WASHINGTON — After the arrest of a man charged with placing two pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national parties on Jan. 5, 2021, the warning from the Trump administration was clear: If you come to the nation’s capital to attack citizens and institutions of democracy, you will be held accountable.
Yet Justice Department leaders who announced the arrest were silent about the violence that had taken place when supporters of President Trump stormed the Capitol and violently clashed with police one day after those bombs were placed — in an attempt to overturn a democratic election.
It was the latest example of the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite the history of the Jan. 6 riot and insurrection, through mass pardons and commutations and the firings of lawyers who prosecuted the participants of the siege — and of the disconnect for a government that declares it is cracking down on violent crime and supporting law enforcement but has papered over the brutality of the Jan. 6 attacks on police officers and the assault on a foundation of American democracy.
“The administration has ignored and attempted to whitewash the violence committed by rioters on Jan. 6 because they were the president’s supporters. They were trying to install him a second time against the will of the voters in 2020,” said Michael Romano, who prosecuted the rioters before leaving the Justice Department this year. “And it feels like the effort to ignore that is purely transactional.”
The White House referred comment to the Justice Department, which referred comment to the FBI. The bureau did not immediately respond to an email from the Associated Press last week.
Pipe bomb incident called ‘inside job’
FBI Director Kash Patel, as a conservative podcast host during the Biden administration, had called the Jan. 6 rioters “political prisoners” and offered to represent them for free.
On Thursday, he said the arrest of the pipe bomb suspect, 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr., was in keeping with Trump’s commitment to “secure our nation’s capital.”
“When you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack the nation’s capital, you attack the very being of our way of life,” Patel said. “And this FBI and this Department of Justice stand here to tell you that we will always combat it.”
Patel’s deputy, Dan Bongino, had suggested before joining the FBI that federal law enforcement had wasted time investigating Jan. 6 rioters and antiabortion activists.
“These are threats to the United States?” he once said on a podcast. “Grandma is in the gulag for a trespassing charge on Jan. 6.”
Bongino speculated last year that the pipe bomb incident was an “inside job” that involved a “massive cover-up.” After joining the FBI, he repeatedly described the investigation as a top priority that was receiving significant resources and attention.
“We were going to track this person to the end of the Earth. There was no way he was getting away,” he said Thursday.
No public link has emerged between the pipe bomb incident and the insurrection, and Cole’s arrest was a significant development in its own right given that the nearly five-year investigation had confounded authorities, who are now assembling a portrait of Cole.
People familiar with the matter told the Associated Press that among the statements Cole made to investigators is that he believed conspiracy theories about the 2020 election, which Trump had falsely claimed was stolen from him in favor of Democrat Joe Biden. The people were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.
There was no widespread fraud in that election, as was confirmed by a range of election officials across the country, including Trump’s former attorney general, William Barr. Republican governors in key states crucial to Biden’s victory have also vouched for the integrity of the elections in their states. More than 60 legal challenges from Trump and his allies were dismissed by the courts.
Trump, whose felony conviction came in a different case, was impeached and criminally indicted for his role in the Jan. 6 attack.
He was found not guilty in his impeachment trial in the Senate, but seven Republicans voted to convict. One who did not, then-Senate GOP leader Mitch McConnell, said, “There’s no question that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of the day.”
Trump’s felony criminal case was dismissed after his election last year, given Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot face criminal prosecution.
Playing down Jan. 6 and aftermath
The tough-on-crime words heard during Thursday’s announcement about Cole’s arrest were at odds with the administration’s repeated efforts to play down the violence of Jan. 6, absolve those charged and convicted in the insurrection — some guilty of sedition — and target those who investigated and prosecuted the rioters.
Trump’s clemency action on his first day back in the White House in January applied to all 1,500-plus people charged with participating in the attack. That included defendants seen on camera violently attacking police with makeshift weapons such as flagpoles, a crutch and a hockey stick.
More than 100 police officers were injured, many seriously, including some who have described being scared for their lives as they were dragged into the crowd and beaten. The deaths of five officers are attributed to the Jan. 6 riot.
Earlier this year, the Justice Department asked the FBI for the names of agents who participated in Jan. 6 investigations, a demand feared within the bureau as a possible precursor to mass firings. In August, Patel fired Brian Driscoll, who as the FBI’s acting director in the early days of the Trump administration resisted handing over those names.
The Trump administration, meanwhile, has fired or demoted numerous prosecutors who worked on Jan. 6 cases, including more than two dozen lawyers who had been hired for temporary assignments to support the investigation but were moved into permanent roles after Trump won the 2024 election.
In October, two federal prosecutors were locked out of their government devices and told they were being put on leave after filing court papers that described those who attacked the Capitol as a “mob of rioters.” The Justice Department later submitted a new court filing that stripped mentions of the Jan. 6 riot.
One man whose case was dismissed because of Trump’s pardons was accused of hurling an explosive device and a large piece of wood at a group of officers trying to defend an entrance to the Capitol. Some officers later said they had “believed they were going to die,” prosecutors wrote in court papers, and several reported suffering temporary hearing loss.
Richer and Tucker write for the Associated Press.
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