WASHINGTON — There’s just one active federal prosecution still tied to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the case of the man accused of planting two pipe bombs near the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee. And some of MAGA’s most fervent supporters want to shut it down.
Some conservative figures accuse the Trump administration of framing Brian Cole Jr., who was arrested almost five years after the unexploded devices were placed. Cole, as NBC News first reported, told the FBI that he believed the 2020 election had been stolen after false accusations fueled by President Donald Trump and his supporters.
Cole has pleaded not guilty, and a trial is set for February. The FBI said he confessed after his arrest, but his legal team has noted that he was diagnosed with autism and is expected to seek to have the confession tossed based on his disability or argue he was coerced.
The prosecution has opened a rift between the Trump administration and some prominent right-wing conservatives who are seeking to undermine the case by spreading discredited theories about who was to blame. They contend the bombs were placed by “deep state” actors to distract from the police response and make Jan. 6 seem more violent.
Right-wing activists have appeared in court to support Cole, and former Jan. 6 defendants are backing him online.
Trump pardoned Jan. 6 defendants as one of his first acts in office, and as a result, the Justice Department shut down ongoing investigations into the rioters who beat and bloodied law enforcement and caused an estimated $2.7 billion in costs.
Legally, federal prosecutors pushed forward with the pipe bomb case because the devices were placed the night before the attack and therefore the crime wasn’t covered under Trump’s mass Jan. 6 pardon. The devices were viable but didn’t explode, law enforcement said.
Culturally, it’s been a right-wing talking point for years. In a 2024 podcast, Dan Bongino said he had “zero doubt” the bombs were an inside job. When Bongino became the FBI’s deputy director, he pushed the stalled investigation forward. During the announcement of Cole’s arrest, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi credited him with helping crack the case.
Bongino, who left the bureau in January, has not directly addressed how — or whether — his opinions on the “inside job” theory have changed. After the December arrest, he told Fox News commentator Sean Hannity in an interview: “I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions, that’s clear, and one day I will be back in that space — but that’s not what I’m paid for now.”
Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., publicly posted a photo of officials — including Bondi, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, FBI Director Kash Patel and Bongino — at the news conference announcing Cole’s arrest and said they were “complicit” in a conspiracy.
“The evidence is mounting,” Massie said on social media. “All of the people who took credit at the podium upon the arrest of Brian Cole Jr. are complicit, either through negligence or malfeasance. Mr. Cole is not the J5/J6 pipe bomber, and the identity of the actual perpetrator is being obscured. Bookmark it.”
Before Cole was arrested, the FBI questioned Shauni Kerkhoff, a former Capitol Police officer who was suggested as a possible suspect by reporters for The Blaze, a right-wing website founded by Glenn Beck, based upon a “gait analysis.”
The story was co-written by former Jan. 6 defendant Steve Baker, who pleaded guilty in November 2024 to four misdemeanors but was never sentenced.
Kerkhoff, who had testified in the first Jan. 6 trial, against an armed pro-Trump rioter named Guy Reffitt, was also named in a Blaze story that accused the Capitol Police of using excessive force.
Her lawyers say the FBI told her they were investigating “online chatter” — a reference to The Blaze’s reporting — and subjected her to “a search of her home by caravan of armed agents, a bomb-disposal truck, and a helicopter, followed by a three-hour polygraph interrogation,” before she was eventually cleared.
Kerkhoff, who now works campus security for the CIA, is not a suspect and has not been charged with a crime.
The Justice Department has said the former Capitol Police officer has “become the target of a malicious online conspiracy,” and that while the FBI investigated her, it found the claims to be “baseless” and its investigation “yielded zero evidence connecting Kerkhoff in any way to the construction, transportation, or planting of the pipe bombs.”
Among the “extensive evidence of Kerkhoff’s innocence,” it says, is her alibi backed by evidence that she was at her home in Falls Church, Virginia, when the pipe bombs were placed on Jan. 5.
The Blaze retracted its story on Dec. 4, the day of the news conference announcing the charges against Cole. The site wrote that while it stood by the sources, in light of the arrest, “we consider the values of fairness and accuracy to require retraction of this article.”
In April, Kerkhoff sued Blaze Media alleging defamation, saying it “manufactured” the story to fit a “theory they had already decided to report.” The reporters, Kerkhoff’s attorneys wrote, “built their reporting careers on a single, unshakeable premise: that January 6, 2021 was a ‘deep state’ ‘inside job.’” Instead of investigating with an open mind, the attorneys wrote, the reporters “tried to confirm what they had already decided was true.”
Her life “remains irrevocably altered: she was placed under FBI scrutiny that will follow her for the rest of her career, has lost friendships and professional opportunities, lives in fear for her physical safety, and has postponed her wedding — all because Blaze Media chose to manufacture a story rather than report the truth,” her attorneys wrote in court papers this week in the lawsuit, which is ongoing.
The Blaze’s legal team has said that its stories didn’t directly identify Kerkhoff as the pipe bomber and that the story “went through multiple rounds of editorial review, including legal review and even review by Blaze Media executives.”
Lawyers noted that Blaze Media terminated Baker and that his co-author resigned shortly thereafter, and that the publication is not responsible for any additional statements they’ve made. A message sent to The Blaze’s attorneys wasn’t immediately returned.
Baker said in an interview with NBC News that he first noticed Kerkhoff when he was reviewing video from the Capitol attack. Baker had accused the government of riling up the crowd on Jan. 6, and he had been looking through publicly available video to find people carrying backpacks that might contain an “agitation weapon,” he said in an interview with NBC News.
“It’s essentially a directed energy weapon that can either make you extremely agitated and behave in untoward ways, or it can debilitate you,” Baker said, referring to unusual crowd control tactics law enforcement has used in the past.
He said he remains convinced that Cole is not the suspect. He believes the charges against Cole are part of a government cover-up, and that the government itself played some role with the pipe bombs.
Kyle Seraphin, one of the special agents who performed surveillance in the case, has since left the FBI after a falling-out with Patel and now hosts a podcast. He said in an interview that he doesn’t believe the FBI’s accusations that Cole placed the bombs and that he expects a jury to acquit him.
“There’s no way that a D.C. jury convicts this guy,” Seraphin said.
Some of the attorneys representing Cole are also representing Baker and his co-author in the defamation lawsuit Kerkhoff filed. The government suggested during a hearing this month that it could pose a conflict.
Meanwhile, Cole’s parents have given interviews saying the government is framing their son, including to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — who downplayed Jan. 6 and fed a false narrative about the attack before his departure from the network — as well as Cara Castronuova, a former trainer on “The Biggest Loser” who is now a White House correspondent for a conservative outlet run by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a 2020 election denier.
Enrique Tarrio, the head of the far-right Proud Boys, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and serving a sentence of 22 years in federal prison until it was commuted by Trump, recently came out to support Cole, returning to the federal courthouse where he was tried.
Tarrio said in an interview after the hearing that he considers Cole a part of the Jan. 6 community.
“I think they should drop the case,” Tarrio said. “He’s a J6er.”
Tarrio, who wore a “Brian Cole Did Nothing Wrong” T-shirt to the courthouse, said the Cole case undermines the judicial branch.
“If you don’t have confidence in the system,” he said, “you get events like Jan. 6.”
