Category: Pipe bomb
Massie: FBI threatened his staff if he didn’t ‘play ball’ over pipe-bomb investigation
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said an FBI official threatened to open a criminal investigation on one of his staff over his persistent investigation and questioning on the Jan. 6 pipe bombs.
An FBI official threatened to open a criminal investigation on one of Massie’s staff “if we didn’t straighten up [and] play ball,” Massie told Blaze News investigative reporter Steve Baker in an interview broadcast on Matt Kibbe’s “Free the People” podcast and posted to X.
‘Even he understood that was not a good look. Probably illegal.’
“I’m going to say this here on camera because it’s important. … He said … ‘We’re going to investigate one of your staff for fraud,’” Massie quoted the unnamed FBI official as saying. “And he told another one of my staff this: ‘If you guys don’t straighten up, you know, if you want to play hardball, if this is how you want to play it’ or something like that, ‘this member of your staff is going to get criminally investigated for fraud’ — a very specific threat.”
Massie declined to identify the official he says levied the threat, but said he did complain about it to FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino.
“I told Bongino, I said, ‘One of your guys is threatening my guys with an FBI investigation if we don’t do what you want.’ And he [Bongino] said, ‘I’ll take care of that.’ ’Cause even he understood that was not a good look. Probably illegal.”
Massie said he later received a “non-apology” text from the official that said, “‘I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.’”
“He didn’t apologize. He was unrepentant, let’s say, really.”
Massie has been the most aggressive member of Congress investigating the pipe bombs found behind the Capitol Hill Club at 12:43 p.m. on Jan. 6 and under a park bench on the southwest side of the Democratic National Committee building 22 minutes later. In the same interview with Baker, Massie also disclosed that recent Blaze News reporting has caused him to be “99% certain” that some U.S. Capitol Police officials had a role in the planting of the pipe bombs found on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, 2021.
“I went from 90% certain that some Capitol Police were involved in the Jan. 6 pipe bomb to 95% certain, and now I’m at 99% certain after this new story that you put out this week,” Massie told Baker.
“I’m doing this on probability. The probability may even be higher than that.”
His comments reflect Blaze News’ recent reporting on a former Capitol Police officer who was an apparent forensic match to the bomb suspect, follow-up reporting on the manner in which the second device was discovered by plainclothes Capitol Police officers, and the stonewalling the congressman charges that he faced from Capitol Police in the course of his own investigation. Assistant Police Chief Ashan Benedict, whom Massie named as having specifically blocked his investigation, retired last week.
The Kentucky Republican also expressed frustration that FBI Director Kash Patel seems to have made little more progress than his predecessor, Director Christopher Wray. In an interview with Fox News earlier this month, as well as a follow-up with independent reporter Catherine Herridge, Patel promised that major developments are incoming, but was scant on details.
A CBS story published Tuesday cited three unidentified sources stating that the FBI had cleared the police officer who appeared to match a forensic gait analysis of the bomber, citing “an alibi: video of her playing with her puppies at the time the devices were placed.” Blaze News has sought to obtain independent confirmation of the FBI’s clearance based on the alibi.
Blaze News reported Nov. 8 on a forensic match to a former Capitol Police officer, based on a computer analysis of the hoodie-wearing alleged pipe bomber’s manner of walking compared to that of the person. The algorithm rated the person as a 94% match, while the intelligence analyst who ran the study for Blaze News put the match closer to 98%. The person has since denied any allegations, through her attorney.
FBI photos
Blaze News reported Nov. 18 that two Capitol Police counter-surveillance special agents sent out to look for more explosives after the discovery of the Capitol Hill Club device were seen on video going to the DNC building and to a nearby bush on the side of the Congressional Black Caucus Institute building.
Independent video investigator Armitas discovered that the hoodie-wearing suspect identified in 2021 as the pipe bomber stopped at the bush along a sidewalk on the north side of the CBCI building at 7:47 p.m. Jan. 5. The suspect sat cross-legged at the shrub and appeared to rummage through a backpack before leaning into the bush as if attempting to place something underneath.
The bomb suspect then stood up and walked back to the DNC bench, where a pipe bomb was placed at 7:54 p.m., according to choppy video released by the FBI.
‘He had a handler, who would often interrupt and answer questions for him.’
