The Boys At The Bureau Got The Bomber | Episode 182

0:00hey everybody welcome to vince great to have you with us on a Friday holy crap we caught the bomber i love it i love it you know i told you dan bongino he goes off to the fbi we're like you know what i think it's gonna be pretty good i think it's gonna be a good run i can't believe he's doing this but there he goes and he'll have to have something to show for it man he's got something to show for it happy birthday to dan bongino we got a big show yesterday as all that news was breaking and now we know a whole lot more about how the fbi tracked this guy down the other big piece of this is why didn't the fbi catch this guy before we're getting all of this today on this edition of vince a celebratory but concerned edition of vince good to have you with us as always the best audience anywhere good morning to the live audience and hello to the podcast audience uh you guys are the best hey every so often something happens that does remind us of just how fragile our freedoms are can't afford to take your rights for granted you really can't.

1:01We have to draw a line in the sand. Our friends at Patriot Mobile have been doing this for more now than 12 years. And the truth is, there's really only one provider that boldly stands in the gap for Americans who believe that freedom is worth fighting for. That's Patriot Mobile. Not only are they leading in the patriotic economy, they're also outpacing the competition in terms of technology. Patriot Mobile, as so many of you already know, is one of the only carriers offering premium access on all three major u.s networks giving you the same or better premium coverage as the main carriers they also offer unlimited data plans mobile hotspots international roaming and more their tech is primo you're gonna love it switching easier than ever you can activate in minutes from your home or your office no stupid cell phone store keep your number keep your phone or even upgrade take a stand today go to patriot mobile.com slash vince or call 972 patriot use the promo code vince and get a free month of service how about that that's patriot mobile.com slash vince or call 972 patriot make that switch today

2:17well we got him we got him they caught this dude the uh the pipe bomber the suspected pipe bomber guy called brian cole caught in woodbridge virginia yesterday morning just ahead of our live broadcast uh his name wasn't even out as we began the show yesterday but we know a lot more about him as of today with a lot more biographical information to come, including his fundamental motivations. More on that in a moment. But first, here's the Attorney General of the United States yesterday announcing the good news from the Justice Department. Early this morning, Brian Cole Jr. was arrested and charged with placing the pipe bombs at the RNC and the DNC on January 5th, 2021.

3:06He has been charged with violating 18 U.S.C. 844, which is use of an explosive device. This investigation is ongoing. As we speak, search warrants are being executed, and there could be more charges to come. I'm going to let our U.S. attorney discuss that shortly. This was the work of multiple agencies working together. This morning's operation was carried out safely and successfully. Safely and successfully. So as she was talking yesterday, this was in the two o 'clock hour Eastern time yesterday afternoon. They had to wait for the president to finish another peace deal that he had worked out.

3:49And as soon as his peace deal conference was over, they start talking about, hey, we caught this pipe bomber today and we're in the midst of investigative action right now. That's because the FBI was continuing to search the home, the car, everything of this guy, Brian Cole Jr. They had taken him into custody. They interviewed him yesterday. There's a lot of activity going on. Police helicopters circling above Woodbridge, Virginia, the whole road lockdown. They finally catch this guy after nearly five years of hunting for him, or at least a couple months of hunting for him. We'll get to what the old FBI was doing in a moment.

4:24And Pam Bondi said, this is not based on any new information. remember when the FBI put out a request for assistance in October when they said, hey, if you got any more information, let us know. Get to us. We got a$500 ,000 reward. Here's this high-quality video footage. We want help. We need some help to put the final pieces together here. And Pam Bondi says the truth is nobody came forward. Or if they did, nothing of value. This was based on no new tips. This was based on no new witnesses. It was just based on the stuff they already had at the FBI. Cut to take a look at the attorney general here for long years.

