Brace yourselves for a plot twist straight out of a political thriller: a man who planted pipe bombs near party headquarters in Washington, D.C., claims to be a staunch supporter of former President Donald Trump.
Breitbart reported that Brian Cole Jr., a 30-year-old from Northern Virginia, was nabbed by the FBI at his family home on a recent Thursday, confessing to placing explosive devices outside the Republican and Democratic national headquarters on January 5, 2021, just before the infamous Capitol protest the following day.
Thankfully, the bombs didn’t detonate, sparing untold damage and potential tragedy.
While the timing of Cole Jr.’s actions ties him to the chaos of January 6, 2021, investigators have found no links between him and the militant groups or other Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol.
Here’s where it gets murky: Cole Jr. told the FBI he believes Trump was the rightful winner of the 2020 election and proudly identifies as a supporter.
Yet, his social media activity hints at anarchist tendencies, leaving law enforcement scratching their heads about what truly drove him to such a dangerous act.
“It’s not yet clear what the drivers were,” an anonymous law enforcement official admitted, summing up the confusion surrounding Cole Jr.’s intentions.
That ambiguity is a reminder that ideology isn’t always a straight line—sometimes it’s a tangled web of contradictions that even the sharpest minds can’t unravel.
Cole Jr.’s background adds another layer of complexity, as he worked for a bail bonds business run by his father, Brian Cole Sr., which catered to helping unauthorized migrants avoid detention.
Interestingly, the family enterprise, operating under names like StateWide Bonding, Inc., sued the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement in 2018, alleging unfair penalties when clients missed court appearances.
“Hundreds of Plaintiffs’ clients fail to appear because Defendants fail to (1) provide said person with a specified date, time, and location to appear in court,” the complaint argued, pointing fingers at federal agencies for procedural failures.
Just weeks before the bomb incident, a D.C. appeals court sided with the Trump administration against StateWide in November 2020, a bitter pill for a family now tied to a self-proclaimed Trump loyalist.
Meanwhile, Cole Sr. has faced his own battles, partnering with attorney Ben Crump in 2021 to accuse a Tennessee prosecutor of racial bias against another of his ventures, and more recently facing sanctions for misconduct in a state appeals court.
As Cole Jr. awaits a detention hearing on December 15 with attorney John Shoreman by his side, the conservative heart can’t help but ponder the irony: a so-called Trump supporter entangled in a family business at odds with Trump-era policies. It’s a stark lesson that loyalty to a cause doesn’t always align with personal or familial realities.
