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FBI Director Kash Patel claimed that the agency under former President Joe Biden's administration committed “sheer incompetence or complete intentional negligence” by allowing the suspect arrested Thursday (December 4) in the Washington, D.C., pipe bomb case to roam free for nearly five years.
Brian Cole Jr., of Woodbridge, Virginia, is set to be formally arraigned Friday (December 5) on charges of planting pipe bombs outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees on January 5, 2021, the evening before the U.S. Capitol riot by President Donald Trump's supporters protesting his loss to Biden in the 2020 election.
“The prior administration sat on the evidence for four years,” Patel said during an appearance on FOX News at Night. “There wasn’t any production of new evidence from five years ago.
“Here’s what we did — we went out to the country, brought in our experts, and Deputy Director [Dan] Bongino led the charge and said, ‘We are going to look at every single piece of evidence again.'”
Investigators used bank and cell phone data to link Cole to the production and placement of the pipe bombs, a process that the suspect reportedly began in 2019, during the probe.
“We looked at three million lines of evidence,” Patel said. “We went back and looked at the cell phone tower data dumps. We went back and looked at the providers and what information they provided pursuant to search warrants at the time and asked questions, such as ‘Why weren’t all the phone numbers scrubbed?’ and ‘Why weren’t they connected?’ and ‘Why wasn’t there any geolocational data done?’
“Now that is either sheer incompetence or complete intentional negligence, neither of which is acceptable for this FBI. So, we changed that in the prior eight months, not on just this case, but everyone. And what that did was allow us to narrow the search down.”
The bombs were rendered safe and no injuries were reported, however, the FBI said both devices had the potential to be lethal. Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in protest of his 2020 election loss following his 'Stop the Steal' rally hours after the bombs were planted in Washington, D.C.
Trump pardoned more than 1,500 people convicted of or awaiting trial of sentencing for offenses related to the January 6 Capitol attack upon taking office for his second of two non-consecutive presidential terms in January.