Joe Biden’s FBI was guilty of “sheer incompetence or complete intentional negligence” in allowing the DC pipe bomb case to languish for nearly five years before the arrest of a suspect Thursday morning, FBI Director Kash Patel has charged.
Brian Cole Jr., 30, of Woodbridge, Va., will make an initial appearance in DC federal court Friday afternoon to be formally arraigned on charges of planting pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees on Jan. 5, 2021, hours before the Capitol riot by supporters of President Trump.
“The prior administration sat on the evidence for four years,” Patel told “Fox News at Night” Thursday evening. “There wasn’t any production of new evidence from five years ago.”
“Here’s what we did — we went out to the country, brought in our experts, and Deputy Director [Dan] Bongino led the charge and said, ‘We are going to look at every single piece of evidence again.’”
According to a probable cause affidavit, investigators used bank and cell phone data to link Cole to the production and placement of the pipe bombs outside the party headquarters in DC’s Capitol Hill neighborhood — a process authorities say started in 2019.
“We looked at three million lines of evidence,” Patel told host Trace Gallagher. “We went back and looked at the cell phone tower data dumps. We went back and looked at the providers and what information they provided pursuant to search warrants at the time and asked questions, such as ‘Why weren’t all the phone numbers scrubbed?’ and ‘Why weren’t they connected?’ and ‘Why wasn’t there any geolocational data done?’
“Now that is either sheer incompetence or complete intentional negligence, neither of which is acceptable for this FBI. So, we changed that in the prior eight months, not on just this case, but everyone. And what that did was allow us to narrow the search down.”
Here’s the latest on the Jan. 6 pipe bomb suspect
The pipe bomb case was a top priority for Bongino, a former Fox News host who claimed on his eponymous podcast in 2024 that he believed the bomb plot was the work of “either a connected anti-Trump insider or this was an inside job.”
“I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions. That’s clear. And one day, I’ll be back in that space,” Bongino told his former colleague Sean Hannity Thursday night when confronted about his remarks. “But that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.”
Bongino added that investigators are “pretty comfortable we have our guy.”
If Cole is convicted of the two counts he currently faces, the bomb suspect faces between 15 and 30 years in prison. Officials have said more charges are possible.
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