Brian Cole, Jr. worked for a bail bonds company run by his father that worked to free illegal immigrants from ICE facilities and sued the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security.
Weeks before 30-year-old Cole Jr. allegedly planted pipe bombs at the headquarters of the Democrat and Republican parties on January 6, 2021, a court ruled against the company it its lawsuit attacking the Trump administration on immigration issues, The Daily Wire has learned. An FBI affidavit in the case notes that the suspect works for a bail bond company and lives with his mother.
Later in 2021, the company held a press conference bemoaning anti-black racism with a left-wing attorney. Cole Sr. and Benjamin Crump, who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, attempted to sic the Biden Department of Justice on a local Tennessee prosecutor who had raised questions about the bail bond company.
“A high-profile civil rights attorney is calling for a federal investigation into a Rutherford County prosecutor accused of discrimination,” Nashville news outlet WPLN reported on November 16, 2021.
Cole Sr., who is black, claimed racial persecution by Rutherford County Assistant District Attorney John Zimmerman, video shows. Zimmerman had raised concerns about the bail bond company’s ethics, noting that it had been suspended from operating in a nearby district.
Standing alongside Crump, he said to the media: “He’s defamed me, called my insurance company. We hope the Department of Justice can come in and do a brief investigation because we’ve seen a lot of questionable acts that Mr. Zimmerman has demonstrated towards minority companies.”
Crump said “It is appalling and we want these allegations investigated to the highest level of government … They called him a punk and a thug, what is it about him? A lot of people believe they know the answer.”
In April 2025, a Tennessee appeals court found that sanctions against the company were called for due to repeated misconduct. The elder Cole lied about having never filed for bankruptcy or having other financial problems, when he in fact had filed bankruptcy twice and had tax liens against him, a Tennessee court of appeals affirmed.
Cole Jr. and his father worked as bail bondsmen under various company names, including Free U Bonds, initially in Fairfax County, Virginia. Public records suggest that the father moved to Knoxville, Tennessee around 2017.
One of those corporate names was StateWide Bonding, Inc. Immigration Bonds, which helps illegal immigrants avoid jail.
“An Immigration Bond will secure the release of an undocumented alien from an immigration facility with the guarantee the conditions of the Immigration Bond requirements are met,” its webpage says.
Brian Cole is listed as StateWide Bonding’s owner in a dispute over bonds for illegal immigrants in the state of Colorado.
StateWide sued the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security over its policies relating to illegal immigrants. Weeks before Cole allegedly planted the pipe bombs, on November 10, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. sided with the administration on the case, ruling that the lower court had properly thrown out all of StateWide’s claims.
One of several lawsuits complained that StateWide was being harmed unfairly when its illegal immigrant clients failed to appear at court dates. “Statewide have secured the bond for thousands of immigrants… If an immigrant does not appear, that failure to appear is considered a breach of bond… When a bond is breached, at that point, all Plaintiffs are subjected to a steep financial penalty,” it said.
“Hundreds of Plaintiffs’ clients fail to appear because Defendants fail to (1) provide said person with a specified date, time, and location to appear in court,” it continued. “Then, only after the subject immigrant fails to appear, these Defendants expect Plaintiffs to find the person in less than 10 days (many times less than 48 hours), or suffer the penalty of paying the sum total of millions of dollars.”
The January 6 pipe bombs were used by Democrats and the media to portray Trump supporters as violent, though during the Biden administration, the FBI claimed it was unable to locate a suspect, and Kamala Harris — who was 20 feet from the bomb at the DNC — never mentioned it.
Charging papers say Cole Jr. began purchasing bomb-making parts by May 2019, during the Trump administration and long before any dispute about election results.
They say his cell phone signal showed that he was in the vicinity of the DNC and RNC when the bombs were placed. The Biden administration quickly used similar cell phone data to apprehend hundreds of Trump supports for minor crimes.
Editor’s note: This story was updated shortly after publication to clarify that the company was owned by Cole Sr., while Cole Jr. worked for it.
.png)
.png)
