U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Jeanine Ferris Pirro gestures as she speaks about Elias Rodriguez, suspected of fatally shooting two Israeli embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum, at the Justice Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., August 7, 2025. REUTERS/Kent Nishimura
National security analyst Marcy Wheeler noticed a strange edit in the court filing about the Jan. 6 bomber, Brian Cole, who confessed to planting pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican Party headquarters.
Writing Monday, Wheeler said that it might be a minor point, but the detention memo quotes Cole saying one thing, while changing the meaning of the confession later.
This month, Cole told the DOJ, "I really don't like either party at this point."
But a few paragraphs later, the DOJ changes the tense of the opinion he had in 2020.
"In his own words, the defendant did so because he did not 'like either party,' but 'they were in charge' and thus were, in the defendant’s mind, an appropriate target for extreme acts of violence," the document says.
Wheeler noted the past tense is "consistent with him having been a Trump supporter and souring on him." It was only later that the DOJ turned it into a "both-sides thing."
"By his own admission, the defendant committed these chilling acts because he was unhappy with the response of political leaders on both sides of the political aisle to questions raised about the results of the 2020 election, and 'something just snapped.' [my emphasis throughout]."
The documents make it clear that Cole was a 2020 election denier.
Wheeler commented, "It may well be that something about what Cole said makes it fair to put his animosity to both parties back in time to 2020, but that’s not the tense he used."
Her most "stunning" observation, she said, is that the detention affidavit throws out what seems like an important detail from the arrest affidavit. Cole was on Capitol Hill on Dec. 14, 2020. Starting on Dec. 15, 2020, he started resetting his phone to "factory settings."
"The alleged pipe bomber started exercising operational security the day after that trip to Capitol Hill, the scene of his alleged crime," Wheeler said, quoting the details from the affidavit.
It details "a Samsung cellular device" taken from Cole when he was arrested. "... between December 2020 and December 2025, the device recorded 943 events identified as a 'factory reset' or 'wipe,' including a 'wipe' event approximately three hours before the defendant’s arrest on December 4, 2025."
The first reset happened on Dec. 15, 2020, the day after his trip to Capitol Hill. The second was a month later, on July 15, 2022. At that point, Cole began resetting his phone weekly.
The trip to Washington D.C. on Dec. 14 piqued Wheeler's interest, but she noticed that suddenly, there's no mention of the the visit.
"Jeanine Pirro doesn’t want to talk about the trip he made there at all," speculated Wheeler.