Brian Cole Jr., who is accused of placing pipe bombs outside national party headquarters on Jan. 5, 2021, faces new terrorism and weapons of mass destruction charges.
Federal prosecutors filed a superseding indictment against Mr. Cole Tuesday. It features the two new charges as well as the earlier charges of interstate transportation of explosives and attempted malicious use of explosives.
Authorities accuse Mr. Cole of placing pipe bombs, which prosecutors are now describing as weapons of mass destruction, outside the headquarters of the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee in Southeast Washington a day before the Jan. 6 Capitol riots.
Prosecutors allege in the new indictment that Mr. Cole’s aim was to use the bombs to destroy property as a way to intimidate the population and “to influence the policy and conduct of a unit of government” with an act of terrorism.
Mr. Cole’s attorneys questioned the government’s motivation in applying new charges in the case.
“The government has gone from identifying the alleged device as an explosive to now referring to that same device as a ’weapon of mass destruction,’ knowing experts have said this device would not have detonated. … The government now wants Brian Cole Jr. (a Black man) to go down in history as the only alleged, accused January 6-related individual to serve not only a jail sentence, but to serve the rest of his life in prison,” Mario Williams, an attorney for Mr. Cole, said in a statement to Washington’s WDVM-TV.
Mr. Cole’s attorneys previously called on President Donald Trump to pardon Mr. Cole just as he pardoned other defendants tied to Jan. 6.
Mr. Cole did not approve of the response by some political leaders to voter concerns about fraud affecting the 2020 election, telling investigators that “I didn’t agree with what people were doing, like just telling half the country that they … just need to ignore it,” according to court documents.
In an affidavit, an FBI agent alleged that Mr. Cole bought the materials used to make the pipe bombs at Home Depot, Lowe’s, Micro Center and Walmart locations in Northern Virginia in 2019 and 2020.
In addition, Mr. Cole matched the figure caught on surveillance footage placing the bombs outside the two party headquarters, and cellphone data placed him in the area around the time the bombs were set on the ground, according to the affidavit.