5:04Let me be clear. There was no new tip. There was no new witness. Just good, diligent police work and prosecutorial work, working as a team, along with ATF, Capitol Police, Metropolitan Police Department. And of course, the FBI. We are working every day to restore the public's trust. We hope that today is a significant step towards that progress. We'll share more information when we can and when it unfolds. I cannot stress enough how hard Director Patel and Deputy Director Bongino have worked for months to make our nation's capital safer and to make our country safer. Man, what a great day. It's funny, you watch these guys and they all look like they had a deep sense of well-deserved satisfaction, relief, joy, that they could finally bring this coveted capture to public attention.

6:08And I know there's been so much concern and back and forth and chatter and allegations and guesses, and that person did it, that person did it. And so just imagine being the guys like Cash and Dan who are fully dedicated. I don't know who the hell is still questioning these guys who are fully dedicated to the mission of bringing justice, accountability, going after the bad guys, capturing them and making our country safer. Duh. These guys have to keep toiling away, toiling away, toiling away. And then hearing all the horseshit that's constantly directed at them and trying as best they can to keep their heads down and just do the job until they can actually demonstrate results.

6:49right what is what did dan say forever is like you don't got to trust me just watch you don't have to trust me i got to prove it through my actions well the action is they take this guy into custody yesterday and here's cash talking a little bit more about how they basically just shifted through the available data that the fbi had for going on five years in order to establish whoa found our guy we know exactly who it is here's cut three the fbi director watch the The Attorney General said we did not discover any new information. What we did, an investigation spearheaded by the Deputy Director and the ADEC of our Washington Field Office, brought in a new team of investigators and experts, re-examined every piece of evidence, sifted through all the data, something that the prior administration refused and failed to do.

7:35As a result of that, we generated numerous investigative leads, executed multiple legal process with their U.S. attorney partners, and came to this conclusion today. And that is why we were able to safely secure this individual into custody. Yeah, so they just had the data already. They had all this stuff. I'll get to that data in a moment because since the press conference yesterday, we get an affidavit, basically a government document, containing all the ways they tracked this guy down. And then you read through this and you're like, holy crap, they had this guy dead to rights. And you also wonder, wait a second, They had this guy dead to rights for a long time.

8:12This data has been sitting at the FBI forever. How is it that it took this team, it took Cash and Dan and the guys who are at the FBI now to finally settle this thing up? We'll get to that in a moment and the implications for the future too. But as you heard Cash say, and you don't even need to hear Cash say this. You know that, well, first of all, this audience in a big way knows this. This thing's Dan's baby. it is very unusual for the deputy director of the fbi to be involved in an investigative announcement at the united states department of justice why would you include the deputy director it almost never happens despite their role in in getting to the bottom of any particular case you don't really hear from the deputy director there's a reason we haven't really heard from dan bongino at a lot of these statements and various press events over the course of the last year because by and large the tradition is you just have the principal do it you have the guy who's at the very top of the food chain do it in this case that would be cash patel or the attorney general of the united states or perhaps a u.s attorney whose jurisdiction is responsible for the prosecution you don't usually bring anybody lower down the totem pole up to the microphone to talk even if they do a lot of work but there have been a couple of events this year that Dan was very heavily involved in where his participation has been very highlighted.

9:33One of them was Operation Summer Heat. That was the effort to take all these violent criminals off the streets of America's cities. And Kash Patel just went out of his way to say, guys, look, everyone talks about the FBI. That's great. It is a team effort. But I got to tell you, this thing was the brainchild of Dan Bongino. He was able to bring down violent crime across the country by how hard he was working with all of our various field offices. do that uh and he deserves credit for that wonderful news great great to hear but then yesterday the attorney general of the united states who you'll remember earlier this year there were all these reports that dan and and bondi were butting heads well whatever that was that that at least seems to be water under the bridge because yesterday pam bondi and cash patel said dan get up here and talk to us a bit about what just went down and your role in it and here is our buddy Dan Bongino, Watch Cup 4.

