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Obviously it's incompetence, the question is whether the brass at the FBI intentionally put their dumbest guy on the case so they could continue to tie it to Trump for five years. Or is this just how they roll?
Just as obviously the Secret Service's performance protecting the president is dogshit, the only question is whether they intentionally put the dumbest hundred and fifty staff all on his team, or if their performance is representative of the SS.
Either answer is pretty bad.
Personally I think it's just a question of priorities. Simple as that. The bombings didn't get much mainstream sustained attention, didn't kill anyone, didn't even go off! All cases need personnel and time, and I'm positive the FBI has more cases than it has time and personnel. I know some very loud people wanted it to be a priority, but frankly I'm a bit iffy on that. It's not like there was a string of later, connected pipe bombings? So no imminent safety risk. (Also not read into the details of the case - were the pipe bombs actually capable of doing lots of damage? Or was it incompetently done?)
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I do not think intent is likely. At the end of the day, the FBI is still full of cops, not woke anarchists. Who cares about how many non-MAGA bombers are at large in DC, the Democrats being able to vaguely blame Trump for them is worth much more than the credit any of us might get for catching them was likely not a common sentiment in the FBI, ever.
The performance of the Secret Service protecting the US president is something which is hard to judge. I mean, they failed with Kennedy, obviously. But it is hard to measure performance from these rare events. Could be that a rock saying "nobody is gonna shoot the president" would perform equally well, or that they are ten times as effective as thwarting sniper attempts as the Swiss Guard is, or that any local SWAT team could do their job at the same performance level.
If Trump is unhappy with how they do their job, I think he has a lot of leeway as the head of the executive. If he wants to be protected by some MAGA militia cosplayers instead, or by navy SEALs, or by Syrian mercenaries, or by new ICE hires, he most certainly has the funding and the authority to make that happen.
That may be true of the rank and file, but the leadership are all political animals, through and through.
Cop or not, would you be willing to detonate your career if the leadership made it clear that the case was a career dead end?
If I want to engage in a little conspiracy theorizing, as a treat, then I like this one: the agent put in charge of the investigation was terrified that it really was a spook or spook-adjacent individual who planted the pipe bombs. What would the fallout be if they went 110% on solving the crimes and found out something like that? And the information became public? At a bare minimum, every prosecution of Jan. 6 individuals falls apart. At the maximum... the sky's the limit.
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