Category: Jan. 6
Pipe-bomb prosecutors ‘reckless’ for insinuating Brian Cole’s family was involved, attorney says
The defense team for Jan. 6 D.C. pipe-bomb suspect Brian Cole Jr. accused the U.S. Department of Justice of being “reckless” by insinuating that Cole’s sister and grandmother were somehow involved in the crime.
Defense attorney J. Alex Little filed an 11-page rebuttal of the DOJ’s recent 39-page opposition memo, which seeks to prevent Cole’s release from jail pending trial.
‘It is an unjustified deprivation of liberty.’
Oral arguments on the question were held before U.S. District Judge Amir Ali on Jan. 28. The judge said he would issue a ruling later. On Jan. 16, Judge Ali denied an emergency motion for Cole’s release from custody. The judge set a status hearing for Feb. 27.
Cole was arrested Dec. 4 on a criminal complaint alleging that he planted pipe bombs behind the Democratic National Committee building and near the Republican National Committee building between 7:54 p.m. and 8:16 p.m. on Jan. 5, 2021. In January 2026, he was indicted by a federal grand jury and charged with two explosives-related crimes.
‘Resorts to insinuation’
Near the end of its Jan. 23 memo opposing Cole’s release from jail pending trial, the DOJ mentioned that Cole’s sister texted her mother that she was going into D.C. on Jan. 5, 2021. Brittany Cole texted her mother that her grandmother cautioned her there could be protests.
“Unable to identify an actual, present threat, the government resorts to insinuation. It closes its response by suggesting that Mr. Cole’s sister and grandmother may have been involved in the charged conduct,” Little wrote.
“Its proof? Text messages showing that Mr. Cole’s sister — a club promoter who frequently works in Washington D.C. — told her mother she was going to the city, and that her grandmother had warned it might be crowded,” he wrote.
The DOJ memo also mentioned that Cole sent texts to his mother in the days leading up to Jan. 6. There was no mention of the content of those messages. Little said this reference baselessly suggested something nefarious.
A federal grand jury charged Brian Cole Jr. with two explosives-related charges, alleging he planted pipe bombs on Capitol Hill on Jan. 5, 2021. FBI, Prince William County photos
The DOJ said Cole’s sister texted their mother at 4:17 p.m. Jan. 5, writing: “I’m going to dc…Grams said it may be crazy out there so I was just letting you know.” The sister “sent a text message to the defendant a few hours earlier, at approximately 12:39 p.m. on Jan. 5,” the DOJ memo read.
“That is not evidence of involvement. Nor is it evidence of dangerousness,” Little countered. “It is family checking in with each other. The government’s decision to publicly imply, with no factual basis, that these private citizens are connected to domestic terrorism is reckless and reveals how little actual evidence it has that Mr. Cole poses a continuing danger.”
Brittany Cole provided an affidavit on Jan. 27 stating that her job as a concert promoter took her to D.C. that afternoon and that her trip had nothing to do with Jan. 6 or the crimes her brother is accused of.
‘Unable to identify an actual, present threat, the government resorts to insinuation.’
“As part of my work, I routinely had meetings and would attend events in the Washington D.C. area,” she wrote. “I attended these meetings and events as a networking event for my work and the nightclubs I marketed before.”
Tim Lauer, director of external affairs at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia, told Blaze News, “When a defendant claims he should be released into the custody of his family, there will inevitably be a court discussion about the appropriateness of that release.”
For nearly a month, the two sides in the pipe-bombs case have argued whether Cole should be held behind bars until trial. The government insists that Cole is so dangerous that no combination of supervision or monitoring could adequately protect the public.
The DOJ said Cole had purchased other items besides the alleged bomb-making components used for the pipe bombs. This included a pressure cooker on July 25, 2020, a funnel and canning jar on Jan. 28, 2021, nails on Feb. 10, 2021, four alarm clocks and duct tape on March 28, 2020, and three analog wristwatches in 2020 and 2021.
Little said the pressure cooker was purchased to cook meals and was not some kind of bomb component.
“Mr. Cole explained during his interrogation that he bought it for the house for cooking, and there is no evidence it has ever been used for anything else,” Little wrote, noting that “millions of Americans own pressure cookers.”
Police walked right past DNC pipe bomb to first look under a bush where bomber sat 17 hours earlier. Photos by U.S. Capitol Police
“The government’s inclusion of this item in a list of purported ‘bomb-making components’ is the kind of innuendo that pervades its argument — suggestive without context but unsupported by any actual evidence,” Little said.
