The suspect in the Jan. 6 pipe-bombing case voted for Donald Trump twice, according to his lawyer.
Brian J. Cole Jr., a 30-year-old from Virginia, was charged in December with planting pipe bombs outside the offices of the Democratic and Republican National Committees on the eve of the violent Capitol riot.
Cole pleaded not guilty to charges of interstate transportation of explosive devices and malicious attempt to use explosive devices last week.
It is unclear which years specifically Cole voted for Trump. Along with his voting history, Cole’s lawyer, Mario Williams, also told Fox News in an exclusive interview on Monday that he believes Trump’s presidential pardon for all Jan. 6 defendants should apply to Cole.
When quizzed by Fox on whether he believes Cole’s case is “January 6 adjacent,” as described by a judge during a hearing, he said he “absolutely agreed.”
“You have to employ some kind of common sense as applied to the allegations,” Williams told Fox.
“So, if the allegations are that he went out there and he set down these components and that they were found on Jan. 6, the judge says that it’s a part of Jan. 6 the pardon says that you were allowed to get a pardon for everything related to the events that occurred on or at the Capitol building on Jan. 6. We’re going to talk about that at a later date,” he said.
The Daily Beast has contacted Williams for comment.
Trump’s pardon, which was announced in January last year, stated he would “grant a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other individuals convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.” Trump also listed the names of 14 individuals who would have their sentences commuted.
The idea that Trump’s wide-ranging Jan. 6 pardon may possibly apply to Cole was flagged by California Governor Gavin Newsom last month.
FBI chief Kash Patel posted “When you attack American citizens, when you attack our institutions of legislation, when you attack our nation’s Capitol, you attack the very being of our way of life” on X after Cole was arrested last month.
Newsom shared Patel’s post with a photo of Trump’s pardons announcement, adding the caption “Anyone want to tell KA$H about this?”
In a court filing last month, Cole said he “has never really been an openly political person” and did not discuss politics often with his family to avoid conflict.
The filing also said Cole insisted he did not plant the pipe bombs, until the FBI confronted him with a still image of himself on surveillance footage taken around the time the devices were planted.
He said he initially did not recognize the person in the photo and had not previously seen the video, however his answer changed when agents reminded him that lying would lead to further charges.
“This time, the defendant paused for approximately fifteen seconds, placed his head face down on the table, and answered, ‘yes,’” the filing reads.
Williams said that after watching the footage of Cole’s interview, he believes some statements in the government’s court filing are missing context.
“I believe the manner in which the government made those statements is incorrect and acontextual, and in some instances, absolutely false,” he told Fox.
“Some of the representations that the government made, in our opinion, are false,” he added.
Cole told investigators he had fallen into YouTube and Reddit rabbit holes after the 2020 election, “when it first seemed like something was wrong” and “stuff started happening.”
The suspect believed that if people “feel that, you know, something as important as voting in the federal election is being tampered with, is being, you know, being – you know, relegated null and void, then, like, someone needs to speak up, right? Someone up top. You know, just to, just to at the very least calm things down.”
