The man who owned the Metro card that law enforcement believed was linked to a person of interest in the January 6 pipe bomb case spoke with The Daily Wire on Tuesday, saying it was not his neighbor who used the transit card but in fact a friend of his.
The man, an Air Force veteran who requested anonymity to avoid his name being linked to a serious crime, lived next door to a Capitol Police officer named in a story by The Blaze on Saturday. The report said computerized “gait analysis” suggested that the person who planted pipe bombs at the Democratic and Republican National Committees on January 5 moved with the same mannerisms as a particular female Capitol Police officer who later shot nonlethal rounds at protesters.
The theory gained secondary support from the fact that she lived next to someone who had already separately landed on law enforcement’s radar in the case – something that seemed like a mathematically improbable coincidence.
The Daily Wire confirmed that law enforcement suspected a particular Falls Church, Virginia man’s Metro card of being linked to the case, and also that the Capitol Police officer was in fact his neighbor, literally sharing a wall with him.
We went to the address and interviewed the man, who said it was his understanding that the neighboring unit was in fact occupied by two Capitol Police officers — the female officer told him her romantic partner was on the force, too.
But he does not believe his Metro card was used by the police officer on January 5: He told The Daily Wire it was used by a childhood friend who traveled from the south to attend Trump’s rally, and stayed with him to save money. The Air Force vet let him borrow his card and picked him up from the Metro station in Virginia after the rally, he said. Both men are Trump supporters, he said.
About a week later in 2021, he got a call from law enforcement — he believes it was Metro transit police – asking who used the card. Former FBI employee Kyle Seraphin told The Daily Wire two years ago that he was assigned to stake out the address because the FBI believed a person of interest in the bomb case swiped through the subway gates using a card owned by the man.
The Air Force veteran, a tall black man, immediately gave the police the name of his friend, who is a white man about 5 foot 10 or 5 foot 11, he told The Daily Wire.
“Other than that call from the Transit Police, that’s all I ever heard about it,” he said.
The Air Force vet said he went to school with the man decades ago but had not remained in touch until reconnecting over social media. The vet is 66 years old, making the friend about the same age. He said the friend spent large portions of each year in foreign countries spreading Christianity. He would “probably be the last person on God’s green earth that would be involved in doing anything like that,” the vet said.
After receiving the call from the police, the flummoxed vet called his friend to tell him what had happened. “I said, ‘Do you have a secret life that I don’t know about?’ and he said no,” he said.
By that time, law enforcement had already made contact with his friend as well. “When I told him about it, he told me he did have a conversation with those folks,” he said. The police seemingly ruled him out as a suspect.
The Air Force vet declined to name the southern evangelical to The Daily Wire, but said he had provided the name to police, and would fully cooperate with any law enforcement or court inquiry.
He said the friend came back to town for Donald Trump’s second inauguration, where he annoyed the vet by insisting on wearing a Trump hat in deep-blue areas, causing drama. “I felt like, oh my God. How did I get myself involved in this?” he said.
After that, the veteran blocked his old friend on his phone, he said.
The development does not rule out that the police officer identified by The Blaze could be the pipe bomber; however, the theory would now rest solely on the “gait analysis,” or that some other factor is at play.
The female police officer has since moved, and no one answered the door at her new house when The Daily Wire knocked on Tuesday. The Air Force veteran said a Blaze reporter had come to his door a few days ago, but he had declined to speak with him because he was caught off guard by the unexpected visitor.
A January 2025 congressional report on the January 6 pipe bomb investigation, compiled by staff for Reps. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA) and Thomas Massie (R-KY), describe a lead on someone who seemed to be photographing locations where bombs were later placed:
According to the FBI, after taking pictures of the dumpster, [Person of Interest 2] walked around the Capitol Complex, met with two [unidentified subjects], returned to the same alleyway behind the RNC, then entered the Capitol South Metro Station, and rode the metro to Falls Church, Virginia. Notably, agents assigned to the case team determined that POI2 used an Uber account and Metro SmartTrip card registered to a separate individual (‘POI3’) who lived in Falls Church, Virginia. According to internal emails obtained by the Subcommittee, the FBI’s case team considered POI2’s movements to be ‘highly suspicious’ and considered POI2 as a “possible accomplice” to the pipe bomber.
In the weeks following January 6, the FBI directed significant resources towards investigating POI2 and POI3. For example, the FBI placed both POI2 and POI3 under “FISUR” or “physical surveillance” by the FBI’s Washington Field Office’s (“WFO”) Special Operations Group (“SOG”). The FBI also obtained grand jury subpoenas for the cell phone data associated with POI2’s and POI3’s phone numbers and issued preservation requests for their [redacted] and accounts. With help from US [Capitol Police], the FBI also tracked the movements of the two “[unidentified subjects]” POI2 met while walking around the Capitol Complex on January 5. On January 19, 2021, FBI agents interviewed POI2 and ultimately eliminated that individual as a person of interest. According to a summary of the interview obtained by the Subcommittee, the FBI learned that POI2 traveled to Washington, D.C. to attend First Amendment activities on Capitol Hill on January 5 and that throughout the day, POI2 photographed “objects bearing numerals” including doors, dumpsters, and other objects and intended to use these photographs in a book he was writing. The FBI’s review of POI2’s cell phone and photographs appear to corroborate his story; however, the interview summary does not elaborate further on how the case team verified POI2’s story. Following the interview with POI2, the FBI ruled out both POI2 and POI3 as possible persons of interest.”
The FBI claims it has been unable to identify who set pipe bombs at party headquarters, despite using elaborate and high-tech measures to identify hundreds of January 6 protesters for minor crimes like trespassing. There are significant questions about those bombs and the reaction to them, including by police and Kamala Harris, who was at the DNC while the pipe bomb was there, but never mentioned that fact.
Related: The FBI Said There Were ‘Pipe Bombs’ On January 6. Evidence Points To A Coverup, Congressman Says
Surveillance footage shows that after the suspect placed the pipe bombs on January 5, he or she waved to a police officer. / FBI
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