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Notes -
The most likely reason the FBI failed to arrest the January 5 pipe bomber in the past 5 years: incompetence.
Prior Motte discussion here. News article here that claims the suspect, Brian Cole, has allegedly admitted his involvement.
I was thinking about this case and thinking about past cases I’ve handled as a criminal defense attorney where I’ve seen law enforcement screw up an investigation. Three related things I’ve seen before that could be behind the FBI’s failure in this case: overlooking evidence, imposing an unnecessary requirement, and target fixation.
1)Overlooking evidence. The FBI could have had a tip incriminating Cole, but they overlooked or ignored it. Even cases with a small amount of local media attention can generate a ridiculous number of “tips.” I can’t imagine how many were generated by this case. People were falling over each other to identify people involved in the Jan. 6 event, so the FBI was probably inundated on this case, too. Here was another chance for people to pursue every grudge against every Trump supporter they knew.
A tip regarding Cole could’ve been missed for any of the usual reasons: it got sorted into the “tip from crazy person” pile instead of the “has potential” pile, an agent wrongly believing someone else had checked it, incorrect logging of some kind, the agent reviewing it misunderstood it somehow, etc. Perhaps the agent even ran Cole’s name through a DMV database, saw that he’s black, and assumed he couldn’t have done it because it had to be Trump supporter and no Trump supporters are black. Law enforcement makes all kind of (dis)qualifying assumptions during a complex investigation, so an agent filtering out a suspect for a reason like this wouldn’t be shocking.
2)Imposing an incorrect (dis)qualifying assumption. The FBI affidavit for the arrest warrant mentioned the evidence that incriminates Cole: cell site location data, purchase data at MicroCenter, and a hit from a license plate reader.
But it’s a safe bet that’s not all the evidence the FBI would’ve had in the case overall. They would also have all the purchase records they could get for the distinctive shoes, purchase records from other hardware stores (Lowe’s, Home Depot, Ace, Walmart, whoever else carries the components used), and cell site location data for the Jan. 6 riot. Some of this evidence might incriminate other people instead of Cole.
The Jan. 6 cell site location data is important because if someone on the investigative team decided that the suspect must have also been at the Jan. 6 event, then the investigation stopped pursuing anyone that wasn’t there.
This kind of (dis)qualifying assumption happens all the time, and it’s a prime source of mistakes. Someone in the investigation will decide, “the suspect must be X” or “the suspect can’t be Y” with insufficient support for why those must be true.
With sufficient support, this kind of filter is valid and a necessary thing to narrow down an investigation. “The suspect must be black because three witnesses said it was a black guy and the video shows a black guy” is a good reason to discount any non-blacks. “The suspect must be left-handed because the video shows him holding the weapon in his left hand” could be valid, or it could be wrong because the video only showed him holding the knife in his left hand, not actually using it.
“The suspect must be a Trump supporter and was likely at Jan. 6.” That first part could mistakenly discount anyone who the agent thought unlikely to be a Trump supporter as I noted above. The second part means the FBI could drive themselves crazy trying to investigate every person present on Jan 6 and trying to make the pieces fit for that person being the pipe bomber, but never have success if the true suspect wasn’t at Jan. 6.
These assumptions lead to rabbit holes, too. “Maybe he had his phone with him on Jan. 6 but not on the 5th.” “Maybe he had his phone with him on Jan. 5 but not Jan. 6.” Then comparing purchase data and license plate hits for everyone at Jan. 6. More and more searching and data matching with no results in this case.
It often takes a completely fresh set of eyes to go back and look at the overall investigation and spot these logical leaps. Once a new team was brought on board, someone could’ve said “uh… what if the guy who planted these wasn’t at Jan. 6?” Only then did the FBI try and sort through all their other data, ignoring everything about Jan 6, and have Cole’s name pop up.
3)Target fixation on the wrong suspect. It’s possible that the FBI thought it was someone else, but there was some piece of evidence that they couldn’t get to fit. A match between a license plate hit and someone at Jan. 6, but no other matching info. Someone who had bought the same shoes and a cell site hit, but nothing else matching. The possibilities are nigh-infinite.
The FBI has shown themselves willing to go to great lengths to try to make pieces fit once they decide the suspect is guilty. See Brandon Mayfield of Oregon and the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Or think about Steven Hatfill and the 2001 anthrax attacks. Or Richard Jewell.
Here, if they decided it was someone else, they could’ve gone down any number of paths trying to make the case, but always failing to get enough to get a U.S. attorney to sign off on the case.
I have seen these three mistakes go together multiple times. Every defense attorney has had the situation where they’ve read through a police report and spotted an obvious alternate suspect with means/motive/opportunity who the police downplay for a very flimsy reason, and the real reason is that law enforcement decided one person is guilty and they’re going to build the case against that person. It must be remembered that the incentive isn’t to “solve” a crime, it’s to make an arrest and get a conviction.
(This is really obvious in some self-defense cases. Officers will downplay every bit of evidence that indicates it was self-defense by the accused and that the “victim” is actually the aggressor, and rabidly defend and support every bit of evidence that shows the “victim” in the best light possible.)
I'm not going to claim any government official is especially trustworthy or PR announcements about arrests are accurate, but past incompetence + new people working on the case fits what Bondi claims led to the arrest:
It came up in the prior Motte discussion, but upon more review, I don’t believe Cole was previously on the FBI shortlist and that someone feared the evidence was insufficient to get a conviction. Based on what the FBI says it had, they had more than enough evidence to get a search warrant for Cole’s residence, and they had more than enough to send agents to talk to him to see if he’d say something incriminating. It takes very little for law enforcement to go and talk to someone and see what info they can get, so it leads me to think they hadn’t considered Cole at all.
Could it have been new matching software that allowed the FBI to re-sift all the data, or a tip from a nefarious source that can't be made public (something involving Palantir, NSA data centers, etc.), or politically-motivated sandbagging by the prior FBI team? Yes. I don’t have access to any files and can’t rule any of those out. But with what I do know of law enforcement screwing up cases, incompetence seems to fit.
Guy was an MLP fan (or so I am reliably informed by the basket weaving forums). Can we consider some sort of MKultra shit already?
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