The Justice Department is doubling down on its prosecution of alleged pipe bomb planter Brian Cole. The DOJ filed a second superseding indictment in the criminal case that claims Cole lodged the explosives at both the Democratic and Republican national committee headquarters in Washington on Jan. 5, 2021 — the day before Donald Trump supporters stormed the Capitol as Congress certified his loss to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
The latest charging document adds allegations that Cole attempted to use weapons of mass destruction and committed terrorism. That brings the total counts he faces to four, on top of the existing counts alleging interstate transportation of explosives and malicious attempt to use explosives. Neither device detonated.
While the case against Cole, who pleaded not guilty, is more than worthy of attention, prosecutors bringing superseding indictments is not unusual in criminal cases.
Yet the latest indictment is worth scrutinizing, especially as it coincides with the DOJ’s jarring move to drop some of the most serious Jan. 6 cases, in which defendants were convicted of seditious conspiracy. Those defendants were some of the few Jan. 6 convicts whom Trump did not immediately pardon, but rather only commuted their sentences to time served, in the blanket clemency and dismissal order that he issued upon returning to office.
As it happens, Cole has a long-shot pending motion arguing that his charges should be dismissed because, he says, they’re covered by Trump’s pardon. The DOJ counters — probably correctly — that it doesn’t apply to Cole, and a judge still has to rule on the motion.
But even if he isn’t saved by the blanket pardon, the DOJ’s bid to tag him with terrorism charges stands out at a time when the department is ditching convictions of adjudicated terrorists, such as Oath Keepers founder and leader Stewart Rhodes. The DOJ said in court filings that full dismissal of the cases against Rhodes and others “is in the interests of justice.” The government elaborated on social media on Wednesday that the move “ends these years-long, Biden-era weaponized prosecutions. President Trump demanded we stop the two-tiered injustice — and we are delivering. No more rigged system.”
Of course, wiping out the most serious convictions of Trump supporters only rigs the system differently, in furtherance of the myth that the president continues to perpetuate that he was wronged by the certification of the 2020 election that he lost.
What to make, then, of the case against Cole, whose alleged conduct teeters on the edge of Jan. 6 and yet the government has not seen it fit to count him among Trump’s chosen? At least, it hasn’t done so yet. If it were to change course for some reason down the line, it would only be the latest turnabout.
That such an occurrence would perhaps be shocking but not singularly defining of Trump’s tenure in office is itself an indictment of that tenure. It underscores that this DOJ’s actions to date make it hard to take its allegations seriously, even ones that seemingly should be taken seriously. That’s the system that this administration has delivered.
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