Daly: The Pipe-Bomber Arrest Blew up a Lot of MAGA Nonsense

A look at the glaring irony of it all.

Last week, following an almost five-year investigation, the FBI arrested a man named Brian Cole. He is believed to have planted two pipe bombs in Washington DC on January 5, 2021 (a day before the attack on the U.S. Capitol). One of the bombs was placed at the Republican party headquarters, and the other was at the Democratic party headquarters. Thankfully, neither detonated.

The FBI and the Trump administration deserve credit for finally apprehending who looks to be a credible suspect. Hopefully, this will put an end to a public mystery that has lasted for almost half a decade.

One thing it’s already done — in glaringly ironic fashion — is shed new light (or perhaps disinfectant) on some of the conspiratorial absurdities that have plagued the public consciousness about what happened almost five years ago, during an ill-fated 24 hours in American history.

We learned, for example, from FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino, that Cole’s identity was neither previously known, nor kept secret from the public as part of a massive, federal-government cover-up. This “revelation” is worth noting, not because there was ever any credible evidence pointing to such a conclusion, but because Bongino himself, as a very popular right-wing political pundit years earlier, repeatedly made those very assertions. He even went as far as proclaiming, in no uncertain terms, that the placement of the bombs had been an “inside job.”

Last Thursday, after Cole’s arrest, Fox News host Sean Hannity unexpectedly asked Bongino about his past accusations.

“You put a post on X right after this happened,” Hannity reminded him, “and said there’s a massive cover-up because the person that planted those pipe bombs, they don’t want you to know who it is because it’s either a connected anti-Trump insider or an inside job.”

Bongino’s response was even more surprising.

“Listen I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions,” he told Hannity. “That’s clear. And one day I will be back in that space, but that’s not what I’m paid for now. I’m paid to be your deputy director and we base investigations on facts.”

It was one hell of an admission. Right there on Fox News, in front of millions of viewers, Bongino effectively confessed to, as a political commentator, making up things (aka lying) for money. And it wasn’t just a little bit of money. Bongino was reportedly making millions every year spewing such nonsense. And once he’s finished with his government role, Bongino plans to go back to doing it again. But for now, according to him, he’s going to tell people the truth.

Think about that for a minute. Like many in the right-wing media, Bongino was (and still is) a prolific denouncer of “fake news.” But he just admitted that he, in fact, was also a prolific spreader of it — for money. In other words, he was playing a character, and plans to reprise the role when the time is right. And his candidness and forthrightness in saying so suggest that he recognizes that his former (and future) audience is far less interested in hearing the truth, than they are being told things they merely want to be true.

One such want (or perhaps need), in regard to what went down on January 6, has been the notion that law-enforcement officers were complicit in, or outright responsible for, the violence that occurred. This long-running (though long-debunked) narrative has helped a lot of Trump loyalists escape guilt (or at least sympathy) for the beatings Capitol police officers took that day, while conveniently affording them the continued belief in Bongino’s disingenuously pushed “inside job” credo.

That same sentiment is likely what drove The Blaze’s recent efforts to pin the pipe-bombs on former Capitol Police officer, Shauni Kerkhoff. Last month, Steve Baker, of the Glenn Beck-founded news website, widely reported that Kerkhoff had, in fact, been identified as the suspect. He added that she left the police-force six months after January 6, and then “slipped quietly into a three-letter intelligence agency.”

It would have been the perfect outcome for January 6 conspiracists — a validation of the “inside job” theme. Unfortunately for The Blaze (and their legal department), it wasn’t true. Kerkhoff had absolutely nothing to do with it, nor was she ever a serious suspect. There was even surveillance footage of her playing at home with her dogs when the bombs were planted. I’m guessing an enormous lawsuit against The Blaze is already in the works.

Some of you may have seen that after the arrest of Cole (the real suspect), FBI Director Kash Patel proudly stepped up to a press-conference podium and declared, “When you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack our nation’s Capitol, you attack the very being of our way of life.” He added, “And this FBI… will always refute it and combat it. We will provide the safest country the nation has ever seen under President Trump’s leadership.”

