by Julie Kelly
Four years after what the FBI describes as an act of domestic terror--the protest at the Capitol on January 6, 2021--federal authorities have not yet solved the most consequential crime of that day: the presence of two explosive devices within blocks of the U.S. Capitol.
A report issued today by Representatives Barry Loudermilk (R-Ga) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky), chairmen of House subcommittees examining the events of January 6 and the work of the January 6 Select Committee, details how the FBI investigation into the so-called pipe bomber went cold by early 2021 despite dedicating significant resources into finding the suspect and initially identifying several “persons of interest.”
The FBI originally claimed an individual wearing a hoodie planted the devices near the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and outside the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee on January 5, 2021 between the hours of 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. The devices were not discovered until 17 hours later, coincidentally, around the same time the Joint Session of Congress convened at 1:00 p.m. on January 6 to debate the results of the 2020 presidential election. A woman doing her laundry found a pipe bomb in an alleyway near the RNC headquarters at around 12:40 p.m.; a plainclothes Capitol Police officer discovered a similar device outside the DNC headquarters at 1:05 p.m.
The latter situation posed an extreme danger to incoming Vice President Kamala Harris, who left the Capitol at 11:25 a.m. and inexplicably went to the DNC, where she remained until around 1:15 p.m. As I have reported, several officers including numerous Secret Service agents and a bomb-sniffing canine failed to detect the device sitting just steps away from the building’s entrance.
News of the devices prompted the evacuation of nearby buildings and set off the first wave of panic that afternoon. Some top law enforcement officials including former U.S. Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund believe the devices were a diversionary tactic. “[While] law enforcement has not identified the suspect responsible for planting both pipe bombs, the explosive devices played a critical role in how the events of that day unfolded. Whether intended to or not, both pipe bombs acted as diversions, forcing law enforcement to draw resources away from the Capitol,” the report states. The first exterior breach of Capitol grounds occurred at 12:53 p.m.
But no one has been arrested despite a $500,000 reward offered by the FBI. Further, the failure to locate the J6 pipe bomber doesn’t add up considering the extensive investigative tools still being used by the FBI to track down and arrest J6 protesters, a caseload now approaching 1,600 individuals.
Not only did the trail go cold, either intentionally or organically, the same political leaders and government officials who promised to expose the “truth” about the events of January 6 oddly are uninterested in the pipe bomb threat and not cooperating with Republicans in their separate attempts to find the bomber. The report discloses extensive stonewalling by federal and local agencies including the FBI, the ATF, the U.S. Secret Service, and the Metropolitan (DC) Police Department related to House Republicans’ requests for documents and interviews to help better understand the failed pipe bomb investigation.
“[The] FBI has failed to provide any responsive documents. On December 12, 2023, FBI Deputy Assistant Director Matthew Foder briefed the Committee on the status of the FBI’s pipe bomb investigation. Deputy Assistant Director Foder’s briefing failed to satisfy even the Committee’s most basic informational needs and dealt exclusively with information already in the public domain.”
The former head of the Washington FBI field office, Steven D’Antuono, who led the pipe bomb investigation for nearly two years, also appears to have misled Congress by claiming some of the cell phone files obtained by the FBI were “corrupted,” which impeded their investigation. But according to today’s report, “the major cell carriers confirmed that they did not provide corrupted data to the FBI and that the FBI never notified them of any issues with accessing the cellular data.”
Further, despite promises to fully investigate every aspect of January 6, the January 6 Select Committee ignored what represented the biggest threat to public safety and the safety of top elected officials including Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“A thorough review of almost three terabytes of data turned over by the Select Committee yielded shockingly few results regarding the pipe bombs— emphasizing how the Select Committee failed to thoroughly investigate the security and operational failures surrounding the events of January 6,” the report reveals. Rep. Bennie Thompson, chair of the now defunct committee, told Massie in 2023 that his committee did not look into the pipe bomb matter. The committee’s final 845-page report devoted less than three pages to the pipe bomb incidents and relegated it to the appendix.
Even after the devices were detected on Jan 6, security perimeters established around both locations insufficiently protected the public, commuters, and nearby Congressional buildings, the report confirms:
On January 6, 2021, the actions of federal law enforcement before, during, and after the discovery of the pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC constituted a series of egregious safety and security failures. First, federal law enforcement failed to conduct a thorough security sweep of the DNC, resulting in the delayed discovery of one of the pipe bombs. As a result of the USSS’s decision to not use critical explosive detection capabilities, the USSS failed to identify the device and allowed civilians and the Vice President-elect to pass within feet of the DNC pipe bomb. Second, after learning of the pipe bombs, federal law enforcement failed to properly secure and maintain perimeters around the pipe bombs, allowed commuter trains to transit within close proximity of the pipe bomb, and failed to prevent contamination of the crime scene. Lastly, federal law enforcement risked the safety and security of protectees during the evacuation from the Capitol. Despite repeated attempts to notify law enforcement stationed along the perimeter, numerous civilians, law enforcement officers, congressional leadership, and even trains passed by the pipe bombs, needlessly risking human life.
A motorcade carrying Pelosi drove past the device after it was detected but before it was detonated. “Prior to Speaker Pelosi’s motorcade driving by the DNC pipe bomb, federal law enforcement had allowed more than fifteen vehicles to drive past the DNC pipe bomb despite repeated calls over the radio for law enforcement units to stop all traffic passing by the explosive device. The breakdown in command and control around the DNC pipe bomb and the failure to correct the breaches of the security perimeter culminated in law enforcement risking the safety of congressional leadership.”
The subcommittees’ report describes a full throttle investigation into the pipe bombs early on.
In the immediate aftermath of January 6, the FBI’s case team worked aggressively to cultivate and pursue leads toward apprehending the pipe bomb suspect. As of January 2021, the FBI’s investigation consisted of over fifty investigators, including special agents, data analysts, Task Force officers, and support staff. Of those more than fifty investigators, thirty were special agents assigned to the case. The investigation also comprised of a range of investigative support teams such as the Cellular Analysis Survey Team, the Computer Analysis Response Team, and the Digital Imaging and Video Recovery Team. As a result, by April 2021, the FBI had collected over 105,000,000 data points in connection with the investigation.
In February 2021, the FBI identified 186 phone numbers of interest; 36 numbers were assigned to agents for interviews, 98 required additional investigative steps. Fifty-one were categorized as "not needing further action" because the phones "belong[ed] to law enforcement officers or persons on the exclusion list."
By using another sophisticated investigative technique--tracking advertising data--the FBI case team, according to the report, “identified one [individual] whose movements matched the suspect’s movements as outlined by the video the FBI released tracking the suspect’s whereabouts.” But the result of that “significant lead…remains unclear,” the report states.
How is it possible the pipe bomber remains at large given the extensive resources first expended by the FBI and at their disposal to this day? Why did the J6 Select Committee avoid looking into the threat, particularly since it posed a mortal danger to both the incoming vice president and the Speaker of the House, who created the committee? Why did Kamala Harris never discuss her near-assassination attempt on the campaign trail? Why did D’Antuono mislead Congress about the condition of cell phone data? Why has the media stopped covering the pipe bombs?
The good news for now is that House Republicans are not backing down. The key to permanently unraveling the entire Jan 6 narrative is tied to the mystery pipe bomber—and once that missing puzzle piece is found, the public likely will find more shocking revelations.
https://www.declassified.live/p/house-report-discloses-new-information