10:28Folks, this is what it's like when you work for a president who tells you to go get the bad guys and stop focusing on other extraneous things not related to law enforcement. This is what happens. We had a great team. I know it's said a lot in this business. It was a team effort. It becomes cliche, but cliches are useful for a reason because they matter, and this was a team effort. The director and the attorney general emphasized that it was not a new public tip this came from. This was our internal work at the FBI, And I want to just really express my sincere gratitude to this attorney general and this president for allowing us the latitude.

11:04I spoke with Ms. Bondi very early when we maybe day two. And I said, we're going to get this guy. And she said, yes, you are. And we did. I want to also thank he's not here, but Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who we deal with often as well, who could not have been more supportive. whatever process we need, Judge Jeanine, Todd, and Attorney General Bondi, they were there. All you had to do, they were a phone call away. And their team was amazing. We actually never had to make that phone call because they were always responsive. Thank you, Judge, as well. You were amazing. Folks, you're not going to walk into our capital city, put down two explosive devices, and walk off in the sunset.

11:46Not going to happen. We were going to track this person to the end of the earth. There was no way he was getting away. Well, we didn't have to track him to the end of the earth. It wound up in Woodbridge, Virginia. I want to thank the team. They were amazing. They never let this go. Again, Attorney General Bondi, for your incredible support. Director Patel, Judge. I know they're giving me a lot of unnecessary credit, but make no mistake, They were intimately involved in this and were there for all of those supportive mechanisms. And I deeply appreciate it. A lot of props in the chat for Dan. A lot of birthday wishes for the guy.

12:23It was his birthday yesterday. So that was pretty cool that they could catch this dude on his birthday. But I do see, I want to point to at least one message. I've seen a couple of like this, so I just want to address it fundamentally. There's a guy called Count Gout. He's got gout or something. who's in our chat who said, Vince, don't you mean it looks like they caught a theatrical cast member, a made-up bomber? What a joke. No, the joke is you, Count Gow. You're the joke. You're the idiot here. You're the rube. Because think about what's going on. Let me just point out the obvious. You think Dan Bongino is orchestrating a cover-up?

12:58Like, come on. Really? You think he's going to show up to a microphone and be like, yeah, we caught the guy in order to pull a fast one on you that he's like some deep state op come on the whole thing is so stupid how hard did you hit your head before you came up with this assessment and you're not the only one i'm just picking on you because you're in the chat showing up and running your mouth but count gout says that it's not the only one i'm seeing this all over the place and i'm convinced these are like bots these people are psychopaths at some point if you don't trust anybody you're done with everything if you don't trust anybody you're just done with everything you've got you're leading a sad life at this point.

13:35Is it true that Dan and Cash have inherited a shitty reputation at the FBI where we've instinctively developed a reaction to the things that come out of the government? We say, we don't trust this agency. Yes. That's the reason Cash and Dan were chosen to go into that job in the first place. Because it was an agency with such a shitty reputation, you had to send people in with a good reputation for criticizing and detecting the problems. So they go in, they keep their heads down, they do their work, and they demonstrate results. So when they give you results, and you tell them to fuck off? No, you're the idiot.

14:08They're the guys who went in there, they put their asses on the line, they actually produce results for you. And now you should demonstrate, I think, a little bit of gratitude, instead of this ridiculous attitude that is based on literally nothing. So good for these guys, they deserve a victory lap. They deserve to come out and say, look, we finally did this thing. It's great. So not only is this Bongino's baby, which he deserves a lot of credit for, you know, he was doing an interview last night with. With Sean Hannity, and he was recalling what it was like just arriving at the FBI, like the world that he was arriving into.

14:49And here's what he had to say on that subject. watch first meeting my first meeting i i swore in and i kid you not probably 15 minutes later and the people who are in the meeting know um i said when i get in there i want a full brief on this pipe bomber case on day one and i looked at the case agent after getting a full brief on what they'd done and they had done some uh a pretty extensive amount of work they had chased down i think thousands of leads six thousand plus interviews have been conducted hundreds of tips and it still was relatively stale, the case. And I grabbed the case agent on the way out and I said, you're going to get me this guy.