It would have been a perfectly appropriate — even inspiring — proclamation… if we lived an alternate universe in which the events of January 6 never happened. The reality, of course, is that the violence that occurred that day was, in fact, an attack on American citizens, our institutions of legislation, and our nation’s Capitol. That attack was provoked by none other than Patel’s boss, Donald Trump, and carried out by several hundred individuals who Trump later called “patriots,” claimed were victims of a “grave national injustice,” and issued full pardons to (about 1,600 in total), for the crimes they committed that day. Among those pardon-awardees were numerous individuals who’d previously been convicted of serious crimes, and dozens who’ve since committed, or been charged with, additional crimes.

Of course, it’s not only Trump’s history on this issue that made Patel sound two-faced. Patel himself was so sympathetic to those who attacked Capitol police officers, and desecrated the Halls of Congress, on January 6, that he created a nonprofit organization to help pay their legal bills. He even went as far as co-producing a charity music-album for those serving prison time for January 6, featuring their voices (from behind bars) along with Trump’s.

So, congratulations once again, Mr. Patel, for the arrest, but spare us your pillow-talk about justice and safety.

Going back to Cole, it’s unclear, as of now, what motivated him to allegedly place those bombs at the Republican and Democratic headquarters. One tidbit we have heard, from multiple major news organizations, is that Cole told FBI interrogators that he believed the 2020 election was stolen. That is, of course, the same conspiratorial belief that ultimately led to the Capitol attack, which was also aimed at representatives from both political parties. If this is indeed what inspired the placement of the pipe-bombs, or even if it’s just something Cole is willing to say in a court of law, Trump’s blanket pardons may, believe it or not, end up serving as a legal argument for setting Cole free.

Here is some key wording from the official presidential pardon in question:

Acting pursuant to the grant of authority in Article II, Section 2, of the Constitution of the United States, I do hereby:

…

b) grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021;

…

I further direct the Attorney General to pursue dismissal with prejudice to the government of all pending indictments against individuals for their conduct related to the events at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.

I’m no lawyer, but I suspect that an actual lawyer — like Cole’s defense attorney, for example — could, at minimum, look at broad phrasing like “conduct related to” and “at or near the United States Capitol” (both parties’ headquarters are within half a mile of the Capitol), and make a decent argument that the pipe-bomb crime is actually covered under Trump’s pardon. Even if it’s a stretch (and it may well be), it could end up being Cole’s primary legal defense.

While I’m not convinced it would actually work, its been interesting, and rather surreal, listening to political pundits talk about the matter.

On Fox News’s The Five, co-host Emily Compagno, who has a legal background, argued that if Cole does escape legal accountability for the crime, because of Trump’s sweeping pardon, “this DOJ will find a way to charge him with something else, because they will not let this guy get away with it…”

I’m not sure how that would work, since Trump’s pardons broadly covered “conduct,” rather than specific crimes. I’m also not sure how anyone — at least anyone arguing in good faith — can unequivocally say that the Trump administration “will not let this guy get away with it.”

If it turns out that Cole is a Trump fan, or at least convincingly presents himself as one — you know, a guy who did what he did in protest of the “stolen election” — I can just as easily picture Trump granting him a brand new pardon of his own. The president, after all, has been handing these things out like candy, mostly to loyalists whose legal troubles stemmed from their adherence to Trump’s “stop the steal” hoax. Trump has already set free J6ers who were found guilty of, and sentenced to decades in prison for, seditious conspiracy. He’s pardoned literal war criminals who murdered people. Just the other day, he pardoned a major drug trafficker, Juan Orlando Hernández, who is responsible for bringing far more illegal drugs into our country than the Venezuelan drug-boats our president has been bombing. And if you think Trump would refrain from embarrassing, and nullifying the work of, his own FBI and DOJ by pardoning Cole… it’s worth considering that Trump also just pardoned an individual his DOJ criminally indicted just a few months ago, and was in the middle of prosecuting. Not to mention that he’s also made his DOJ and FBI look pretty foolish with his actions on the Epstein files.

In other words, Trump doesn’t care. He’ll do whatever he feels like doing.

That said, we don’t know where the Cole case is headed. We don’t know what his legal defense will be. We don’t know whether his lawyer, or even Trump, will work the pardon angle. But it’s worth taking a step back and recognizing just how ridiculous this moment in time is. One man’s high-profile arrest, which should be a source of pride in our federal government, triggered a domino effect that highlighted breathtaking fraudulence, defamation, gaslighting, hypocrisy, and an abuse of executive power so reckless that it may end up undermining the entire effort put into capturing and prosecuting the suspect.

I guess it’s just another unfortunate reminder of the grand scale of political perversity we’ve chosen, and accepted, as a nation.

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