When a political fever runs hot among government officials, the Bill of Rights is often one of the first casualties. Few fevers have been as hot as the Democrats’ reaction to January 6.
It is no surprise, then, that the investigation by Democrat Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes, like that of the Congressional Select Committee in 2022, obliterated a sacred norm. In this case, the chalk outline is around the Fifth Amendment.
I offer this observation as one who recently was compelled to appear in front of an Arizona state grand jury. The sole purpose is for me to repeat my prior invocation of my 5th Amendment right to remain silent in connection with an investigation into my service as an alternate elector for President Trump in 2020. This follows the shameful spectacle of Congress’ House January 6 Select Committee using footage from its investigatory video depositions to produce a slick TV show in advance of the 2022 elections to publicly shame Republican witnesses who invoked their 5th Amendment rights.
The Bill of Rights were inserted into the Constitution to protect our essential rights, and the Fourteenth Amendment applies them to the states. The Fifth Amendment contains powerful defenses against abuses of power. It includes the right to be indicted by a grand jury for serious crimes instead of at the whim of a prosecutor, prohibits the government from prosecuting someone twice for the same offense, guarantees due process when the government tries to take your life, freedom, or property, and requires the government to pay for any property it takes from you. The Fifth Amendment has one more essential protection: the government cannot force you to testify against yourself.
Importantly, the Supreme Court held in <a href="https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/353/391/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Grunewald v. United States</a> that one of this privilege’s basic functions is to protect innocent men who otherwise might be ensnared by “ambiguous circumstances.” The circumstances involving electors in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 election were indeed “ambiguous.” Alternate electors had been used in Hawaii in 1960, and the votes of John F. Kennedy’s alternates were ultimately validated long after the election. The day after the 2020 election, liberal commentators Van Jones and Larry Lessig <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/11/04/opinions/pennsylvania-take-time-counting-votes-opinion-jones-lessig/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">published</a> their opinion on CNN that Biden too should select alternate electors in Pennsylvania because Trump was leading in that state’s ballot count and the Democrats should contest the election. 
Speaking of ambiguity, exactly what crime Attorney General Mayes is investigating was unclear from the face of the subpoena I received: It provided no notice of the authority of the Attorney General to convene this particular grand jury, no notice of the topic being investigated or the laws allegedly broken, and yet it said that I was a target of the investigation and must testify.
Concern that Mayes is overstepping her authority for political gain is not mere speculation. Before her election in 2022, she campaigned on her certainty — before her investigation — that Arizona’s alternate electors committed a crime. Recently, Mayes <a href="https://dems.ag/democratic-ags-join-msnbc-panel-to-discuss-defending-abortion-rights/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">declared</a> that Democrat attorneys general such as herself “absolutely have to get President Biden re-elected.” With Arizona’s elections only a few months away, consider that Arizona’s investigation is somehow still ongoing nearly three and a half years after the events at issue, that other states and the federal government investigated and made their prosecutorial decisions long ago, and Mayes transparently told the press last year that, with regard to the investigation, “We’re going to make sure that we do it on <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/26/politics/mike-roman-trump-arizona/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">our timetable</a>.”
For these reasons, though I maintain my innocence of any crime, I invoked my 5th Amendment right not to be compelled to testify against myself. Longstanding tradition and practice in both state and federal proceedings provides that once an individual subpoenaed by a grand jury informs the prosecution that the individual intends to assert the Fifth Amendment privilege not to testify, the individual is not compelled to appear before a grand jury for the purpose of invoking the privilege. And yet, I and other Republican witnesses were paraded in front of the grand jury solely to invoke our rights. This has rightly provoked the <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/28/arizona-fake-electors-grand-jury-plead-fifth-00149605" target="_blank" rel="noopener">ridicule</a> of both prosecutors and defense counsel.
There is no substantive evidence in the act of invoking one’s Fifth Amendment rights. To force a witness to do so in front of the grand jury is an improper attempt to bias the grand jury and embarrass the witness. In some jurisdictions like the District of Columbia, a lawyer can be <a href="https://www.dcbar.org/getmedia/674ab822-7f43-4e47-a902-77e27d1d64d3/DC-Code-of-Professional-Responsibility-2021" target="_blank" rel="noopener">disciplined</a> for forcing a witness to appear only to invoke their Fifth Amendment right.
The damage Democrats like Kris Mayes are inflicting on the 5th Amendment, and especially their normalization of its violation for political gain, is shameful and an affront to our Constitution. Repairing this damage must be a priority for Republicans this election year.
* * *
Jake Hoffman is an Arizona state senator in Arizona&#8217;s 15th district. 
NOTE: DC Bar Ethics Opinion 31 is found on page 91 of the linked reference.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

