JUST IN: J6 Pipe Bomber Reveals New Details On His Motive In First Interview With Authorities

A Virginia man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the Republican and Democratic National Committee headquarters on the eve of Jan. 6 told investigators he wasn’t trying to target Congress or disrupt the certification of Joe Biden’s election, according to a new court filing.

Brian Cole, arrested Dec. 4, made the claims during a marathon interview with authorities after initially denying any role in the plot, prosecutors said.

Cole told investigators he does not consider himself openly political, but said the fallout from the 2020 election pushed him down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos and Reddit forums. He said he felt “something was wrong” and believed people who thought “that their votes are like just being thrown away” were being ignored, prosecutors wrote.

When pressed on why he chose the RNC and DNC as targets, Cole was blunt.

“When asked why he placed the devices at the RNC and DNC, the defendant responded, ‘I really don’t like either party at this point,’” prosecutors said in their filing. “[Cole] also explained that the idea to use pipe bombs came from his interest in history, specifically the Troubles in Ireland. The defendant denied that his actions were directed toward Congress or related to the proceedings scheduled to take place on January 6.”

According to prosecutors, Cole admitted he intended for both devices to explode and set 60-minute timers before planting them outside the party headquarters. Afterward, he said, he returned to his car, grabbed food from a Virginia restaurant and went home.

Brian Cole

“According to the defendant, he was not really thinking about how people would react when the bombs detonated, although he hoped there would be news about it,” the filing said. “The defendant stated that he had not tested the devices before planting them. He claimed that when he learned that the devices did not detonate, he was ‘pretty relieved,’ and asserted that he placed the devices at night because he did not want to kill people.”

Investigators said Cole later recognized himself in FBI surveillance footage released to the public and panicked. He allegedly dumped all of his bombmaking materials at a nearby landfill and kept his secret for nearly five years.

Prosecutors also said Cole appeared to repeatedly scrub his digital trail, wiping data from his personal cell phone “nearly one thousand times” in the years after the incident.

The details of Cole’s alleged confession were laid out in a filing urging a judge to keep him locked up while he awaits trial. Prosecutors argued the decision to plant bombs at the headquarters of both major political parties underscores the severity of the threat.

“In his own words, the defendant did so because he did not ‘like either party,’ but ‘they were in charge’ and thus were, in the defendant’s mind, an appropriate target for extreme acts of violence,” prosecutors said. “The defendant’s choice of targets risked the lives not only of innocent pedestrians and office workers but also of law enforcement, first responders, and national political leaders who were inside of the respective party headquarters or drove by them on January 6, 2021, including the Vice President-elect and Speaker of the House.”

The government said it was sheer luck, not restraint, that prevented catastrophe.

Prosecutors stressed that the devices failed to detonate due to “luck, not lack of effort,” and warned that the outcome could have been far deadlier.

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