15:27You're going to track this guy down and you're going to find him. You're going to get me this guy. I want him. And that started what's been almost a nine-month operation right now to make sure that we could get full accountability and transparency to the American public and find this guy. And today we did. yeah good for him you know we had um ed martin on early this year remember him he's the weaponizations are the guy who handles pardons in the justice department for the trump administration and he was one of the first guys you told us as we we sat him down on our set he starts talking about he's like vince he goes the whole thing this is like dan's whole like mo he gets in there The pipe bomber is like story number one every single day.

16:15The guy's like waking up each morning trying to get updates on the pipe bomber. What's going on with the pipe bomber case? Who's working on the pipe bomber case? Every single freaking day they're doing this. And so they were letting it fall by the wayside? Hell no. The whole thing was about solving it. And in fact, you know, getting this guy, the left never thought it would happen. They never thought it would happen. They're pissed off that it happened. The Virginia Senator Mark Warner, awful human being, he got on television yesterday. He was annoyed by the celebratory nature of the Justice Department's announcement yesterday.

16:50Watch Mark Warner, cut six, watch the Democrats upset that we caught the pipe bomber. Look, I got to tell you, it kind of makes me looking at this crowd doing a victory lap when all the senior FBI officials across all key divisions have been fired for political purposes, when in some field offices up to 45 percent of the FBI officers who are doing things like counter-espionage and cyber have been assigned to do immigration cases, it's a little rich that they're saying America is safer. How much earlier could we have caught this guy if resources hadn't been diverted. And I hope it would also remind folks that on January 6th, I was here at the Capitol on January 6th.

17:36It was an ugly, awful day. And this administration and this president basically pardoned all the perpetrators. You know, it's that kind of picking and choosing of facts from this crowd that makes me a little bit crazy. so so that dork just inverted literally everything but he's revealing something he's he's tapping into something super important you hear what he said he's like these guys have fired all sorts of fbi people true they have fired fbi people they're getting rid of the political operatives now he inverted this thing he was like oh they're turning into something political no they're depoliticizing the fbi they're turning it into a functional agency that actually goes after they're criminals and finds even guys in cold cases.

18:20And why was this case cold, by the way? We'll get to that. They go after guys in cold cases, catch pipe bombers. That's because they're actually doing investigative work. As Kash Patel keeps saying, let good cops be good cops. That's what they're doing with the FBI. It's fundamentally working. And then he said, did you hear what he said? He's like, they're taking FBI guys off of national security cases and then putting them on things like immigration. It is true. The FBI is very focused on our border mission right now. That's because the president is very focused on our border mission right now.

18:49He said, hey, guys, FBI, I need your help do this. It's been a massive success. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has intervened in helping with the border mission. And as a result, we've been able to hustle nearly three million people out of the country, whether it's through self-deportation or physical deportation from our country. These are massive numbers, way more to go. You and I are demanding more, more, more, obviously. And the border is sealed up. And they're getting violent criminals off the streets. And they're bringing crime down the record lows. And they're dropping the homicide rates.

19:20This is all phenomenal news, actually. And Mark Warner's upset about it because he's a merchant of chaos. That's what he'd prefer. He doesn't like that things are settling down, thanks to President Trump and the FBI. But the other thing is, he said they took the FBI guys off of national security missions. You know what a national security mission is in the eyes of the left? And in the eyes of the old FBI run by Christopher Wray? national security mission is crushing grandmothers who go inside the united states capitol building their own capitol building that's a national security priority according to the left destroying thousands of people's lives as a matter of national security that's what he's talking about and so he's upset that they caught the pipe bomber he's upset that this thing is now closer to being solved.

