I Still Want To Talk About The Interesting Stuff

So the Democrats caved last evening, and there's a leadership crisis in the party. I was on this Thursday and Saturday. It happened, as I discussed then, because they allowed Trump to back them into a structured choice in which the alternatives to caving would be seeing the filibuster nuked or abandoning their key constituencies of federal workers and welfare recipients.

Trump knew this would happen when he flew Air Force One on a victory flight over the Lions-Commanders game yesterday afternoon, even befiore they caved. Nothing new here.

What I do think is a more interesting topic is the alleged January 6 pipe bomber. As a good contrarian, I note that this topic, which even many alt sites wouldn't touch when the story broke, has now completely disappeared from any news at all. That means it's got to be worth pursuing.

On November 1, I posted about the two prevailing theories of the case, that the individual in loose clothes, a hoodie, and face mask seen in surveillance video placed the bombs during the evening of January 5, or that a woman who lived nearby, Karin Younger, may have placed the bombs not long before she reported them on the morning of January 6. Both theories involve a woman, one Ms Younger, the other the widespread speculation that the person in the mask and hoodie, 5'7" tall, walked like a woman. The revelations this past weekend add support to this second theory.

More productive, though, is that the individual in the mask and hoodie in the videos, irrespective of gender or even name, comes off as an amateur. The hokey disguise is amateurish enough, but he or she wanders for blocks around the target areas, hesitates, and wanders around some more. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What is the sequence of actions the figure in the mask and hoodie makes while wandering around Capitol Hill the evening of January 5, 2021?" It answered,

• Circa 7:30 p.m. EST: The suspect was first seen on security cameras carrying a backpack near the intersection of 1st Street S.E. and North Carolina Avenue S.E..
• Between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. EST: The individual walked to the DNC building on South Capitol Street S.E..
• Circa 7:54 p.m. EST: After walking off and then backtracking to a bench, the suspect sat down and placed the first pipe bomb underneath a bench outside the DNC headquarters.
• Circa 8:00 p.m. EST: The individual left the DNC area and proceeded toward the RNC office. The suspect was briefly lost on camera during this time.
• Circa 8:16 p.m. EST: The suspect arrived in an alley behind the RNC building and placed the second pipe bomb. The placement of this bomb was not directly caught on camera.
• Circa 8:18 p.m. EST: The figure was last seen on camera heading east on Rumsey Court S.E..

So it took the person almost half an hour to wander around the scene before placing the bomb at the DNC headquarters, all the time dressed in a highly distinctive outfit and apparently unaware that cameras were everywhere. Then the person took another 16 minutes to travel what, according to Chrome AI mode, is approximately 0.17 miles (around 900 feet), which is a short three to four-minute walk. Then, after apparently planting the RNC bomb, the person quickly skedaddled.

Whatever this was, it wasn't a professional operation. Since Chrome AI mode has been hitting quite well today, I asked it, "How would professional, experienced operatives have planted the January 6 pipe bombs?" It answered, in part,

• Minimizing Identifiers: A professional operative would have worn completely generic and disposable clothing to avoid leaving behind forensic evidence or a discernible trail based on unique items like specific models of sneakers.
• Optimal Timing and Discretion: Operatives would choose a time with minimal foot or vehicle traffic to reduce the chance of witnesses or appearing on CCTV, or would use methods to disable surveillance systems beforehand. The time the DNC and RNC bombs were planted (between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. the night before) still involved some public visibility.
• Operational Planning and Reconnaissance: Professionals would conduct extensive reconnaissance to identify surveillance blind spots and escape routes, ensuring the devices were placed in locations that were highly likely to cause casualties or significant disruption if detonated, rather than in easily discoverable, accessible spots like behind bushes where they were found.
• . . . Evasion of Digital Forensics: Operatives would employ rigorous counter-surveillance tactics, use burner phones (or leave personal phones elsewhere to avoid geofencing data), and avoid using any personal vehicles or equipment that could be tracked or linked to their identity.
• Secure Communications and Logistics: The entire operation, from acquiring materials (which would likely be from hard-to-trace sources) to planning the placement, would involve secure communication channels and logistics, leaving no digital or paper trail that law enforcement could exploit.

It concludes,

The fact the suspect remains unidentified after more than four years suggests some level of careful execution, but the relative simplicity of the devices and their failure to detonate are often cited in expert discussions as potential indicators of an amateur or an operation that prioritized placing the devices quickly over ensuring their functionality or maximizing their impact.

Except the devices were planted anything but quickly! The person dithered for nearly an hour, followed on video, doing something that should have taken at most ten minutes! The story as it's begun to emerge after the Blaze Media version was released is that the person (assuming it's Ms Kerkhoff) seems to have worked with her next-door neighbor both to use a Washington Metro card that was tied to the neighbor, and apparently later to be picked up in the neighbor's Subaru on the way home.

Clearly neither was following professional tradecraft, and via former FBI Agent Kyle Seraphin, the neighbor had already been traced via the Metro card the suspect had used to travel to the site -- but then the FBI dropped the case, which probably, given the amateurishness involved, should have been easily solved.

Certainly both individuals, Ms Kerkhoff as either a police officer or a CIA security guard, and her neighbor, said to be a civilian Air Force employee, could at minimum be removed from their jobs via ordinary due process, given the evidence.

So what's happening now? I would assume that at minimum, the FBI would need to interview Ms Kerkhoff, if for no other reason than to rule her out as a suspect. But as I surmised yesterday, the Blaze writers had almost certainly already been tipped off to Ms Kerkhoff by a source within the FBI. But so far, Director Patel and Attorney General Bondi are silent. The five-year statute of limitations for prosecuting the wannabe bomber or bombers has yet to run out, on January 6, 2026. I asked Chrome AI mode, "What is the federal penalty for planting a pipe bomb, even if it doesn't explode?" It answered,

Planting a pipe bomb, even if it does not detonate, is a serious federal offense that can lead to imprisonment for a term of years or life, or even the death penalty, depending on the specific charges and the intent and circumstances of the act. The act can be prosecuted under various statutes, including those related to the use of a weapon of mass destruction or attempted malicious destruction by explosive, which carry severe penalties.

I've got to assume something is in the works, although the most obvious suspects, highly trained deep state operatives, probably aren't involved, due to the incredible amateurishness of the whole operation.