, 2023. Christopher Wray is asked how the FBI was able to identify and arrest so many people who entered the Capitol on January 6th but not able to identify the person who left the pipe bombs.
— MAZE (@mazemoore) December 4, 2025
Wray claimed that the FBI had pretty much done everything possible to find the… pic.twitter.com/1wviPQI748
Again, nothing was happening as far as the pipe bomb investigation, and another year passed with the FBI making excuses, while January 6 protestors and tourists alike kept getting arrested, thrown in D.C.'s notorious gulag, or pleading out to trumped-up charges.
As for the bomber on the phone, Steven D'Antuono, the former Assistant Director in Charge of the FBI Washington Field Office (WFO), almost tripped the Bureau up, testifying in another Congressional hearing about the geofencing they were using to track and arrest participants. It was rock solid until it wasn't, he seemed to say.
And the 'wasn't' or data corruption only seemed to pertain to finding that lone pipe bombing suspect. By way of explanation for excluding that single phone in all the phones they tracked, D'Antuono went as far as to suggest that the pipe bomber was either not using a 'real' phone or pretending to talk on a phone that was turned off.
Seriously. He did.
Weird, no?
And then stuttered through his 'corruption' BS.
Mr. D'Antuono's testimony provided additional details about the FBI's use of geofencing technology to identify the pipe bomb suspect.
He testified:
So the – there's a lot of phone data that came in. Yes, I've seen the same video. I've watched the same video. We put out the same video. It looks like a phone. Was it a real phone, a not a real phone, was it a ruse? Was it a – you know, I picked up my phone several times at meetings going, oh, yeah, I got to take this call, and walk out, right. The phone's not on, right. So was the person just sitting there trying to pretend like they're on a bench taking a phone call? We don't know until we find the person, right, and ask them those questions.
We did a complete geofence. We have complete data. Not complete, because there's some data that was corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely by them, right. It just – unusual circumstance that we have corrupt data from one of the providers. I'm not sure – I can't remember right now which one. But for that day, which is awful because we don't have that information to search. So could it have been that provider? Yeah, with our luck, you know, with this investigation it probably was, right. So maybe if we did have that – that data wasn't corrupted – and it wasn't purposely corrupted. I don't want any conspiracy theories, right. To my knowledge, it wasn't corrupted, you know, but that could have been good information that we don't have, right. So that is painful for us to not to have that. So we looked at everything.
In light of what Kash Patel is now saying, and that his FBI cracked the case in under nine months using resources and data the FBI already had in its possession?
Mr. D'Antuono is full of it and someone ought to look at a perjury charge or at the very least publicly squeeze him in another round of really ugly 'Tell us why you said that.'
Not three weeks ago, the WaPo was WAAH, poor FBI no find da bomber!
How the FBI’s massive search for the D.C. pipe bomber stalled
Early on, they questioned a Capitol Hill-area gym employee who had purchased the same Nike shoes as a person captured in grainy security camera footage crisscrossing the area the night before the riot. Then they suspected a man who had been spotted snapping photos of locations outside the Republican and Democratic party headquarters before the bombs were placed there. Later, agents found an actual bombmaker — he just turned out to be the wrong one.
Nearly five years later, the identity of the D.C. pipe bomber is one of the enduring mysteries from the day that triggered the largest investigation in the Justice Department’s more than 150-year history. It has also become the focus of conspiracy theories — and claims that the crime was an inside job, often accompanied by assertions that it was not vigorously investigated.
The Wray FBI 'quickly poured resources' into the search. I do not believe WaPo knows the meaning of the word.
We also know, thanks to the whistleblower (above), that FBI headquarters never asked for any canvassing of confidential human resources until a year later. This is not 'quickly.'
It's foot-dragging.
...By contrast, bureau leaders in the Washington Field Office quickly poured resources into the pipe-bomb investigation. They saw the would-be bomber as a key to understanding how extensively the day’s political violence had been planned — and whether the bombs were intended to divert police from the Capitol as Trump’s supporters stormed it.
One of the first steps that FBI investigators took was to scour the blocks around the sites where the bombs were found in the hour before the riot began — one near a dumpster outside the Republican Party headquarters, and the other near a bush and garage entrance to the Democratic National Committee building.
Agents found more than a half-dozen government security cameras and home surveillance systems had captured the suspicious individual meandering around the sites for about an hour the night before the riot. The suspect paused for a while on a park bench, cut through an alley and stopped again as a neighbor walking a dog passed by.
In his testimony, Mr. D'Antuono couldn't even tell the committee if the FBI had interviewed the person who had found the device at the DNC.
I mean, that's astonishing, coming from the man who oversaw the Washington Field Office's (WFO) investigation of both the Jan 6 riot and the pipe bombing.
YGTBFKM
Mr. D'Antuono also testified that he did not definitively know if the FBI had interviewed the individual who discovered the pipe bomb at the DNC.
He testified:
Q. So just to . . . put a fine point on it, you do not know whether they interviewed the person that discovered . . . the [bomb] at the DNC?
A. I don't know.Mr. D'Antuono conceded that it would be 'investigation 101' to interview the individuals who discovered the bombs, yet he was unable to confirm whether the FBI had taken this basic investigative step.
He explained:
Mr. Massie. So – but the person who found – you either haven't identified the person who found the second pipe bomb, or did you?
A. I – honestly, sir, I don't know the granularity of everything my agents and analysts did in that matter. It's just – it's a whole host of stuff that's going on. As the [Assistant Director in Charge], as like any senior leader, I'm getting briefed on things, and that part never came up, so –
Mr. D'Antuono's testimony raises concerns about the FBI's handling of the pipe bomb investigation, more than 890 days following the placement of the pipe bombs. To date, the FBI has failed to respond to the Committee's requests for a briefing regarding the investigation.
I DON'T KNOW THE GRANULARITY OF EVERYTHING - I'M ONLY IN CHARGE
This was Christopher Wray's FBI.
Listen to Wray talked about the Pipe Bomb investigation under his leadership.
— C3 (@C_3C_3) December 4, 2025
Every single word was a lie and he knew it.
They didn’t try.
pic.twitter.com/Y5i8C2usa7
Everything Wray and his underlings say they didn't have, Kash Patel's FBI says they had, and now Patel has a pipe bomber arrest and a charging affidavit with that evidence.
From the Pipe Bomber FBI Affidavit:
— Techno Fog (@Techno_Fog) December 4, 2025
The FBI tracked Brian Cole's bomb making equipment purchases to Home Depot and WalMart.
His cell phone pinged the area of the RNC and DNC on January 5, 2021.
His car was placed a half mile from the bombs on January 5. pic.twitter.com/go7mKyqZme
I don't know about you, but to my cynical ear, there's one helluva dissonance in the force.
FBI: We have the cell data showing the route the pipe bomber took
— Josiah (@RealJCochran) December 5, 2025
Wray: The data is corrupted
Tmobile: No it isn't
Wray: Yes it is
Tmobile:....ok....
Media: Welp, guess we'll never know, case closed!
Just like 'all it took was a new president,' all it took was a new FBI director.
SOLOMON ON THE J6 PIPE BOMBER SUSPECT ARREST
— Real America's Voice (RAV) (@RealAmVoice) December 5, 2025
“The same evidence that Chris Wray’s FBI had for…four years was taken by a new team appointed by Dan Bongino and Kash Patel, and they solved the case in a few short weeks after they switched out the personnel.” @jsolomonReports “This… pic.twitter.com/pP19fUctE0
But that doesn't let the other guy off the hook.
The 'why' must be answered.