20:07We've got the suspect. Now let's find out more. More ahead on how they caught this guy and the lingering questions that Dan and Cash are promising answers are coming for. All ahead on this edition of Vince. Great to have you with us. All right. We've got great sponsors on this program. Beam's Cyber Sale is continuing. Beam. I love Beam. Still live for you right now. It's their best offer of the year, but only until the end of the week, candidly, which is just about here right now you get up to 50 off with my code vince show you can grab dream for just about a dollar a night dream is made with clean science-backed ingredients like reishi magnesium altheanine apigenin melatonin it's awesome it's formulated to help you fall asleep fast stay asleep and wake up refreshed no grogginess no crash just deep restorative rest here's the best part it actually tastes amazing it's amazing it's really really good and you drink it end of the day just before you go to bed it's a great way to wind down and then you'll sleep like a baby i've been using dream for a while now i can honestly say i feel sharper calmer more focused so if you've been waiting for the right time to try dream this is it go to shopbeam.com vince show use the code vince show get up to 50 off during beams cyber sale but here's the catch Dream is only available at this price until it sells out.

21:30So seriously, think about it. How much you want to pay for a truly great night of sleep? How about$1.08 per night with Beam's cyber price? So go to shopbeam.com slash vinshow right now. Shopbeam.com slash vinshow. All right. So how'd they catch this guy? How did that happen? Well, I'm glad you asked. We got an affidavit on the subject. government document saying that this was a combo of things uh they had videos first of all as you know they had video surveillance of the guy which uh we like a lot of video surveillance of the guy and they established that the dude is um they said five foot seven was the estimate five foot seven and they ended up clocking this dude in at five foot six he's five foot six uh so and they said that's well within the margin of error for the type of assessment that they were making here.

22:28They reviewed video footage from January 5th of 2021, and they said it showed that the guy was planting pipe bombs at the RNC and the DNC, same individual. And we saw this video footage. He was observed on video surveillance footage at various locations in the surrounding neighborhood between approximately 734 at night and 818 at night. They described what he was wearing. He had the gray sweatshirt and the the dark pants the nike air max speed turf shoes the famous shoes and a face mask that obscured his face the video surveillance photos showed him adjusting eyeglasses at the time that's an important detail here that he was adjusting his eyeglasses and that he was carrying a backpack so they do um this is there's a fancy name for this but they did what they call the reverse projection photogrammetry examination, which is a very fancy way of saying a height analysis.

23:23They did a height analysis of him, and they determined that he's 5 '7", 5 '7", with an error rate of plus or minus 1.1 inches. That's pretty dialed in on the error rate. And then they catch this guy. They say he's 30 years old, Brian J. Cole Jr. He's 5 '6", so it's within the error rate, and he wears corrective eyeglasses. Okay, so those are two data points. He lives in a single family house with his mother and other family members. He works in an office of a bail bondsman in Northern Virginia. They ran down his bank accounts. They got his checking account. They got credit cards. And they were looking through his records dating back to January of 2018.

24:06And what they determined by looking at his purchase records was that he spent a lot of time at a lot of home improvement stores buying the very materials that were found as a part of the pipe bombs. He was at Home Depots all across northern Virginia buying the materials that would eventually be found outside of the RNC and the DNC. So they were able to run down these records. They also found all sorts of bomb-making type equipment that was consistent with what they've, my guess, has surely been finding as they searched the house, whether it's the safety glasses, the wire stripping tool, the wire nuts that they found, sandpaper, a machinist's file, and protective gloves and disinfecting wipes as well.

24:55They said the bomb making was occurring and the purchasing was occurring well before the 2020 election. they said that the the actual construction of this thing the the the uh again the purchasing at home depot um this was happening up back in 2019 so remember just just in terms of whatever context we can establish from all of this president trump is obviously in office in 2019 arrives in 2017 as president of the united states all the way through the beginning of 2021 and so 2019 president trump is definitely the president of the united states and this guy is going to Home Depot's he's going somewhere called micro center he's going to Lowe's he's going to Walmart and he's buying all of the various supplies that are involved in making these bombs the affidavit lays out and um he began building all of this in the fall of 2019 and he's doing this throughout 2020 well before the election so obviously this is happening uh coming into what one would expect to be a Biden presidency, right?

