WASHINGTON — The Virginia man who was arrested earlier this month for allegedly placing bombs at the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters said he had never been an “openly political person.” But on that day, he said he wanted to send a message to both parties.
Brian Cole Jr., despite initially denying involvement, admitted to investigators in an hourslong interview over the weekend that he had planted the bombs at the two locations on Jan. 5, 2021, one day before Congress was set to convene to certify the results of the 2020 election.
Cole said in his confessions that he wasn’t targeting lawmakers or the joint session. In fact, Cole wasn’t sure how he wanted people to react — he just “hoped there would be news about it,” according to court filings.
But in interviews with investigators, Cole repeatedly cited conspiracy theories about the 2020 election that he said he closely followed on Reddit and YouTube. Then one day, “something just snapped” after “watching everything, just everything getting worse,” he told them.
Cole said he wasn’t targeting either party in particular, and he placed bombs at both headquarters because “they were in charge.”
“I really don’t like either party at this point,” he told investigators.
Cole admitted to traveling to Washington, D.C., specifically to plant the bombs despite initially claiming he wanted to attend events protesting the results of the 2020 election. The defendant had not told anyone of his plans ahead of time, according to court documents, and he had never told anyone about it in the nearly five years since then.
Cole said he wanted to act on behalf of those who felt like their “votes are like just being thrown away” and that the election was “tampered with.”
“I didn’t agree with what people were doing, like just telling half the country that ... they just need to ignore it,” he told investigators. “I didn’t think that was a good idea, so I went to the protest.”
Cole planted the first bomb around 7:54 p.m. on Jan. 5, 2021, “in the immediate vicinity” of the DNC headquarters, according to the court filing. He placed the second bomb around 8:16 p.m. at the RNC headquarters, which was just a quarter of a mile away.
Cole told investigators he did not test the devices before placing them, but he was “pretty relieved” when they did not go off. He confessed he planted the pipe bombs at night because he did not want anyone to be killed.
Then-Vice President Kamala Harris was inside the DNC headquarters when the bomb was found outside the building the next morning, but she was quickly evacuated and was not harmed.
When Cole saw surveillance footage of himself on the news, he “discarded all the bombmaking materials he had at a nearby dump.” Cole also wiped his phone memory in a “factory reset” 943 times since the event — the most recent being approximately three hours before his arrest on Dec. 4.
Cole is scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday for a detention hearing.