Federal authorities moved decisively this month when they arrested Brian J. Cole Jr., a 30-year-old Virginia man accused of planting the two pipe bombs found outside the DNC and RNC on the night before the January 6, 2021, Capitol breach. The Department of Justice announced charges and described the arrest as the result of painstaking analysis of existing evidence rather than a sudden new tip, a development that should have come far sooner given the gravity of the devices.
At a Justice Department news conference, leaders including Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI officials framed the breakthrough as the product of renewed focus and forensic work carried out under new leadership, even as they declined to lay out every detail of the investigative chain. That explanation only intensifies the uncomfortable question conservatives and many taxpayers have been asking for years: why did this investigation languish while other, less consequential Jan. 6 matters were pursued aggressively?
Court filings and reporting show the case against Cole rests on conventional investigative pillars — purchase records for bomb components, license-plate captures, and cell phone pings near the bomb sites — and prosecutors say Cole spoke to investigators after his arrest. Those are the kinds of leads that should have been chased down quickly in 2021 instead of sitting in a file room while the nation demanded answers about who tried to bring real explosives into the heart of our capital.
This is not merely a law-enforcement lapse; it smells like political negligence. A bipartisan House subcommittee that examined the pipe-bomb response documented a long list of leads and persons of interest that the FBI pursued early on but which, according to critics, never produced a suspect until this recent reanalysis under new DOJ leadership. The memory of other Jan. 6 investigations that produced rapid identifications of relatively minor participants makes the delay in solving a plot to place deadly devices look less like simple incompetence and more like a failure of priorities.
The FBI released surveillance video of the hoodie-clad bomber years ago and even put a half-million-dollar reward on the case, yet the public and lawmakers watched as the most obvious threat surrounding the Capitol remained unsolved for nearly five years. That gap gave rise to ugly theories and legitimate anger across the political spectrum, and it fueled doubt about whether the Agency was shielding anything — or simply overwhelmed by its own politicized mission creep.
Now that an arrest has finally been made, justice must follow through, transparently and without selective storytelling. The American people deserve a clear accounting of what went wrong, who knew what and when, and what reforms will ensure that a real bomb case never again “languishes” while ordinary citizens and our institutions are put at risk. The DOJ’s statements and the upcoming court proceedings are only the beginning; oversight and honest answers are the necessary next steps to restore confidence in our institutions.
