Thomas Massie Thinks the FBI Arrested the Wrong Guy for Pipe Bombs

WASHINGTON – For years, far-right Republicans have claimed that the federal government’s failure to stop the Jan. 6 attacker proved that the entire insurrection was some kind of “inside job” designed to entrap Donald Trump’s supporters.

So what did they do when the FBI finally arrested a suspect, seemingly ruining their theories? They doubled down.

In response to the arrest of Brian J. Cole, the 30-year-old Virginia man accused of building and placing the two devices, the Republican special committee rewrite the history of the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol This week he sent out a new interview request, formally asking the woman who found the device near the Republican National Committee headquarters to tell them what she knows.

“The way I look at this is that we always have a theory. We try to prove that theory is false. Then you can move on to something else,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), the committee’s chairman, told News themezone.

Loudermilk wonders if Cole may have had help: “Did he have a conspirator in the Capitol? Or was he part of a larger organization?”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who partnered with Loudermilk on an investigation of the pipe bomb case earlier this year, said a confidential source told him the government might even have arrested the wrong guy.

“Last night I received another protected disclosure from a whistleblower in this case, which leads me to believe that they’ve got the wrong person, or that it’s being…he was very manipulated, if he had anything to do with it,” Massie told News themezone on Friday, referring to Cole. “I think his level of functioning is lower than reported.”

The FBI, the Justice Department and Cole’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment Friday.

Citing bank records, cell phone data, license plate scanners and surveillance videos, the government has said Cole assembled the two homemade bombs from materials he purchased over the course of two years. He then placed them outside each party’s headquarters building the night before Congress certified President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 election.

Authorities have said Cole, who lives with his mother in a D.C. suburb, supported Trump and did not like the outcome of the election.

“I was disappointed by several aspects of the election,” said Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s hand-picked prosecutor for Washington, DC. told ABC News in an interview.

Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested there could be more charges, although it was not clear whether she meant additional charges against Cole or anyone else.

“This is ongoing. It’s very active. Search warrants are still being executed. Many charges are potentially coming,” Bondi said.

But DC Police Chief Pamela Smith was more adamant that they had caught the guy who did it: “The suspect responsible for this act is now in custody.”

Tom Williams via Getty Images

As the years passed without a break in the pipe bomb case (and as the Justice Department arrested and charged more than 1,500 Trump supporters for participating in the riot that day), right-wing media latched onto the pipe bombs as the mystery that could exonerate Trump and his supporters.

The Blaze, an outlet founded by former News host Glenn Beck, went so far as to name a former Capitol Police officer as the attacker. They recanted the story after Cole’s arrest and an attorney for the officer suggested to The Bulwark that a massive defamation lawsuit could come.

FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, before being elected to his current position, said on his podcast in January that the pipe bombs were an inside job designed to prevent Republicans from objecting to the certification of Trump’s victory.

“It’s either a Democratic insider or an anti-Trump lunatic who was trying to stop Republicans on January 6, four years ago, from opposing the election,” Bongino said. “So they thought if they planted a bomb there they could run to the Capitol and say, ‘Stop the objections! Kamala Harris was almost assassinated by you!'”

Last week, after Cole’s arrest, Bongino said he was “paid for my opinions” when he podcasted. “But that’s not what they pay me to do now. They pay me to be their deputy chief and we base investigations on facts,” Bongino said on News.

in your January 2025 Report Regarding the unsolved pipe bomb case, Loudermilk and Massie said the bombs served as a distraction that helped rioters storm the Capitol.

“The discovery of both pipe bombs, which had been out for more than 16 hours, occurred minutes after Congress’ vote to certify the 2020 presidential election and resulted in federal law enforcement diverting considerable resources from the United States Capitol,” the Loudermilk-Massie report says. “As a result, as law enforcement responded to the pipe bombs, protesters breached the Capitol security perimeters and entered the building.”

In a public letter Monday, Loudermilk asked Younger for a transcribed interview, citing in particular conservative media reports that she worked for the government at the time.

“According to public reports, you were working as a government employee with the Department of Commerce on January 6, 2021, when you discovered a pipe bomb near the RNC,” Loudermilk’s letter said.

Loudermilk told News themezone that he wants to ask Younger about his statement to the FBI that he thought the bomb had been planted on the day of the riot, not the day before, as authorities said.

“She’s not a suspect or anything. We just think she can provide information,” Loudermilk said. “I don’t know if anyone has done any in-depth research into where they were possibly picked up and re-emerged.”

Younger has not responded to Loudermilk’s question and did not say whether he plans to move on to a subpoena if she does not get in touch. Younger did not respond to a News themezone inquiry in his work email.

Loudermilk became Republicans’ point man in their Jan. 6 counterinvestigation after the original Jan. 6 committee, the one led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Mississippi) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.), released videos of Loudermilk showing some of his constituents the tunnels connecting the House office buildings to the Capitol, suggesting he somehow helped the insurrectionists.

Voters took photographs; some of them later attended Trump’s rally near the White House. The police finally said that there was nothing suspicious about your photo takingwhich is something tourists sometimes do in the Capitol tunnels. Loudermilk complained of receiving death threats as a result of the committee’s inquiries.

News themezone asked Loudermilk if he was concerned that his public letter would cause Younger to receive unwanted attention or threats. He recognized the possibility.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story incorrectly noted the status of former Rep. Liz Cheney.