When Capitol Police dispatch warned of the Capitol Hill Club bomb at 12:43 p.m., two plainclothes Capitol Police special agents took a nearly six-minute drive to reach the Capitol Hill South Metro Station, one block from the Capitol Hill Club bomb scene. They then walked to the DNC building, passing the park bench the pipe bomb sat next to.
The agents continued walking until they reached an alley leading to the side of the CBCI building. Their movements were not captured on video because four Capitol Police security cameras that would have shown the DNC crime scene were turned away at key moments or pointed in another direction by default.
Massie’s office released video in July 2023 showing a man in dark clothing and a ball cap approaching a U.S. Secret Service SUV sitting in the driveway of the DNC building as part of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris’ security detail. Harris was inside the building when the pipe bomb was discovered.
Blaze News reported in January 2024 that this man was the plainclothes Capitol Police officer who discovered the pipe bomb under a bush at the foot of a park bench at the DNC building.
Following that story, Massie told Blaze News he was determined to interview the agents, but did not get much cooperation from Capitol Police. Massie referred to the agents as “man-bun guy” and “backpack guy” (the one who discovered the bomb).
‘Weirdest meeting’
The Capitol Police never made “backpack guy” available to the Massie, but on Jan. 30, 2024, they did eventually send his partner, accompanied by his commander, Benedict, to speak with the congressman in a meeting that was not recorded or transcribed.
“So they came over to my office, but not ‘backpack guy,’” Massie said. “’Man-bun guy’ came over, and he had a handler, who would often interrupt and answer questions for him.”
Two congressional investigators sat in on the meeting alongside Benedict, the police officer, and Massie. The congressman later described the interview as the “weirdest meeting in the world.”
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) said an FBI official threatened a criminal investigation of his staff if he didn’t “play ball” on the Jan. 6 pipe bomb investigation.Photo courtesy of Free the People
“In the conversation with the counter-surveillance officer in my office, Ashan Benedict would frequently interrupt the officer, answer before the officer could reply, or qualify the officer’s answers,” Massie told Blaze News. “There was an effort by our committee staff to get Benedict to sit for a transcribed interview, but he successfully evaded that effort.”
Massie said he still wants to interview the officer who actually found the bomb, as well as his partner and Benedict. “Those need to be transcribed interviews. They need to be sworn in. I feel very strongly about that,” he said. “But the reality is the FBI should be doing these things.”
Massie said that after he reposted the Blaze News article on the gait analysis, Bongino called him to complain about two early persons of interest mentioned in the piece.
One of those men, named in FBI reports as Person of Interest 3, lived directly next door to the Capitol Police officer who was the subject of the Nov. 8 Blaze News article. The FBI’s Special Operations Group conducted surveillance on Person of Interest 3 in Falls Church, Va., for two days in January 2021, but surveillance was suddenly canceled, before any law enforcement officer ever questioned the man.
Massie said Bongino told him, “‘That’s a dead lead. … We investigated that lead and … there’s nothing there. There’s no there there.’ So that’s why they quit looking at it. … At that point I said, ‘But you guys weren’t — you never did suspect him. The FBI never did suspect him. … His build doesn’t match. There’s no way it could be him. Your guys were looking for somebody else.’”
Whistleblower concerns
A current FBI supervisory special agent on Nov. 10 filed a whistleblower protected disclosure with Massie and U.S. Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga.), alleging the termination of surveillance at the Falls Church condominium complex was improper and cut off a suggestion by a surveillance team member that Person of Interest 3 be questioned face-to-face at his doorstep.
Person of Interest 3 and Person of Interest 2, his alleged houseguest on Jan. 5 and 6, 2021, had not been questioned by the FBI when surveillance was terminated. Interviews took place six days later, according to FBI reports included in the whistleblower disclosure. An FBI agent pretending to be a Metro Transit police officer interviewed Person of Interest 3 over the phone, a congressional source told Blaze News.
The whistleblower’s “concern was that the investigation that went to Falls Church, Virginia, that got them to the doorstep of the person that [Blaze News] identified through gait analysis as possibly somebody that might have been the person in the hood,” Massie said.
“There were suggestions made to the people in charge of the investigation about how to follow up on those leads,” Massie said. “And it was just dropped after two days of surveillance. And he [the whistleblower] provided supporting documents to that effect.”
