More than a year before federal authorities took Brian J. Cole Jr. into custody and accused him of planting pipe bombs outside political headquarters in Washington, D.C., a Virginia police officer was writing him a citation for a minor traffic crash.

Scripps News obtained body camera footage from that April 2024 incident. It offers one of the first glimpses of Cole on camera, showing him talking to police after his vehicle collided with a pick-up truck driven by an 84-year-old man.

The video indicated no one was injured in the minor crash, but Cole received a citation for following too close behind the other vehicle, according to a court record related to the case.

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