In numerous filings with the court, the DOJ said Cole “used beaker sets to conduct another science experiment to create potassium chlorate,” a chemical “oxidizing agent commonly used in explosives.” This experiment was done sometime after Jan. 5, the DOJ said.
Little said the DOJ “has the timeline wrong.”
‘There is significant evidence of the defendant’s continued interest in bomb-making.’
“This experiment occurred years before the charged conduct, not after,” Little wrote. “During his interview, Mr. Cole described the experiment in detail: He used beakers and got bleach on the carpet. The government’s own discovery confirms that the beakers the government describes were purchased in 2018.”
Cole’s mother, Delicia Cole, provided an affidavit stating, “In or before 2018, while living in my home, Brian attempted a science experiment to create homemade ‘rocket fuel.’” Her son’s attempt to make rocket fuel “was an innocuous science experiment without any ill intent,” Delicia Cole wrote.
Little said the DOJ has provided no forward-looking evidence of Cole being a danger to society. He said his client is willing to be placed under the strictest release conditions, including home detention and GPS monitoring.
“Mr. Cole’s alleged conduct occurred more than five years ago. He has done nothing dangerous since,” Little wrote. “He has no criminal history, strong community ties, and family — including a retired law enforcement officer — willing to ensure his compliance.”
‘Deprivation of liberty’
Given Cole’s willingness to submit to comprehensive release conditions, Little said that continued detention of his client “is not the ‘carefully limited exception’ the Constitution requires — it is an unjustified deprivation of liberty.”
The DOJ cited Cole’s alleged history of purchasing bomb-making components, his alleged confession, and a nearly five-year effort to avoid law enforcement as factors showing he is a danger to society and must remain in custody.
“There is significant evidence of the defendant’s continued interest in bomb-making, and there are concrete reasons to doubt that the defendant will abide by release conditions or that a third-party custodian will effectively monitor him,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Charles R. Jones wrote in a memo opposing Cole’s release.
“On this record, and given the statutory presumption of detention, there is clear and convincing evidence that no combination of conditions will reasonably assure the community’s safety if the defendant is released,” Jones wrote.
A U.S. Capitol Police bomb robot (center) responds to the Democratic National Committee building on Jan. 6, 2021. Photos by FBI, U.S. Capitol Police
Little scoffed at the idea that his client evaded law enforcement for nearly five years.
“The government paints him as a criminal mastermind who engaged in a sustained effort to avoid apprehension. But the government’s own evidence tells a different story,” Little wrote.
While the DOJ said Cole “wiped” his Samsung cell phone more than 940 times, Little said that began 18 months after Jan. 5. “If Mr. Cole were trying to destroy evidence of the January 5, 2021, offense, one would expect the wiping to begin immediately afterward, not 18 months later,” Little said.
“The government’s own discovery shows that Mr. Cole purchased CCleaner, an application that advertises its ability to make phones and computers operate faster by cleaning out junk files,” Little wrote. “According to Mr. Cole’s interview, he understood it to be antivirus software.
“According to the government, beginning in July 2022, he started compulsively using the cleaning function — a pattern consistent with his documented OCD.”
The defense submitted an affidavit of Maryland neuropsychologist David O. Black, who said he diagnosed Cole with autism spectrum disorder, level 1, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“Over the past several years, Mr. Cole has repetitively wiped his phone of junk files,” Black wrote. “Repetitive behavior of this nature is consistent with behavior that is often seen in obsessive-compulsive disorder.”
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Trump sues BBC for billions over ‘deceptive and defamatory’ edit of his Jan. 6 speech, blasts foreign election interference
President Donald Trump filed a massive defamation lawsuit against the British Broadcasting Corporation on Monday over an edit of his Jan. 6, 2021, speech that appeared in a BBC “Panorama” documentary.
The lawsuit claims that the BBC’s “deceptive and defamatory distortion, doctoring, manipulation, and splicing damaged President Trump in his occupation, damaged his professional reputation, and portrayed him as engaging in supposed calls for rioting and violence that he never actually made.”
‘The FAKE NEWS “reporters” in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s**t as the ones here in America.’
The complaint notes further that the “aggressively anti-Trump” documentary, which aired shortly before the 2024 presidential election and painted Kamala Harris as an optimal candidate, constituted “a brazen attempt to interfere in and influence the Election’s outcome to President Trump’s detriment.”
A tale of two speeches
Trump originally said at 12:12 p.m. in his speech on Jan. 6, 2021:
Now it is up to Congress to confront this egregious assault on our democracy. And after this, we’re going to walk down — and I’ll be there with you — we’re going to walk down, we’re going to walk down. Any one you want, but I think right here, we’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and we’re going to cheer on our brave senators and congressmen and women, and we’re probably not going to be cheering so much for some of them, because you’ll never take back our country with weakness.
