Brian J. Cole Jr., a Virginia man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic national committees in Washington, D.C., is asking a federal judge to throw out his case before trial, arguing it falls within President Donald Trump’s sweeping post–Jan. 6 clemency. In a court filing made Monday, Cole’s attorneys said Trump’s “blanket pardons” should apply to him because his alleged conduct on Jan. 5 is “inextricably tethered” to what happened at the U.S. Capitol the following day.
Cole’s motion seeks dismissal from U.S. District Judge Amir Ali, in the District of Columbia. The filing argues that prosecutors themselves have tied the timing of Cole’s alleged actions to the schedule at the Capitol on Jan. 6, when rioters disrupted the joint session of Congress that certified President Joe Biden’s electoral victory over Trump.
Defense attorneys also said prosecutors’ framing places Cole’s alleged motive and context “in the same political controversy that animated the January 6 crowd.” They pointed to how the government’s theory links Cole’s actions—planned for the night before the riot—to the events at the Capitol that followed, arguing it is not simply a coincidence of dates.
The Justice Department did not immediately respond in writing to the request, according to the filing details. In an earlier submission, prosecutors had said Cole, under questioning by FBI agents, denied that his actions were related to the Jan. 6 proceedings at the Capitol.
The charges stem from Cole’s arrest last year, after authorities identified him as a suspect in a case that had confounded the FBI for more than four years. Prosecutors have said Cole confessed to investigators after his Dec. 4 arrest, including that he felt “bewildered” by conspiracy theories related to the 2020 presidential election and that he “something just snapped” after “watching everything, just everything getting worse,” prosecutors said in earlier court papers.
Cole has remained in custody since his arrest. His attorneys have appealed Ali’s refusal to order Cole’s pretrial release from jail, and the judge has not set a trial date.
Cole is 30 and from Woodbridge, Virginia. His attorneys said he has been diagnosed with autism and obsessive-compulsive disorder, and they said he has no criminal record.
The Justice Department’s position on whether Trump’s pardons extend to Cole’s pipe-bomb charges will become central as the case proceeds. For now, the court has been asked to decide whether the timing and alleged context of Cole’s actions before Jan. 6 place the charges inside the scope of Trump’s mass clemency order.