{"id":334697,"date":"2025-12-07T08:24:15","date_gmt":"2025-12-07T08:24:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/334697\/"},"modified":"2025-12-07T08:24:15","modified_gmt":"2025-12-07T08:24:15","slug":"officials-play-up-pipe-bomb-suspects-arrest-jan-6-violence-unmentioned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/334697\/","title":{"rendered":"Officials play up pipe bomb suspect’s arrest. Jan. 6 violence unmentioned"},"content":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 After the arrest of a man charged with placing two pipe bombs<\/a> outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national parties on Jan. 5, 2021, the warning from the Trump administration was clear: If you come to the nation\u2019s capital to attack citizens and institutions of democracy, you will be held accountable.<\/p>\n

Yet Justice Department leaders who announced the arrest were silent about the violence that had taken place when supporters of President Donald Trump<\/a> stormed the Capitol and clashed with police one day after those bombs were placed.<\/p>\n

It was the latest example of the Trump\u2019s administration\u2019s efforts to rewrite the history of the riot, through pardons<\/a> and the firings of lawyers who prosecuted the participants of the siege, and of the disconnect for a government that prides itself for cracking down on violent crime and supporting law enforcement but has papered over the brutality of the Jan. 6 attacks on police officers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe administration has ignored and attempted to whitewash the violence committed by rioters on Jan. 6 because they were the president\u2019s supporters. They were trying to install him a second time against the will of the voters in 2020,\u201d said Michael Romano, who prosecuted the rioters before leaving the Justice Department this year. \u201cAnd it feels like the effort to ignore that is purely transactional.\u201d <\/p>\n

The White House referred comment to the Justice Department, which referred comment to the FBI. The bureau did not immediately respond to an email from The Associated Press on Friday. <\/p>\n

Bongino once suggested pipe bomb incident was \u2018inside job\u2019<\/p>\n

FBI Director Kash Patel, as a conservative podcast host during the Biden administration, had called the Jan. 6 rioters \u201cpolitical prisoners\u201d and offered to represent them for free<\/a>. But on Thursday, he said the arrest of the pipe bomb suspect, 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr., was in keeping with Trump\u2019s commitment to \u201csecure our nation\u2019s capital.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack the nation\u2019s capital, you attack the very being of our way of life,\u201d Patel said. \u201cAnd this FBI and this Department of Justice stand here to tell you that we will always combat it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Patel\u2019s deputy, Dan Bongino, had suggested before joining the FBI that federal law enforcement had wasted time investigating Jan. 6 rioters and anti-abortion activists.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese are threats to the United States?\u201d he once said on a podcast. \u201cGrandma is in the gulag for a trespassing charge on January 6th.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bongino speculated last year that the pipe bomb incident was an \u201cinside job\u201d that involved a \u201cmassive cover-up.\u201d After joining the FBI, Bongino repeatedly described the investigation as a top priority that was receiving significant resources and attention.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were going to track this person to the end of the earth. There was no way he was getting away,\u201d he said Thursday.<\/p>\n

No public link has emerged between the pipe bombs and the riot, and Cole\u2019s arrest was a significant development in its own right given that the nearly 5-year investigation had confounded authorities, who are now are assembling a portrait of Cole. <\/p>\n

People familiar with the matter told The Associated Press<\/a> that among the statements Cole made to investigators is that he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, which Trump has insisted was stolen from him in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The people were not authorized to discuss ongoing investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.<\/p>\n

There was no widespread fraud in that election, which a range of election officials across the country, including Trump\u2019s former attorney general, William Barr, have confirmed. Republican governors in key states crucial to Biden\u2019s victory have also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. Nearly all the legal challenges from Trump and his allies were dismissed by the courts.<\/p>\n

Administration has played down Jan. 6 and aftermath<\/p>\n

The tough-on-crime words heard during Thursday\u2019s announcement about Cole\u2019s arrest were at odds with the Republican administration\u2019s repeated efforts to play down the violence of Jan. 6, absolve those charged in the insurrection and target those who investigated and prosecuted the rioters.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s clemency action on his first day back in the White House<\/a> in January applied to all 1,500-plus people charged with participating in the attack on the foundations of American democracy. That included defendants seen on camera violently attacking police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a crutch and a hockey stick. More than 100 police officers were injured, including some who have described being scared for their lives as they were dragged into the crowd and beaten. <\/p>\n

Earlier this year, the Justice Department asked the FBI<\/a> for the names of agents who participated in Jan. 6 investigations, a demand feared within the bureau for as a possible precursor to mass firings. In August, Patel fired Brian Driscoll<\/a>, who as the FBI\u2019s acting director in the early days of the Trump administration resisted handing over those names.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s administration, meanwhile, has fired or demoted numerous prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases<\/a>, including more than two dozen lawyers who had been hired for temporary assignments to support the investigation but were moved into permanent roles after Trump won the 2024 election.<\/p>\n

In October, two federal prosecutors were locked out of their government devices<\/a> and told they were being put on leave after filing court papers that described those who attacked the Capitol as a \u201cmob of rioters.\u201d The Justice Department later submitted a new court filing that stripped mentions of the Jan. 6 riot.<\/p>\n

One man whose case was dismissed because of Trump\u2019s pardons was accused of hurling an explosive device and a large piece of wood at a group of officers who trying to defend an entrance to the Capitol. Some officers later said they had \u201cbelieved they were going to die,\u201d prosecutors wrote in court papers, and several reported suffering temporary hearing loss.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"WASHINGTON (AP) \u2014 After the arrest of a man charged with placing two pipe bombs outside the headquarters…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334698,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[11164,23,1927,1574,169084,48298,107114,32856,3506,3505,12,1070,793,3319,48296,152186,169085,3,111,10585,28387,21,792,19,22,20,25,24,800,62933],"class_list":["post-334697","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-united-states","tag-2021-united-states-capitol-riot","tag-america","tag-ap-top-news","tag-bombings","tag-brian-cole-jr","tag-brian-driscoll","tag-capitol-siege","tag-daniel-bongino","tag-dc-wire","tag-district-of-columbia","tag-donald-trump","tag-elections","tag-general-news","tag-joe-biden","tag-kash-patel","tag-local-news-for-apple","tag-michael-romano","tag-news","tag-politics","tag-u-s-department-of-justice","tag-u-s-federal-bureau-of-investigation","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-government","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-washington-news","tag-william-barr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334697","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=334697"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/334697\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334698"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=334697"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=334697"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=334697"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}