Federal prosecutors have filed additional felony charges against the individual accused of placing pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee offices before the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol protest.
The charges were unveiled in a superseding indictment.
The first new charge says Brian Cole Jr. “used and attempted to use a weapon of mass destruction” against “persons and property.” The second new charge says the suspect allegedly “maliciously attempted to burn, destroy, and injure another’s property … with the intent to influence the policy and conduct of a unit of government by intimidation and coercion and with the intent to intimidate and coerce a significant portion of the civilian population of the United States and the District of Columbia.”
Cole’s attorneys filed a 23-page motion in March to dismiss the case. Defense lawyers Mario Williams and John Shoreman argue that the government’s own account of the case “inextricably” ties Cole to the events at and around the Capitol that day.
“By the government’s own telling, this is exactly the kind of case that President Trump’s January 20, 2025 Presidential Pardon was invoked to reach,” the attorneys wrote, adding, “The Pardon, like it or not, applies to Mr. Cole, based on the ordinary and plain meaning of the Pardon’s language as applied to the relevant facts in this case.”
His legal team argues the pardon’s language covers him because Cole drove to Washington “to attend a protest concerning the outcome of the 2020 election,” and the DOJ itself linked the timing and location of the explosive devices to that protest activity. Cole’s devices never detonated, and the defense notes that no physical injuries resulted from the incident.
Cole was arrested in December.
