Conservative peels back the curtain on Trump deputy’s 'farfetched conspiratorial nonsense'

Writing for the conservative news outlet, The National Review, senior political correspondent Jim Geraghty outlined how revelations following the arrest of a suspect in the January 6 pipe bomb case revealed the "farfetched conspiratorial nonsense" peddled by Deputy FBI Director Dan Bongino.

On Thursday, the FBI announced the arrest Brian J. Cole Jr., 30, of Virginia, charging him with placing pipe bomb explosives outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees' headquarters in Washington D.C. on Jan. 5, 2021. This was just before the Jan. 6 Capitol riots that attempted to disrupt the certification of Donald Trump's loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election. According to the affidavit, Cole was found to have purchased materials consistent with the creation of the specific pipe bomb devices throughout 2019 and 2020. He is the only perpetrator named, with no other co-conspirators named at this time.

This latter fact was one the Geraghty highlighted as a counter to the conspiracy narratives once put forward by Bongino, during his days as a right-wing podcaster before joining Trump's FBI. The reporter cited a Feb. 4 episode of Bongino's show in which he called the pipe bomb case "the biggest scandal of our time because there’s clearly a monster cover up going on.”

"Got that?" Geraghty wrote. "Bigger than Watergate, bigger than Teapot Dome, bigger than Iran-Contra or Chappaquiddick."

In the episode, Bongino and guest Darren Beatie claimed that the pipe bombs were part of hoax, on account of allegations that then-Vice President-elect Kamala Harris and Secret Service officers did not act sufficiently alarmed about the discovery of the bombs on security tapes.

“The January 6 scandal, the hoax of January 6, and specifically the hoax of the pipe bomb seems to implicate in some fashion Kamala Harris herself," Bongino said at the time.

Now, Bongino himself was part of the press conference announcing the arrest, and claimed in an interview with Sean Hannity that Cole's "motive was to drop a couple bombs that could have killed people," with no further mentions of past conspiracy claims.

"That Bongino podcast back in February was full of farfetched conspiratorial nonsense," Geraghty wrote. "And I suspect that the audience listening and watching at the time didn’t particularly care. They know it’s conspiratorial nonsense, and they consume this media because they want to hear conspiratorial nonsense, because they want to believe in conspiratorial nonsense."

He continued: "A certain chunk of the audiences out there want to hear lies. They love it when someone tells them something false. The truth is usually comparably boring. The conspiracy theory narratives can get convoluted in their details but almost always amount to one simple and exciting storyline: Shadowy and malevolent figures at the top of society are fooling most of the public and getting away with terrible deeds by framing or using some hapless patsy. And you, the theory believer, get to be a minor hero in the story; you’re the one who’s not so easily fooled, the who can see through their lies."

Citing this arrest alongside the details discovered about the men who assassinated Charlie Kirk and attempted to assassinate Trump in Butler, Geraghty said that there are "no vast conspiracies, no government cover-ups," merely "angry and usually young men, often with mental health issues, convinced that whatever has eluded them in their lives will be found by committing a terrible act of violence against someone who did nothing to deserve it."