(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Brian Cole Jr., who’s accused of planting two pipe bombs near the RNC and DNC headquarters the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest, was federally indicted on Tuesday—putting an end to the controversy over whether he’d be released from jail.
Cole’s attorneys had been trying to have him released from prison because Justice Department prosecutors didn’t secure an indictment before the DC federal grand jury closed for the holidays starting on Dec. 19. The DOJ did secure an indictment last week from the local DC Superior Court, but Cole’s lawyers said the local indictment was invalid because it circumvented the federal grand jury process.
In any event, that controversy is now moot now that Cole has been indicted federally on the first day the grand jury went back into session. He is set to have a status hearing Friday.
The Jan. 5/6 pipe bomber was indicted by a federal grand jury this afternoon.
Like I said last week, the whole controversy pushed by Baker and Seraphin was a waste of time. https://t.co/bT3o6nNPkH pic.twitter.com/pCUXqoZ6oL— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) January 6, 2026
Cole was arrested on the morning of Dec. 4 at his Woodbridge, Virginia, house in what law enforcement officials described as a major breakthrough in their nearly five-year-old investigation. During a search of Cole’s home and car after his arrest, prosecutors say, investigators found shopping bags of bomb-making components. He at first denied having manufactured or placed the pipe bombs, but later confessed during an hour-long interview.
At Tuesday’s detention hearing, prosecutors urged the judge to keep Cole confined as he awaits trial. They said he’s a danger to the community, given his interest in explosives. Cole allegedly wiped his phone of data 934 times, showing that he has a pattern of hiding and destroying evidence, they added.
Cole’s attorneys begged to differ. They said he’s autistic and has OCD, and that the devices he allegedly built were duds. The defense lawyers said they have an expert witness who will testify that the so-called bombs “cannot explode and are not viable.”
The judge sided with the DOJ.
Pipe Bomb Case History
As Headline USA revealed in March 2024, the FBI had a suspect identified by Jan. 10, 2021 in the pipe bomb case, but didn’t make an arrest at the time.
FBI records released in September revealed that agents didn’t interview the woman who discovered a pipe bomb near the RNC around 12:40 p.m. on Jan. 6 until days later. That woman, former counterterrorism analyst and then-Commerce Department worker Karlin Younger, said she found the bomb while doing laundry.
Meanwhile, former Vice President Kamala Harris continues to be tight-lipped on the subject, despite the fact that her motorcade drove past the DNC pipe bomb on Jan. 6. Harris left the Capitol at 11:21 a.m. arrived to the DNC at 11:25 a.m., but the nearby pipe bomb wasn’t discovered until 1:07 p.m. by a plainclothes Capitol Police officer.
The bizarre circumstances have driven many to suspect that it may have been a false-flag attempt overseen by the feds themselves to divert law enforcement from the Capitol right as the Jan. 6 protest was turning violent.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., has said that it may be impossible to successfully prosecute the pipe bomber.
“Here’s what a good criminal defense attorney’s going to say: If you identified the individual who’s believed to place the bomb, then hours go by, and you had a search by the Secret Service at the DNC and the dog didn’t find the explosive—so clearly, the device [the defense attorney’s] client might have left there wasn’t the device that was determined to be the pipe bomb, because it wasn’t picked up by the bomb-sniffing dog,” Griffith argued in March 2024.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
