The FBI announced Thursday that it has arrested Virginia resident Brian Cole Jr., who is accused of planting pipe bombs outside the headquarters of both the Republican National Committee and the Democratic National Committee on the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol. The arrest marks the end of a nearly five-year investigation that frustrated authorities and fueled a wave of conspiracy theories.
“We solved it,” FBI Director Kash Patel said at a news conference, adding that “the American public and the world will learn even more information” when Cole appears in court.
“We are going to make sure accountability is delivered to the fullest extent,” Patel added.
Neither Patel nor other senior law enforcement officials, including Attorney General Pam Bondi, shared additional details about the ongoing investigation or what may have motivated Cole.
Bondi did clarify that Cole’s arrest did not stem from any fresh tip or new witness, but rather from a renewed analysis of what Patel described as “more than 3 million [existing] lines of data.”
Investigators say the homemade devices were viable explosives capable of causing “serious injury or death” if they had detonated. They were placed outside the DNC and RNC headquarters on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021, but went unnoticed for roughly 16 hours. They were discovered only minutes before supporters of President Trump began pushing through barricades outside the Capitol in an effort to stop the certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.
According to a report from the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general, then–Vice President-elect Kamala Harris passed within about 20 feet of the DNC device when her motorcade arrived that morning. She remained inside the building for nearly two hours before the bomb was found, prompting her evacuation and a sweeping law enforcement response.
Surveillance video captured the suspect wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, a mask and Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers with a yellow logo. The FBI offered a $500,000 reward for information and subpoenaed 18 sneaker vendors. Yet even after more than 1,000 interviews, a review of over 39,000 video files and more than 600 public tips, investigators were initially unable to determine even the suspect’s gender, let alone their identity.
In that vacuum, speculation flourished about political motives and links to the Jan. 6 riot. “There is a massive cover-up, because the person who planted those pipe bombs — they don’t want you to know who it was, because it’s either a connected anti-Trump insider, or this was an inside job,” Dan Bongino, now the deputy FBI director, said in November 2024. “Those bombs were planted there. This was a setup. I have zero doubt.”
After Trump returned to office earlier this year, Bongino and Patel moved to reinvigorate the case, naming it one of the bureau’s highest priorities. Citing a person familiar with the matter, the New York Times reported Thursday that Cole’s arrest “was not based on new information but came after agents bore down yet again on their investigative files and discovered a new lead.”
“Folks, you’re not going to walk into our capital city, put down two explosive devices and walk off into the sunset,” Bongino said Thursday. “We were going to track this person to the end of the earth. There was no way he was getting away.”
One of Trump’s earliest executive actions of his second term was to grant clemency to nearly 1,600 people charged with or convicted of “offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.” It is not yet clear whether Cole’s legal team will argue that this proclamation should apply to him.
