Republicans Holding On To Jan. 6 Pipe Bomb Conspiracy Theory

WASHINGTON — For years, far-right Republicans have claimed the federal government’s failure to catch the Jan. 6 pipe bomber showed the whole insurrection was some sort of “inside job” designed to entrap Donald Trump supporters.

So what did they do when the FBI finally arrested a suspect, seemingly blowing up their theories? They doubled down.

In response to the arrest of Brian J. Cole, the 30-year-old Virginia man accused of building and placing the two devices, Republicans’ special committee to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol this week sent out a fresh interview request, formally asking the woman who found the device near Republican National Committee headquarters to tell them what she knows.

“The way I look at these is we always have a theory. We try to prove that theory false. Then you can move on to something else,” Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), the chair of the committee, told HuffPost.

Loudermilk wonders if Cole may have had help: “Did he have a conspirator on the Hill? Or was it part of a bigger organization?”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), who partnered with Loudermilk on an investigation of the pipe bomb case earlier this year, said a confidential source told him the government might even have arrested the wrong guy.

“I had another protected disclosure last night from a whistleblower on this case which leads me to believe they’ve got the wrong guy, or he is being ― he was highly manipulated, if he had anything to do with it,” Massie told HuffPost on Friday, referring to Cole. “His level of functioning is, I think, lower than is being reported.”

The FBI, the Justice Department and Cole’s attorney did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Friday.

Citing bank records, cell phone data, license plate scanners and surveillance video, the government has said Cole assembled the two pipe bombs from materials he purchased over the course of two years. He then placed them outside each party’s headquarters building the evening before Congress would certify President Donald Trump’s loss in the 2020 election.

Officials have said Cole, who lives with his mother in a D.C. suburb, supported Trump and didn’t like the election result.

“He was disappointed in various aspects of the election,” Jeanine Pirro, Trump’s handpicked prosecutor for Washington, D.C., told ABC News in an interview.

Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested there could be more charges, though it wasn’t clear she was referring to additional charges against Cole or someone else.

“This is ongoing. It’s very active. The search warrants are still being executed. Many charges potentially to come,” Bondi said.

But D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith sounded more definitive that they’d caught the guy who did it: “The suspect responsible for this act is now in custody.”

Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., talks with reporters after a meeting of the House Republican Conference in the U.S. Capitol on Tuesday, Dec. 10, 2024.

Tom Williams via Getty Images

As the years went by without a break in the pipe bomb case — and as the Justice Department arrested and charged more than 1,500 Trump supporters for participating in the riot that day — right-wing media latched on to the pipe bombs as the mystery that could exonerate Trump and his supporters.

The Blaze, an outlet founded by former Fox News host Glenn Beck, went so far as to name a former Capitol Police officer as the pipe bomber. They retracted the story after Cole’s arrest, and an attorney for the officer suggested to The Bulwark that a massive defamation lawsuit could be coming.

Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino, before he was tapped for his current role, said on his podcast in January that the pipe bombs were an inside job designed to stop Republicans from objecting to the certification of Trump’s victory.

“It is a Democrat insider or an anti-Trump lunatic who was trying to stop on Jan. 6, four years ago, the Republicans from objecting to the election,” Bongino said. “So they figured if they planted a bomb there that they could rush into the Capitol and go, ‘Stop the objections! Kamala Harris was almost killed by you!’”

Last week, after Cole’s arrest, Bongino said he was “paid for my opinions” when he was podcasting. “But that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts,” Bongino said on Fox News.

In their January 2025 report on the unsolved pipe bomb case, Loudermilk and Massie said the bombs served as a diversion that helped rioters breach the Capitol.

“The discovery of both pipe bombs, which had been laying outside for more than 16 hours, occurred within minutes of Congress’s vote to certify the 2020 presidential election and resulted in federal law enforcement diverting considerable resources away from the United States Capitol,” the Loudermilk-Massie report said. “As a result, while law enforcement responded to the pipe bombs, protesters breached security perimeters at the Capitol and entered the building.”

In a public letter on Monday, Loudermilk asked Younger for a transcribed interview, notably citing conservative media reports that she worked for the government at the time.

“According to public reports, you were working as a government employee of the Department of Commerce on January 6, 2021, when you discovered a pipe bomb near the RNC,” Loudermilk’s letter said.

Loudermilk told HuffPost he wants to ask Younger about her statement to the FBI that she thought the bomb had been placed the day of the riot, not the day before, as law enforcement has said.

“She’s not a suspect or anything. We just think she can provide information,” Loudermilk said. “I don’t know that anybody’s really looked deeply into where they possibly picked up and put back out again.”

Younger hasn’t responded to Loudermilk’s query, and he wouldn’t say if he plans to escalate to a subpoena if she doesn’t get in touch. Younger did not respond to a HuffPost query to her work email.

Loudermilk became Republicans’ point man on their Jan. 6 counter-investigation after the original Jan. 6 committee, the one led by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.) and former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wis.), released videos of Loudermilk showing some of his constituents the tunnels connecting House office buildings to the Capitol, insinuating he somehow aided the insurrectionists.

The constituents took pictures; some of them later attended Trump’s rally near the White House. Police ultimately said there was nothing suspicious about their picture-taking, which is something tourists sometimes do in the Capitol tunnels. Loudermilk complained he got death threats as a result of the committee’s queries.

HuffPost asked Loudermilk if he had any concern that his public letter would result in Younger getting unwanted attention or threats. He acknowledged the possibility.