Remember the J6 pipe bomber?
He or she has long been a mysterious figure, one whom the Biden administration seemed to have less interest in pursuing despite relentlessly hounding everyone else concerned with J6. Now someone has been caught who is purportedly this bomber, but we still know very little about him:
A suspect was arrested Thursday morning and charged with transporting explosives and attempted malicious destruction in connection with the planting of pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot.
Federal agents swarmed the Woodbridge, Va., home of 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. following the break in the case that has vexed and embarrassed the FBI for nearly five years. …
Authorities did not publicly indicate any motive for the crime, with one high-placed FBI source rejecting earlier claims that Cole may have had “anarchist” leanings.
Neighbors in the suburban cul-de-sac described a young man who shunned most human interaction and doted on a pet Chihuahua.
So far he seems to be a type of person with whom we’ve become quite familiar: a cipher who may have lived his main life online, except for venturing out into the real world to commit a criminal act. It’s premature to come to any conclusions, although my guess is that a sizable number of people will automatically think he’s the proverbial patsy.
Another aspect of the story is that about a month ago, there was this:
Thursday’s arrest also firmly debunked a prior report from The Blaze. In early November, reporter Steve Barker claimed the suspect had been identified as former Capitol Police officer Shauni Kerkhoff. Barker added that Kerkhoff had quit the force six months after the riot and then “slipped quietly into a three-letter intelligence agency,” fueling the conspiracy theory that the Capitol riot was an inside job.
I skipped that story at the time because it seemed way too shaky.
I live in the MD suburbs of DC . Something looks weird here. On FNC they showed an aerial view of the guy’s house in Woodbridge, VA. That was not the house of a 30 year old would-be anarchist. It’s an over 3000 sq ft house on a large wooded lot in a cul-de-sac and probably sells now for around a mil.
How did he get that house? Does he live with his parents? Did he inherit it? Do he and maybe a spouse have good enough jobs that they can afford a house like that before age 30?
It’s just a really strange setting for a bomb-dropping anarchist. Something is either very strange or amiss here.
It’s too early to comment much about the perp. This is one of those stories that will evolve as new info is released. As has been par for the course for at least this past decade or so it seems as if any time there’s a significant news event of some sort, in the immediate aftermath there’s all these rumors and claims that are bandied about social media that end up being false or misleading. You gotta give it at least a day or so.
YoungHegelian:
They have said he’s NOT an anarchist. Also:
“…a sizable number of people will automatically think he’s the proverbial patsy.”
*Raises hand*
The fact that the previous administration had zero interest in chasing whoever planted the “pipe bombs”, despite a number of leads indicates, to me, that it was an inside job.
If it was an ” inside job”, it was run within the IC. These are the same people who construct absolutely false but incredibly complete identities for spies and undercover agents.
They’ve had almost five years.
They’re searching his house, his car, his office (if he has one). When they find something, is it “organic”, or did a black-bag crew plant it last week?
I know I sound like another conspiracy theory nut, but when I look at something like the E Jean Carroll farce and how actors within government agencies pulled that bit of nonsense off, it doesn’t appear all that far-fetched.
@Neo,
Thank you for the update on the accused. That all makes perfect sense that he lives with a parent/parents & other family.
That was not the house of a 30 year old pipe bomber!
buddhaha:
Read the article I linked in my comment just above yours. For example:
Neo, the story describes purchase of everything but the explosive material. Wonder why that was left out of the story?
Seems like a important component.
Why include this in the story? Are we to assume he was going to make more bombs? Was he waiting for another Trump administration to set them off?
I’m in trouble. I just purchased 9 volt batteries.
Doesn’t this guy watch TV? Never use a Credit Card.
neo on December 4, 2025 at 3:38 pm said:
YoungHegelian:
They have said he’s NOT an anarchist.
They?
with one high-placed FBI source rejecting earlier claims that Cole may have had “anarchist” leanings.
Don:
I assume we’ll learn more about “anarchist” thing over time – I only mentioned it in connection with the house question. The point is that he lives with his parents.
I assume this whole thing is a bit inconvenient.
Or actually, maybe it’s rather convenient.
The question of course is, “Why now?”…along with its no doubt more curious correlative, “Why not at any point during the ‘Biden’ administration?”
Or perhaps, following the inspiring precedent of that Minnesota judge (see above thread) it’ll be tossed because of
lack ofTOO MUCH evidence.(Or maybe they’ll be some sort of accident…)
Stay tuned!
@SHIREHOME : Doesn’t this guy watch TV? Never use a Credit Card.
My thought exactly.
Does Bill Ayers have to teach them everything?
I must have missed something. I thought they ID’d the person (a woman as I recall) a month or so ago indicating it was an inside job? Or was that another bomb? It’s becoming hard to keep the stories straight. When do the executions begin?
OTOH the bomb components were purchased in 2019-2020.