The president noted nearly an hour later after first raising concerns about voting irregularities and potential fraud in the 2020 election, “Most people would stand there at nine o’clock in the evening and say, ‘I want to thank you very much,’ and they go off to some other life, but I said, ‘Something’s wrong here, something’s really wrong — can’t have happened.’ And we fight, we fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”
The “Panorama” documentary spliced and reorganized Trump’s remarks to make it appear as though he said, “We’re going to walk down to the Capitol, and I’ll be there with you. And we fight. We fight like hell, and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country any more.”
In addition to creating a false narrative by coupling two parts of the speech that were divided by over 50 minutes’ worth of content and omitting Trump’s call for supporters to behave “peacefully,” the documentary showed flag-waving men descending on the Capitol after the president spoke — despite the video having been recorded before Trump’s speech.
Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images
The Telegraph obtained and reported on a whistleblower memo earlier this year revealing that there were concerns at the BBC over the apparently deceptive work.
The whistleblower memo noted that the “mangled” footage made Trump “‘say’ things [he] never actually said” and insinuated, with the help of the footage of men marching on the Capitol, that “Trump’s supporters had taken up his ‘call to arms.'”
Too little, too late
Last month, the BBC came under fire both in the United States and in the United Kingdom.
White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson told the Telegraph, “Trust in the media is at an all-time low because of deceptive editing, misleading reporting, and outright lies. This is yet another example, of many, highlighting why countless Americans turn to alternative media sources to get their news.”
Donald Trump Jr. tweeted, “The FAKE NEWS ‘reporters’ in the UK are just as dishonest and full of s**t as the ones here in America!!!”
“This is a total disgrace. The BBC has doctored footage of Trump to make it look as though he incited a riot — when he in fact said no such thing,” wrote former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson. “We have Britain’s national broadcaster using a flagship programme to tell palpable untruths about Britain’s closest ally. Is anyone at the BBC going to take responsibility — and resign?”
In the face of mounting pressure, the BBC issued a retraction, and the director-general of the BBC, Tim Davie, and Deborah Turness, the head of BBC News, both resigned in disgrace.
“Like all public organizations, the BBC is not perfect, and we must always be open, transparent, and accountable,” Davie said in statement. “Overall the BBC is delivering well, but there have been some mistakes made, and as director-general I have to take ultimate responsibility.”
Turness similarly assumed some responsibility for the fiasco, noting the controversy had “reached a stage where it is causing damage to the BBC” and adding that “the buck stops with me.”
‘The BBC had no regard for the truth.’
Turness suggested, however, that the broadcast corporation was not biased.
“In public life, leaders need to be fully accountable, and that is why I am stepping down,” said Turness. “While mistakes have been made, I want to be absolutely clear recent allegations that BBC News is institutionally biased are wrong.”
Samir Shah, the chair of the BBC, subsequently sent a personal letter to the White House apologizing for the edit; however, the network refused to pay compensation, claiming that there was no basis for Trump’s defamation claim.
Former British Prime Minister Liz Truss encouraged Trump to take legal action against the BBC, suggesting in a Nov. 15 interview that the network’s apology was insufficient “because they keep doing it again and again. They have painted a completely false picture of President Trump in Britain over a number of years. They’ve done the same thing about conservatives in our country.”
Pay the piper
Trump’s lawsuit, which was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida and demands judgment against the BBC for at least $5 billion in damages, states:
The lack of any effort by the BBC to publish content even remotely resembling objective journalism, or to maintain even a slight semblance of objectivity in the Panorama Documentary, demonstrates that the BBC had no regard for the truth about President Trump, and that the doctoring of his Speech was not inadvertent, but instead was an intentional component of the BBC’s effort to craft as one-sided an impression and narrative against President Trump as possible.
A spokesperson for Trump’s legal team told the Guardian that “President Trump’s powerhouse lawsuit is holding the BBC accountable for its defamation and reckless election interference just as he has held other fake news mainstream media responsible for their wrongdoing.”
A spokesperson for the network said in a statement, “As we have made clear previously, we will be defending this case.”
A spokesperson for the prime minister’s office noted that while Downing Street will always “defend the principle of a strong, independent BBC as a trusted and relied-upon national broadcaster reporting without fear or favor,” the prime minister’s office has “also consistently said it is vitally important that they act to maintain trust, correcting mistakes quickly when they occur.”
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