DOJ Must Conduct A Criminal Inquiry Into The J6 Pipe Bomber Investigation.

It makes no sense that the FBI could not bring a case against Brian Cole in 2021 if the evidence is as seems to be laid out in the affidavit.

A lot just doesn’t make sense.

I used to tell young agents to not get too caught up in trying to make every puzzle piece fit because many people who commit crimes are often not the most rational thinkers or careful planners. “Why would he do that? questions were often responded to by me with “Don’t waste time searching for rationality in the decisions of an irrational person.”

Many of the details laid out in the Affidavit in Support of the Criminal Complaint against Brian Cole Jr., last week don’t make much sense if you were looking for an individual aggrieved over the Jan 6 protest in D.C. — on either side.

But the pieces to the puzzle that are assembled in the details of the Affidavit do lead to one over-arching and unanswered question — given what is known, why did it take 1,798 days to announce the arrest of Brian Cole?

Let me premise what comes next with the point that I made often in my career and especially while representing J6 defendants — an Affidavit is not required to contain every detail known to investigators about the defendant. In my opinion, using an Affidavit to tell a “story” in order to set a “narrative” at the very outset is an abuse of power. It’s done because DOJ allows the prosecutors to comment on any subject that is included in a publicly filed document. But the only facts necessary to be set forth in an Affidavit are those sufficient to state probable cause that the defendant has committed one or more crimes as alleged in the Criminal Complaint. My approach was to say that in a paragraph if you only needed a paragraph. The only audience is the Magistrate Judge who reads it — NOT the press or public at large.

But the point of this article is that the Affidavit suggests that much of the evidence used to charge Cole has been in the FBI possession for years. FBI Dir. Patel said as much in his press conference — that no new evidence was obtained as part of the new investigation. Instead, a new team of Agents was tasked with the job of being “fresh eyes” and starting over again in analyzing the evidence already gathered.

If that is true, then no new grand jury subpoenas were issued for records. I’m not sure this is entirely true because Patel did mention that after re-examining the evidence they “executed multiple legal processes with the U.S. Attorney partners.” To me, that would only make sense if he is referring to grand jury subpoenas or search warrants.

But, three examples of documentary evidence that play a part in the probable cause set forth in the Affidavit are important in terms of timing — the checking account and credit card records; the transactional records from the purchases, and the cellphone records.