Capitol Police block off the intersection of 1st and C streets in response to discovery of a pipe bomb at the Capitol Hill Club in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.U.S. Capitol Police
Massie said Bongino made reference to the FBI conducting a meeting to address the whistleblower disclosure. “He didn’t say, ‘We’re trying to find the whistleblower,’” Massie said. “But my Spidey sense went off, and I almost said to him in that moment, ‘You better not be trying to find the whistleblower, because law protects that individual.’ But I didn’t say it.”
Massie said he thought about this when recalling the threat he said his staff received from the FBI official.
“I have to tell all the listeners this because this is the context in which I’m worried for the whistleblower,” Massie said. “If they’re willing to retaliate against a congressional office, which has speech or debate immunity and a lot of other protections, they may be willing to retaliate against the whistleblower.”
The whistleblower’s attorney, Kurt Siuzdak, sent a letter to Massie and Loudermilk on Nov. 13, warning that if the FBI attempted to out the whistleblower, it would violate the supervisory agent’s protections under the law. Massie shared the letter on social media.
“Identifying the whistleblower serves only one purpose,” Siuzdak wrote, “which is to allow FBI management to retaliate.”
In a Nov. 13 post on X, Bongino accused Massie of throwing “BS bombs” and denied that the FBI sought to identify or retaliate against the Nov. 10 whistleblower. A Blaze News request to Bongino for further comment went unanswered.
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Assistant Capitol Police chief accused by Rep. Massie of thwarting congressional J6 pipe-bomb investigation retires
Ashan M. Benedict, the assistant U.S. Capitol Police chief who a congressman alleges prevented two special agents involved in the discovery of a pipe bomb at the Democratic National Committee building from testifying before a U.S. House panel, has retired from the department, Blaze News has learned.
Rumors of Benedict’s retirement came one day after Blaze News published an investigation showing unexplained activity by the Capitol Police officers who discovered that bomb, who were overseen by Benedict. The announcement surprised some at the Capitol Police because his contract with the department was set to expire at the end of the month, on Dec. 1. Benedict came to the Capitol Police on Dec. 4, 2023, as assistant chief for protective and intelligence operations, which includes counter-surveillance teams. He later became assistant chief for standards and training operations.
‘They never looked for a third or fourth or fifth pipe bomb.’
Before he joined the USCP, Benedict was the DNC pipe-bomb incident commander for the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. In that post, he oversaw ATF’s response to the J6 pipe-bomb threat.
Capitol Police Chief Michael Sullivan distributed a bulletin Monday, Nov. 24, announcing Benedict’s retirement after less than two years with the USCP. Word had already circulated around the department on the Wednesday before that Benedict was leaving, two sources told Blaze News.
Word of Benedict’s retirement started percolating a day after Blaze News published an investigation showing the two USCP counter-surveillance agents who discovered the DNC bomb on Jan. 6, 2021, seemingly acting in a suspicious manner. The cops parked their car that afternoon and walked straight past a pipe bomb to another location, which Blaze News’ investigation discovered that the pipe-bomb suspect visited the night before. Then the officers returned to the DNC building, where one of them discovered the device.
Pipe-bomb suspect, construction worker, and police at a bush next to Congressional Black Caucus Institute.Photos by U.S. Capitol Police
“I went from 90% certain that some Capitol Police were involved in the Jan. 6 pipe bomb to 95% certain, and now I’m at 99% certain after this new story,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told Blaze News last week in an interview with Steve Baker broadcast on Matt Kibbe’s “Free the People” podcast and posted to X.
“I’m doing this on probability. The probability may even be higher than that.”
The officers were not seen searching any other areas for explosives in any of the extensive video available and reviewed by Blaze News, and they did not continue searching after the DNC device was found at 1:05 p.m. on Jan. 6.
The USCP has since confirmed that one of its agents found the pipe bomb near the DNC park bench, but there is no video showing that because key cameras were turned away from the DNC building at the time. The fact that the DNC bomb was discovered by plainclothes Capitol Police officers, and not merely a pair of passersby, was not made public until Blaze News broke that news in January 2024.
Following that story, Massie told Blaze News he was determined to interview the agents, but did not get much cooperation from Capitol Police. Massie referred to the agents as “man-bun guy” and “backpack guy” (the one who discovered the bomb). By this time, the agents were under Benedict’s command.
