More Comes Out On The January 6 Pipe Bomb Investigations

Yesterday's post on the FBI and ATF investigations of the January 6 pipe bombs was based primarily on testimony before the House Judiciary Committee from last summer. Since then, new allegations about those investigations have emerged. As of yesterday's post, the official story was that notwithstanding the FBI's huge investigative resources, three years of searching for the bomber have come up empty, while it seems as if the person who discovered the bomb the next day was never seriously considered as a suspect, despite this being a basic investigative principle.

Via the Daily Wire this past Monday:

A former FBI agent said that the Bureau quickly believed that it tied the person who planted pipe bombs at the Democrat National Committee and the Republican National Committee to a particular Metro fare card and license plate, but did not allow him to interview the person of interest and pulled his team off of the lead.

. . . Kyle Seraphin, who led FBI surveillance teams, told The Daily Wire that shortly after January 6, a counterintelligence team met him at a firehouse in Falls Church, Virginia to brief him on his next surveillance target: They had used security footage to follow the person into a Metro station after he planted the bombs, and identified the fare card that was used.

That fare card then allowed them to determine that the person got off at a Metro stop in Northern Virginia, where surveillance footage showed the person entering a car. Both the car and the fare card were in the name of the same person — a retired Air Force chief master sergeant who was now working as a contractor with a security clearance, they said.

Seraphin and his team were assigned to stake out the person’s row house for days, but the FBI blocked his request to interview the person, he said. Then they were called off the target completely and told to pore through low-priority leads about minor January 6 participants, he said.

This information was initially published in May 2023:

The Washington Times first reported the allegation in May 2023. The article, which was paywalled, did not get widespread attention, yet when the House Judiciary Committee interviewed Steve D’Antuono, the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, it seemed to be on his mind.

“People like Kyle Seraphin and others that are not a case agent, have no knowledge of the case, have no knowledge of what happened in the case, he also made another accusation too that there was an individual with a Metro card. My understanding is all that was chased down. There was a lead that was chased down, but he says that we didn’t chase it down,” D’Antuono said.

His comment seemed to confirm that the Metro card lead did exist, and he did not explain how or why it ultimately resulted in nothing.

Yesterday, more information also came out about the person who found the pipe bombs:

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) on Tuesday confirmed the person who found the January 6 pipebombs is a current US Capitol Police Officer.

Earlier this month new explosive J6 footage was released. It turns out that a plainclothes police officer found the DNC pipebombs at 1:05 pm on January 6.

Darren Beattie said according to sources who have seen the extended video, bomb robots showed up several minutes later and dismantled and diffused [sic] the pipe bomb.

Although former FBI Washington Field Office head D'Antuono discounted Kyle Seraphin's knowledge of the case, Seraphin did raise a key question in the first link above:

"The bureau is far too competent to fail this,” he said. “When they had the World Trade Center bombing in ‘93 they went under four stories of rubble and were able to find a partial VIN number that they used to track it down to the people responsible. And you’re telling me you had a pristine, non-detonated bomb and they couldn’t find anything on it?”

As a true crime fan, I've got to say this would appear to be another case of Investigations 101 -- you look at product information from the off-the-shelf components of the bomb, manufacturer, SKUs, batch numbers, and so forth, that you trace back to the store that sold them on a particular date and location. Then you look at surveillance video of the sale. The kitchen timer, apparently a common item, would be one line of inquiry, but electrical components, the pipe, and even the explosive would be another -- and since the bomb didn't detonate, all these items would be intact and available.

It appears that the Republicans are on the case, and more will inevitably come out. I'm still intrigued at the strange echoes of the Richard Jewell case -- there, the FBI focused on Jewell as the suspect, because he found the bomb. Now I note that the DNC bomb was planted under a park bench, which is where Jewell found the Atlanta bomb. It's almost as though someone in the FBI cooked up a scenario for a phony bombing based on the easiest example he could think of.