The Virginia man charged with planting two pipe bombs near the Capitol on the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot was ordered to remain in jail until his trial, after a federal magistrate judge found there were “substantial red flags” that his release from custody could endanger the community.
In a 19-page ruling, the magistrate judge, Matthew J. Sharbaugh, said he was concerned that the defendant, Brian Cole Jr., had continued for more than a year and a half after a mob of pro-Trump loyalists ransacked the Capitol to purchase components similar to those prosecutors said he had used to make the bombs. Mr. Cole was accused of placing the devices outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic Party on the eve of the Capitol attack.
Judge Sharbaugh also said that when federal agents arrested Mr. Cole on Dec. 4, they discovered bomb-making materials in his car and in a closet in his home in Virginia — “two locations,” he pointed out, “essentially within arm’s reach of Mr. Cole’s daily routine.”
Moreover, the judge noted that between December 2020 and last month, Mr. Cole had “wiped” his cellphone in a so-called factory reset 943 times, raising suspicions that he was seeking to conceal information.
The decision by Judge Sharbaugh came less than a week after federal prosecutors in Washington disclosed in court papers that Mr. Cole had confessed to planting the bombs. While the devices never exploded, they drew law enforcement resources away from the Capitol at a sensitive moment: just as the mob was breaching its security perimeter on Jan. 6.
In a lengthy interview with federal agents, Mr. Cole asserted that he had never been “an openly political person,” the court papers said. But he also said that as he began to follow the 2020 presidential race, he started to feel that if “something as important as voting in the federal election is being tampered with,” then “someone needs to speak up.” Mr. Trump repeatedly claimed without evidence that the election had been rigged against him.
On Tuesday, Mr. Cole appeared in Federal District Court in Washington, where his lawyers sought to persuade Judge Sharbaugh that he could be safely released before his trial.
During the hearing, the lawyers did not contest the basic facts of his confession. But they did say that he had no prior criminal record. They also suggested that his repeated efforts to wipe his phone could be blamed on his autism and obsessive compulsive disorder.
One unresolved wrinkle in the case stems from a decision by the prosecution team to employ a little-used procedural gambit to secure an indictment of Mr. Cole as the 30-day window to do so after his arrest was running out.
Typically, federal grand juries return indictments against people charged with federal crimes. But prosecutors in Mr. Cole’s case obtained the indictment from a local grand jury on Dec. 29, the Saturday in between Christmas and New Year’s Eve, when there were no federal grand juries sitting.
In November, James E. Boasberg, the chief federal judge of the district, issued a ruling in a separate case allowing federal prosecutors to fall back on local grand juries to approve serious charges. But he also immediately put his ruling on hold so an appeals court could consider it.
Judge Sharbaugh said on Tuesday that he would now have to decide whether he could legally accept the indictment of Mr. Cole as a valid charging document.
Alan Feuer covers extremism and political violence for The Times, focusing on the criminal cases involving the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and against former President Donald J. Trump.
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