26:09This is January of 2021 that the guy's laying the pipe bombs down, and yet he'd been building them throughout the last year. That's just a piece of data I think that you can sit on and hold on to in the days ahead as you're like, okay, well, it's worth thinking about. It wasn't merely a reaction to the election. It was clearly this guy's, I don't know, he's a bomb obsessive, whatever it is. He's building it well ahead of the election. The affidavit continues and points out that they also had this guy's cell phone records. They were able to. So remember, weren't we told at one point that the cell phone data was corrupted, that they didn't have that the FBI couldn't give us cell phone data?

26:52Well, sure enough, they have cell phone data. since at least as early as january 5th 2021 cole has been the user of a specific telephone number with a cellular phone cole cell phone is how it's referred in the affidavit and here they they basically run through that his cell phone kept popping up next to all of the cell towers that were directed near capitol hill in the locations of the rnc and the dnc So as he was traversing and being captured on video footage near these party headquarters, his cell phone was pinging at the exact moments that he was walking by some of these cameras. So they definitely knew who this guy was.

27:36And let me tell you, somebody who's been I've been in the Washington, D.C. area in and around the city for 15 years now. And with that in mind, that area in the evening by the Capitol building at the RNC and the DNC, it's not a highly trafficked area. There's not a ton of people. There's not a ton of foot traffic going past anything. There's obviously a lot of row homes there, a lot of townhomes that you're walking by. And and and a couple of, you know, basically the party headquarters in various buildings. But it's just a very lightly trafficked area at night at that time. And you can even see it in the video footage.

28:14You watch this guy meandering around past all of these locations. there's really not that many human beings in the shot in other words this if you had cell phone data about a guy who's in the vicinity of these buildings and they were for that exact amount of time you'd be able to stitch this together pretty easily actually relatively additionally they've got video footage of the guy's car they said they've got footage of his car arriving he's the registered owner of a 2017 Nissan Sentra with a Virginia license plate. And on January 5th at approximately 7.10 p.m., his Nissan Sentra was observed driving past a license plate reader at the South Capitol Street exit from Interstate 395 South, I-395 South, which is less than one half mile from the location where the individual placed the devices, was observed on foot near North Carolina and New Jersey avenues.

29:10In other words, and this is, this is all over Washington, DC, major metropolitan areas. They've got license plate readers everywhere. So if you drive into a city, you drive into the nation's capital, your license plate is going to get picked up as you drive past cop cars and various license plate readers that are just rampantly collecting data on the vehicles that drive past them. They caught this guy. They had it. And so if you're like, you know, Now, for anybody out there who's still doing the like, oh, he's a patsy. He's a patsy. The freaking car is registered to him. He was there at that time.

29:44The cell phone pings match up entirely. His biographical details down to the inch match up with the guy they were looking for. So, I mean, come on. So, in other words, they've got this guy dead to rights. When you hear Dan Bongino be like, wait, we've got our guy. They've got their guy. This is the guy. So useful data inside the affidavit as we take a look at exactly what went down here. Now, what else is there to know? A lot. There is a lot to know. I'll get to that. But let me dwell on something else first. This is just the fact that they had all this data. They have all this data. And yet the Biden FBI didn't take this guy into custody?

30:30You're telling me you had cell phone data? They had cell phone data. You had license plate scanner data? They had license plate scanner data. They had this guy on camera. They easily identified his height. They knew that he wearing prescription glasses. They had all of it, and they didn't act on it? Now, what is that? What is that? Let's play the game. Is it moron or is it malice? Moron or malice? You dwell on that for a moment, and I'll give you my answer in just a moment. Hey, this Christmas, as we celebrate the gift of life, as we celebrate the gift of life, we love life, we love Christmas, you have a big opportunity to share that same gift with a mother and her baby.