In a press conference Thursday afternoon, Bondi, FBI Director Kash Patel, FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro and others praised the herculean months-long work to arrest a suspect after years of inactivity during Joe Biden’s administration.
Brian Cole Jr. was arrested and charged with placing the pipe bombs at the RNC and the DNC on January 5, 2021. He was also charged with transporting an explosive device in interstate commerce and the attempted malicious destruction by means of explosive materials, with more charges likely to result from the ongoing investigation.
The arrest raises questions about the lack of progress made by the Biden administration under FBI Director Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland.
Bondi said the Trump administration prioritized the investigation after a “total lack of movement on this case in our nation’s capital,” which “undermined the public trust of our enforcement agencies.”
“This cold case languished for four years until Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino came to the FBI,” Bondi explained. “The FBI along with U.S. Attorney Piero and all of our prosecutors have worked tirelessly for months sifting through evidence that had been sitting at the FBI with the Biden administration for four long years.”
The damning evidence was in the FBI’s position before Trump took office, Bondi emphasized. “There was no new tip, there was no new witness, just good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work,” she explained.
Patel reiterated that the FBI “did not discover any new information,” adding that the FBI brought in a new team that “reexamined every piece of evidence, sifted through all the data, something that the prior administration refused and failed to do.”
Bongino suggested the prior regime deliberately deprioritized the pipe bomber investigation, even as Biden and Democrats across the county campaigned on their narrative of the pipe bomber.
“This is what it’s like when you work for a President who tells you to go get the bad guys and stop focusing on other extraneous things not related to law enforcement,” Bongino said of President Donald Trump, also praising Bondi and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Patel would not elaborate on the potential motivations of the suspect, although reports Thursday revealed Cole had begun planning his attack months before the November 2020 election – a stark contrast to Democrats’ framing that the bomber was a Trump supporter motivated by Biden’s win and Trump’s questioning of the results.
Although the Biden FBI possessed the necessary evidence, the rejuvenated investigation under Trump remained daunting.
“The amount of effort the FBI and our partners devoted to identifying the pipe bomber cannot be overstated,” Darren Cox, Assistant Director in charge of the Washington Field Office of the FBI said, adding, “We dove into more than 3 million lines of data to come up with this suspect.” Metropolitan Police Department Chief Pamela Smith said investigators reviewed “countless, probably thousands of hours of CCTV footage from around the DNC and RNC headquarters.”
“This case involved millions of pieces of data, and it is a huge win, because it was like finding a needle in a haystack,” Piero added, explaining some of the painstaking tactics employed by investigators. She explained:
There were 233,000 black end caps of the type that were used…the FBI had to go through the sale of every one of them to try to find commonality with an individual, along with the purchase of the pipe itself, the cap ends, the wires, the steel and the nine volt batteries. Every one of those had to be mined and re-mined to the point where we were able to then connect.
Piero confidently predicted Cole’s conviction, saying the evidence, when revealed during the course of the subsequent trial, will be conclusive.
But while Cole’s arrest is a step forward in attaining justice for one of the crimes committed during that cold week in January, it introduces more questions about other potential crimes that followed.
Bradley Jaye is Deputy Political Editor for Breitbart News. Follow him on X/Twitter and Instagram @BradleyAJaye.
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