This arrest is a triumph of modern tech — databases, cell tower records, every camera in the vicinity, sneaker ID, gait analysis, interviewing everyone in the area, analyzing cellphone status — going dark is another clue, license plate recognition, driving patterns.
And one AI to rule them all and in the darkness bind them.
I predict this case will become textbook for modern forensics.
We are not Red China.
But even here we now live in a world in which there are so many sensors everywhere, records are kept, and AI can pore through EVERYTHING, that unless one goes way, way off the grid, there is No Anonymity for Anyone.
Of course, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear. 🙂
So, he bought all of these components to make a pipe bomb. Look at all of that!
The problem I have with this is that, to accuse me, all they would have to plant is the kitchen timers. I have every one of the other items in my house or garage.
Electrical wire. I have a cabinet full of electrical wire of various types. House wiring, hookup wire, low voltage cable, high temp insulation wire, Cat5e cable, RG59 coax, etc, etc, etc.
Battery clips. I have clips for AA and AAA batteries, 12V car batteries and 12V lantern batteries. Coin cell clips and, yes, 2 or 3 9V snap on clips.
Safety glasses -at least 4 pair, wire strippers – 3 for differing wire sizes, “machinist” file – 4 or 5, along with a pile of woodworking files and a double handled farrier file I picked up along the way.
Galvanised Pipe -boy do they have me there. Various diameters in various lengths, along with a couple of end caps, none of which were used for plumbing projects. They’re used as helpers over the ends of wrenches to add length and therefore leverage for stubborn bolts and nuts.
Throw in a kitchen timer and you got me.
As Brian E says, where the explosive? They would have me on that, easily. I reload, so I have a stock of gunpowder and primers.
Kitchen timers and I’ll spend life in prison.
Tom235, see the latter part of Neo’s post. Steve Baker, with Blaze News, said they had 95% identification of the perpetrator from analysis of the walking gait of a former Capitol Police, now CIA, employee. They named her. She had a clear alibi. Ooops.
Regardless of the accuracy of the Blaze News identification, I still find it very interesting that shortly after somebody loudly points a finger at a Deep Stater, the Deep Staters at the FBI suddenly discover they had all the evidence they needed to identify the perp all along and just had to go back over their notes …
Buddhaha:
All the pipebomb components were purchased within about a year of the bomb’s placement. Were yours all purchased during that time?
Was your cellphone in the vicinity at the right time, as well? And was your car photographed there, too, that morning?
And does your physique resemble that of the bomber in the photo?
My old hometown, Woodbridge, makes it into the national news. Now described as upscale, back then it wasn’t. Prince William county back then was Poor White county.
As regards the energetic materials, it may be smokeless powder (gunpowder for reloading) or Tannerite? They may not want to give imitators all the ingredients.
So why didn’t those bombs detonate?
Incompetence? The timers set later than they were discovered?
huxley:
One of the articles explained that. One pipe bomb was found in the alleyway by a woman who was in the neighborhood to do her laundry. She called police and they got it and ascertained it was functional and could have detonated but they got to it before it did. Then they did a search (in the surrounding area?) and found the other.
Democrats love to spout numbers yet no one has asked them ” where did these numbers come from?”
The suspect is described as 5’6″. This explains in part how the Blaze could have misidentified him as a female. He is also not a white supremacist, presumably. Photo at Fox News:
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/who-brian-cole-dc-pipe-bomb-suspect
Click on “reader” to view.
Kate:
Maybe one of those black white supremacists the left talks about?
neo:
OK. I was aware of those details. But if there were timers, what time were they set for?
I’ve got a new post up with more information here.
huxley:
The information on that is a bit unclear, but the gist of it is that the bombs had 60-minute kitchen timers that didn’t go off, but that the bombs were nevertheless “viable” and would have gone off if disturbed
Neo: Yes, he’s just like Larry Elder, the black face of white supremacy.
And then there is Candace Owen the black face of fascism (or just nuts).
@neo: … the bombs had 60-minute kitchen timers that didn’t go off…
That’s weird. What was the plan then? For someone to come back an hour before to set the timer, then leave? Sounds like a good way to get caught.
Or did he set the timers to go off an hour after the bombs were planted, but both timers failed?
I hope this story makes more sense eventually.
huxley:
My understanding is that he set them to go off in 60 minutes but the bombs didn’t go off because the timers were faulty or not connected right. However, the bombs themselves weren’t faulty and they might have gone off if jostled.
I remember reading a rant recently that pointed out the timers were completely unfit for the purpose of detonating the bombs as well as seeming to be unconnected to any mechanism to trigger the explosive. Almost like the guy had instructions about bombmaking that left out the parts that would actually make them explode.
I suppose the FBI calling them ‘viable’ was due to them including some explosive material as opposed to just being empty pipes, since they obviously didn’t function as bombs