The FBI announced the arrest of Brian J. Cole Jr., a 30-year-old man from Woodbridge, Virginia, in connection with the pipe bombs placed near the RNC and DNC headquarters on the night before the January 6, 2021 Capitol unrest. This is the culmination of a nearly five-year probe that finally produced an arrest, and hardworking Americans deserve straight answers about why it took so long to find him.
Officials say Cole was tied to the devices through a combination of surveillance images, cellphone location data, license-plate records and purchases of bomb-making materials from big-box stores in 2019 and 2020. Those details ought to end the wild speculation, but they also raise uncomfortable questions about investigative priorities when so much evidence was available early on.
Remember how the images of a hooded figure in Nike shoes circling the party headquarters became a political football? The FBI’s painstaking review of video, digital footprints and purchases finally produced a suspect — evidence that should have been marshaled faster to protect Americans, not tossed into the churn of partisan headlines.
We’re told the devices were “viable” and could have killed or seriously injured people, including officials who were nearby that night. That chilling fact should snap every American out of partisan complacency: bombing political targets is terrorism plain and simple, and it demands relentless, apolitical pursuit.
Conservative readers will rightly ask why, with so many cameras and tips, this suspect was not arrested sooner, and why the case seemed to languish amid a torrent of political investigations. Those are fair questions — Americans deserve transparency about whether this was investigative sluggishness, bureaucratic bungling, or worse, and they should not accept vague platitudes from officials.
Make no mistake: it’s right to applaud the FBI agents who closed the case and to demand that prosecutors move decisively to try the suspect. But equal to that must be a demand for a full accounting from the agencies involved — not excuses — so that justice is served and confidence in law enforcement is restored for the citizens who keep this country running.
