Hours after the FBI arrested Brian Cole Jr., of Woodbridge, Va., on charges he planted two pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committees’ offices in Washington, D.C., FBI chief Kash Patel explained the suspect was identified by evidence the agency already had.
And had had for years.
“This guy … planted bombs at the United States Capitol on camera,” Patel said. “And the Federal Bureau of Investigation for the prior four years couldn’t find him. Completely unacceptable.”
The bombs were found, unexploded, just as the protests were going on at the Capitol in Washington for those who saw the results of the 2020 presidential race as corrupted.
Patel confirmed the evidence in hand was reviewed, analyzed again, and the arrest was made.
Not identifying the suspect during the years of the Joe Biden administration, he said, was “sheer incompetence” or else it was “intentional negligence.”
In an interview on Fox, he said the Biden team sat on the evidence for four years.
He said under President Trump, “We went back and looked at the cellphone 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, why aren’t they connected and why wasn’t there any geolocational data done?”
Patel told Fox the FBI team “good cop basics” and combed through hundreds of tips and interviews to finally identify the suspect.
The report noted he cited the suspect’s Nike sneakers as a key, as there were only a limited number made for the U.S. market.
He added, “We worked with our partners at the Department of Justice, the attorney general and the U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, to leverage countless subpoenas and legal processes before we ever decided to hit the House, like we did this morning,” Patel said. “And they hit the suspect’s place of business.”
The suspect is charged with use of an explosive.