Key cameras that cover the Democratic National Committee building were turned away during bomb discovery and disposal.U.S. Capitol Police
The Capitol Police never made “backpack guy” available to Massie, but on Jan. 30, 2024, they did eventually send his partner, accompanied by Benedict, to speak with the congressman in a meeting that was not recorded or transcribed.
“So they came over to my office, but not ‘backpack guy,’” Massie said. “’Man-bun guy’ came over, and he had a handler, who would often interrupt and answer questions for him.”
‘They just kind of wander off. Their job was done. They had found the second pipe bomb.’
Two congressional investigators sat in on the meeting alongside Benedict, the police officer, and Massie. “In the conversation with the counter-surveillance officer in my office, Ashan Benedict would frequently interrupt the officer, answer before the officer could reply, or qualify the officer’s answers,” Massie told Blaze News. “There was an effort by our committee staff to get Benedict to sit for a transcribed interview, but he successfully evaded that effort.”
Massie asked the agent who sent him and his partner to the DNC building, as opposed to some other high-visibility potential target.
“How did you know to go look there?” Massie said he asked. “And it wasn’t a real good answer, something like, ‘That was my sector’ or something. You know, ‘We’re assigned sectors, and that’s just the sector that I look in.’”
According to the January 2025 report of the Committee on House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, three two-man Capitol Police counter-surveillance teams were dispatched to look for other bombs after discovery of the Capitol Hill Club device.
Massie said he showed a video to the men, depicting the slow, nonchalant response from the Secret Service, Metropolitan Police Department, and Capitol Police to the discovery of a bomb that potentially could have killed them all.
‘He never told me about this other bush.’
“Look, there’s pedestrians still walking around, and this is allegedly a pipe bomb,” Massie said. “And that’s when his handler [Benedict] stepped in and said, ‘Well, you don’t want to alarm people when you have a lot of crowds. You know, when you find a bomb or something, you can’t yell, ‘Bomb!’ You gotta just play it cool.’”
Video showed there were no crowds near the DNC bomb site. Occasional pedestrian traffic continued on the sidewalk within feet of the bomb, and vehicle traffic was not immediately stopped on nearby streets. Commuter trains continued to rumble over the adjacent train trestle for 15 minutes after discovery of the bomb.
Massie said his next question “elicited the oddest body language I’ve ever seen in a meeting and no real answer.”
“Well, so then you obviously went looking for another pipe bomb, right?” Massie recalled. “You found two of them within 30 minutes. You must believe the whole place is riddled with them if you’re finding them this quickly.
“I actually knew part of the answer. I watched the video of where he went after,” Massie said. “They just kind of wander off. Their job was done. They had found the second pipe bomb. They never looked for a third or fourth or fifth pipe bomb, and they didn’t have an answer to me for why the search for pipe bombs was over once they found the second pipe bomb. No answer. Weirdest meeting in the world.”
Massie said he still wants to see the officer who actually found the bomb and interview him, his partner, and Benedict under oath for transcribed interviews. “Those need to be transcribed interviews. They need to be sworn in. I feel very strongly about that,” he said. “But the reality is the FBI should be doing these things.”
“How did they know exactly where to look, including the place [Congressional Black Caucus Institute bush] where the pipe bomber tried to place a bomb?” Massie asked. “It was police, it was Capitol Hill Police that found these bombs, and they got there. But … I hope they went and bought lottery tickets after finding these, after going to these two locations.
“But when you take them all together, and the fact that I got to interview these, it’s at least one of these guys [who discovered the bomb], and he never told me about this other bush,” Massie said. “He didn’t have answers for why they didn’t look for more bombs after they found the second one. And then we’ve got the ATF person in charge of the bomb stuff happening on Jan. 6 is now at Capitol Police handling the interview?”
Sources have said the two special agents, who are known to Blaze News, are still with the Capitol Police. The one who discovered the bomb is now the Capitol Police’s liaison to the FBI — the agency charged with investigating the pipe bombs. His partner, who accompanied Benedict to meet with Massie, still works in the intelligence section.
Benedict’s retirement is just the latest disclosure in two months of developments in the long-unsolved pipe-bomb case.
Questions and requests for comment sent to Benedict and the two officers were not returned in time for publication.
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