Staff Reports
After nearly five years of questions and rumors, federal agents arrested a suspect in the pipe-bombings that rocked Washington on the eve of January 6, 2021. Authorities say Brian Cole Jr., a Virginia resident, was taken into custody in connection with the two viable devices placed outside the DNC and RNC headquarters — a development that should have come far sooner.
The Justice Department has charged Cole with explosives-related offenses, including transporting an explosive device across state lines and attempted malicious destruction with explosives, according to reporting on the case. These are serious federal counts that underscore how close those bombs came to causing real carnage.
It’s no exaggeration to say the devices could have killed. Law enforcement repeatedly described the bombs as viable, and the discovery forced evacuations — including of then–vice president‑elect Kamala Harris — and pulled critical resources away from the Capitol on a day that already descended into chaos. America should be grateful nobody was hurt, but we should also be furious about the incompetence and delay that let this case linger unresolved for half a decade.
The FBI says the arrest follows a painstaking reexamination of evidence: surveillance footage, cell‑tower data, purchase records, and other digital leads that were reviewed again this year. Conservatives and many victims of the January 6 prosecutions have long complained about selective focus and slow answers from the federal bureaucracy — this breakthrough proves the work could be done, it simply wasn’t prioritized in a way the public can trust.
For years the left and much of the legacy press pushed a single‑narrative version of January 6 that conveniently blamed only one political side, while some of the most important threads — like these pipe bombs — were left dangling. That inconsistency has consequences: it erodes faith in institutions and gives rise to conspiracies on both sides. Americans deserve stern enforcement of the law, but they also deserve transparency, not headlines that pick winners based on politics.
Now that an arrest has been announced, the conservative call should be simple and clear: let the courts do their job and let the American people see the evidence. If the suspect is guilty, he must be punished to the fullest extent; if the case is weaker than promised, those who rushed narratives and stonewalled oversight must answer for letting such a critical investigation languish. This country needs fair, even-handed justice and the truth — not another partisan coverup.
