As the conflagration over the Epstein files rages within Republican ranks, another obsession of the far right threatens to widen emerging cracks in the Trump coalition: the stalled investigation into the planting of pipe bombs outside party headquarters in Washington the night before Jan. 6, 2021.
Administration officials — most notably the F.B.I. deputy director, Dan Bongino — have pushed back hard against a report from the The Blaze, a far-right news outlet founded by Glenn Beck, that named a law enforcement official as the suspect based on a computer analysis of the way the person walked. The crime remains unsolved.
“A week of near 24-hour work on RECENT open source leads in the case has yet to produce a break through, and some of the media reporting regarding prior persons of interest is grossly inaccurate and serves only to mislead the public,” Mr. Bongino wrote in a lengthy post on social media on Thursday that included an attack on a House Republican and an aggrieved defense of his own work.
The editors at The Blaze defended their reporting but hedged some of their claims. Even so, the account had the effect of dropping a match onto MAGA kindling, sparking renewed complaints about the lack of substantial progress in tracking down those responsible for planting the bombs outside the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican committees, not far from the Capitol.
For some of Mr. Trump’s supporters, the case — an overshadowed sideshow to most Americans — is an important missing link that might prove the pipe bombs were an inside job by deep-state law enforcement and intelligence officials intended to discredit the far right.
That, according their logic, would prove the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was not an attempt to overturn the election by Trump supporters, as hundreds of successful prosecutions overwhelmingly proved.
The pipe bomb case was never likely to rival the investigation into Jeffrey Epstein, the disgraced financier, in scope, public interest or political importance. But both cases share a key characteristic: They spawned conspiracy theories that were promoted, to one degree or another, by Trump loyalists now occupying top positions in the F.B.I. and Justice Department.
Mr. Bongino and his boss, Kash Patel, the F.B.I. director, promised to pursue investigations based on fictional or exaggerated premises, pledging to reveal deep-state secrets and vowing swift vengeance on their enemies.
Now they are the ones urging caution, and facing blowback for it.
Representative Thomas Massie, a Kentucky Republican who also backs the bipartisan push to release the full F.B.I. and Justice Department files on Mr. Epstein, lashed out at the bureau’s leadership on Monday, accusing the administration of a cover-up.
“FBI, CIA, and Capitol Hill Police Department are implicated in this story,” he wrote in a post on X, joining a chorus of far-right activists who accused Mr. Trump’s team of being drawn into the deep-state machinations they had once promised to expose.
Representative Barry Loudermilk, a Georgia Republican who serves as chairman of the subcommittee investigating the investigation of the Capitol riot, was among those clamoring for more evidence. “With new information circulating, I am asking the @FBI for evidence associated with their investigation into the pipe bombs found on J6, including all information gathered and persons of interest they interviewed, along with any surveillance footage and photos,” he wrote on X early Thursday.
F.B.I. officials responded by turning over new material to Mr. Loudermilk late Thursday, although it was not immediately unclear how much new detail the disclosures added.
But it was Mr. Massie who really got on Mr. Bongino’s nerves. The deputy director was particularly incensed by a letter from a self-described F.B.I. whistle-blower, publicized by Mr. Massie, who claimed the bureau’s leaders were trying to suppress information on the pipe bomb investigation.
“This is disgusting, even by the low standards many have for politicians,” wrote Mr. Bongino, who went on to describe details of the investigation, including the deployment of specific F.B.I. units, and posted screenshots of two calls to Mr. Massie, one of which had gone unanswered.
Mr. Massie did not respond to multiple requests for comment. An F.B.I. spokesman said Mr. Bongino’s post on X spoke for itself.
Mr. Bongino’s public taunts were consistent with the behavior of Mr. Patel and Attorney General Pam Bondi, who have made a practice of responding to questions from Democrats with partisan and personal attacks.
Yet Mr. Bongino’s behavior went far beyond the norms established by all of his recent predecessors, who for the most part eschewed public discussions of open investigations, avoided social media out of concern their statements could taint the bureau’s work and avoided mud fights with elected officials.
And for all his bluster, Mr. Bongino played a central role in stoking expectations that the F.B.I. would quickly find the pipe-bomb planters.
In an interview with Fox News five months ago, Mr. Bongino identified the pipe bomb investigation as one of his top three priorities. He falsely claimed that the Justice Department under President Biden had not aggressively pursued the investigation, even though the department had offered a reward and conducted an exhaustive review of video and interviews with hundreds of witnesses. Then he offered a prediction.
“I’m pretty confident that we’re closing in on some suspects,” said Mr. Bongino, a former podcaster who is in a critical post typically occupied by bureau veterans with far more law enforcement experience.
At the time of Mr. Bongino’s appearance, the bureau was pursuing several promising leads, but they dissipated, according to a Trump administration official with direct knowledge of the situation.
Current and former officials have been sharply critical of Mr. Bongino and Mr. Patel for focusing too much on social media and rushing to publicize developments in open investigations that later turn out to be dead ends, or incremental.
The bureau had increased its efforts to jump-start the investigation even before the Blaze article was published. This year, F.B.I. officials released new details, including new video images of their still-unidentified suspect, hoping to spur tips that might solve the lingering mystery.
The person, wearing a mask, a gray hooded sweatshirt, dark pants and Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers, planted two homemade bombs the night before the formal congressional ceremony acknowledging that Joseph R. Biden Jr. had won the 2020 election.
Neither device exploded, but their discovery that morning added to the fear and confusion on a day when a pro-Trump mob stormed the Capitol, delaying the certification of the election results.
Glenn Thrush covers the Department of Justice for The Times and has also written about gun violence, civil rights and conditions in the country’s jails and prisons.
The post Far Right’s Fixation on Jan. 6 Pipe Bomb Suspect Reaches F.B.I.’s Top Ranks appeared first on New York Times.
