WASHINGTON – Prior to joining the Trump administration, FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Director Dan Bongino promoted conspiracy theories about the pipe bombs planted in Washington, DC, ahead of the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021, going as far as calling it an “inside job.”

The Department of Justice, which includes the FBI, identified a suspect in the case on Dec. 4 after a nearly five-year investigation.

But years before, both Patel and Bongino repeatedly cast doubt on the investigation into the pipe bombs found outside the facilities, specifically the one found at the Democratic National Committee headquarters because Kamala Harris, who was then-vice president-elect, was at the facility.

Attorney General Pam Bondi, alongside Patel and Bongino, on Dec. 4 identified Brian Cole Jr., 30, of Woodbridge, Virginia, as the suspect in the investigation into the pipe bombs found outside both the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters.

Cole is being charged with use of an explosive device as more search warrants were still being executed on Dec. 4, Bondi said at a press conference.

“You're not going to walk into our Capital city, put down two explosive devices and walk off in the sunset,” Bongino said at the news conference on Dec. 4. “Not going to happen. We were going to track this person to the end of the earth.”

Conspiracy theories surrounding pipe bomb case

Patel and Bongino praised President Donald Trump’s FBI and Justice Department in finding the suspect in the pipe bomb case. But last year, they promoted conspiracy theories about whether the incident actually happened.

In a January 2024 interview with conservative commentator Benny Johnson, Patel called the case “extremely troubling.”

“If the allegations aren't true, or there was some government ruse, or some FBI rogue source or whatever… then there is another corruption scandal in and around an election time narrative that they're advancing,” Patel said.

Bongino claimed the pipe bomb case was a “setup” and an “inside job" in several episodes of his show, The Dan Bongino Show, spanning several years from 2022 to just last year.

“I have zero doubt it was a setup,” Bongino said on his show in January 2024. “Was it government? I don't know. I'm not going to speculate on who did it. Someone who hated Donald Trump planted those bombs there.”

In a September 2024 episode, Bongino claimed a whistleblower told him that a government contractor planted the pipe bombs “to set up a fake assassination plot on Kamala Harris to basically generate sympathy, to shut down people from questioning the vote on January 6.”

"There is a massive cover-up because the person who planted those pipe bombs, they don't want you to know who it was, because it's either a connected anti-Trump insider, or this was an inside job," he said on his show in November 2024.

Patel points fingers in pipe bomb investigation

During a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing in September, Patel, who was now the head of the FBI, defended himself and Bongino as being “private citizens” when those comments were made.

“What we have the ability to do is set aside our personal beliefs to deliver the mission of justice for this country and we're doing it day in and day out,” he said.

Shortly after officials announced the pipe bomb suspect on Dec. 4, Patel quickly appeared on Don Trump Jr.’s podcast Triggered and criticized the Biden administration's FBI for how the case was handled.

“We said, ‘hey, let’s let cops be cops. We got video, let’s enhance it. We have cell phone data that wasn’t triaged properly, let’s triage it. We have the technology and the capability to do it and let’s go back and work with the investigative team and ask them where the pitfalls were,” he said.

“I want to remind everybody, they took four years off,” Patel added. “We put eight months of hard work into this.”

Contributing: Natalie Neysa Alund, Bart Jansen, Sarah D. Wire

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Top Trump FBI officials claimed pipe bombs were an FBI 'inside job'

Reporting by Rebecca Morin, USA TODAY / USA TODAY

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