The Virginian accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic national headquarters the day before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol appeared in federal court Tuesday as prosecutors argued to keep the suspect behind bars.
The Justice Department said Brian Cole Jr. committed an act of terrorism when he allegedly placed the bombs outside both buildings because he was frustrated with the political system.
Prosecutors said the suspect should remain in federal custody as his case proceeds because of the “extreme and profoundly serious nature of his crimes, the overwhelming evidence of his guilt, the years he has spent deceiving those around him to avoid accountability, and the intolerable risk that he will again resort to violence to express his frustration with the world around him.”
Mr. Cole, 30, was arrested this month at his home in Woodbridge, a Virginia suburb 23 miles south of the nation’s capital.
Court documents said Mr. Cole confessed to investigators that he made and laid the bombs. He gave federal agents a step-by-step description of how he crafted the devices, plus shared that they were timed to detonate 60 minutes after he planted them.
The filings said Mr. Cole told investigators that he’s not a “political person” and that he doesn’t like either political party, but after consuming information about the 2020 election on YouTube and Reddit, he said that “something just snapped.”
He said elected leaders needed to address people’s concerns about voter fraud, according to the filings, and not cast any skeptics of the election’s integrity as “Nazis” or “conspiracy theorists.”
“I didn’t agree with what people were doing, like just telling half the country that they … just need to ignore it,” the defendant said, according to court documents. “I didn’t think that was a good idea, so I went to the protest.”
The defendant said he was inspired to make the bombs by their use during the Troubles in Ireland, a yearslong conflict between Protestants and Catholics. He allegedly purchased material for the explosives between 2018 and 2020.
After learning the bombs did not go off, Mr. Cole admitted he was “pretty relieved” because he did not want to kill people, the filings said.
Less than a day later, thousands of protesters rioted at the Capitol as Congress sought to certify the election results.
Mr. Cole’s attorneys requested that the alleged confession be turned over with the remaining evidence that prosecutors have obtained.
The defense attorneys argued that their client has no criminal history and has lived without incident for nearly five years. The legal team pushed for home confinement with GPS monitoring as opposed to being kept in federal detention.
“There is no pattern of alarming conduct either prior to or after the alleged conduct at issue in this case. Mr. Cole does not pose a danger to the community,” the defense team wrote.
Mr. Cole’s attorneys also shared that their client has a mild form of autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
The suspect’s arrest ended a nearly five-year manhunt for the masked and hooded suspect who placed the explosives outside the RNC and DNC headquarters in the District.
On Jan. 6, 2021, then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris came within 20 feet of one of the bombs as she walked by it with her security detail.
Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel thumped their chests about closing the case after it went unsolved under former President Biden.
“Today’s arrest happened because the Trump administration has made this case a priority,” Ms. Bondi said during the Dec. 4 arrest announcement. “The total lack of movement on this case in our nation’s capital undermined the public trust of our enforcement agencies. This cold case languished for four years.”
The lack of answers about who the suspect was became an epicenter of conspiracy theories, particularly from FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino when he was a private citizen.
Mr. Bongino suggested last year that the devices were part of a “massive cover-up” because the perpetrator was “either a connected anti-Trump insider, or this was an inside job.”
Mr. Bongino is set to leave his role at the FBI next month.
• Matt Delaney can be reached at mdelaney@washingtontimes.com.
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