Phoenix Capitol

How Democrats In Arizona Are Damaging The Fifth Amendment

Arizona

Democrats

Fifth Amendment

January 6

Readers Pass

Republicans

Former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a> said on Sunday that former Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and other members of the now-defunct <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/january-6-committee" target="_blank" rel="noopener">January 6 Committee</a> should be jailed.
A House GOP report released last week said Trump&#8217;s driver on January 6, 2021, &#8220;refuted&#8221; a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/testimony-of-cassidy-hutchinson-appears-to-fall-apart-as-new-reports-surface-about-secret-service" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claim</a> relayed by former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson that Trump attempted to grab the steering wheel to redirect the SUV to the U.S. Capitol following his speech, and lunged at his head of security.
Just the News CEO and Editor in Chief John Solomon highlighted on Trump&#8217;s Truth Social platform the particular finding that Cheney, who served as vice chairwoman of the January 6 Committee, <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@jsolomonreports/posts/112079019142185501" target="_blank" rel="noopener">personally took part</a> in an interview with the driver and did not include that denial in the panel&#8217;s final report.
&#8220;She should go to Jail along with the rest of the Unselect Committee!&#8221; Trump <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/112111518330244944" target="_blank" rel="noopener">exclaimed</a> in a post to Truth Social. He went on to share links to several articles concerning the revelations from the House Administration&#8217;s Subcommittee on Oversight, led by Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA).
Cheney, who has <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/liz-cheney-suggests-she-may-enter-2024-presidential-race" target="_blank" rel="noopener">indicated</a> in recent months that she is open to entering the 2024 presidential race to ensure Trump does not win the contest, responded to Trump on X with a screenshot of his post to Truth Social and references to the 2020 election interference cases he faces.
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Hi Donald: you know these are lies. You have had all the grand jury &amp; J6 transcripts for many months. You’re trying to halt your 1/6 trial because your VP, WH counsel, WH aides, campaign &amp; DOJ officials etc will testify against you. You’re afraid of the truth and you should be. <a href="https://t.co/6L3N61OJw1">https://t.co/6L3N61OJw1</a>
&mdash; Liz Cheney (@Liz_Cheney) <a href="https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1769416265007796360?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 17, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;Hi Donald: you know these are lies,&#8221; she <a href="https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1769416265007796360" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. &#8220;You have had all the grand jury &amp; J6 transcripts for many months. You’re trying to halt your 1/6 trial because your VP, WH counsel, WH aides, campaign &amp; DOJ officials etc will testify against you. You’re afraid of the truth and you should be.&#8221;
Trump is facing four criminal cases, including two focused on the January 6 Capitol breach and the 2020 election, as well as civil litigation. He has broadly denied any wrongdoing and argued that politically motivated prosecutors are conducting a “witch hunt” against him.
Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who served as chairman of the January 6 Committee, also pushed back on the findings in the House GOP&#8217;s report.
&#8220;The Select Committee&#8217;s final report took into account the testimony of all witnesses,&#8221; he said in a <a href="https://twitter.com/BennieGThompson/status/1767300191843983406" target="_blank" rel="noopener">statement</a>, adding the claim that all the evidence points to &#8220;the same conclusion: Donald Trump wanted to join his violent mob as it marched on the Capitol, and he was irate when his security detail told him he couldn&#8217;t go.&#8221;
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Kash Patel, a top official in Trump&#8217;s administration, called for &#8220;some serious congressional action&#8221; when pressed on Cheney during an interview on Fox News.
&#8220;Somebody should be subpoenaing her tomorrow to ask her what other information of innocence she withheld, because this was, singularly, the insurrection exoneration of Donald Trump, and Liz Cheney put it in her nuclear football and tried to bury it,&#8221; he told &#8220;Sunday Morning Futures&#8221; anchor Maria Bartiromo.

Liz Chene

Trump Says Liz Cheney Should Be Jailed, Former Congresswoman Responds

Donald Trump

General

January 6 Committee

Liz Cheney

Politics

Former Trump White House aide <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/peter-navarro" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Peter Navarro</a> on Monday was ordered to report to federal prison next week for the four-month-long sentence he was given after he did not show up for a deposition with the January 6 Committee in February 2022.
District Judge Amit Mehta told Navarro, who was convicted last year by a D.C. jury on two counts of contempt of Congress, to report to a prison in Miami on March 19. Navarro had hoped to avoid prison time while his case went through the appeals process. 
The 74-year-old former Trump economic advisor was <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-advisor-will-spend-4-months-in-prison-for-doing-exactly-what-hunter-biden-did" target="_blank" rel="noopener">sentenced</a> and ordered to pay a fine of $9,500  in January after his conviction in September 2023. Navarro has maintained that he did nothing wrong and was not obligated to meet with lawmakers on the January 6 Committee, which was disbanded after Republicans took control of the House in January 2023. 
“Dr. Navarro has now been ordered to report to the custody of the Bureau of Prisons, FCI Miami, on or before 2:00PM EDT on March 19, 2024,” Navarro’s lawyer <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2024/03/11/peter-navarro-prison-march-19-00146225" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a filing on Sunday. “Accordingly, Dr. Navarro respectfully reiterates his request for an administrative stay … Should this Court deny Dr. Navarro’s motion, he respectfully requests an administrative stay so as to permit the Supreme Court review of this Court’s denial.”
Throughout the process, Navarro has maintained that executive privilege should shield him from being forced to meet with the January 6 Committee. His arguments have so far been rejected, with Mehta not allowing him to use executive privilege as his defense during trial. 
“For the first time in history, a senior presidential advisor has been convicted of contempt of Congress after asserting executive privilege over a congressional subpoena,” Navarro&#8217;s lawyer <a href="https://www.theepochtimes.com/us/peter-navarro-ordered-to-report-to-miami-prison-on-march-19-post-5605026?ea_src=frontpage&amp;ea_med=lead-special-courts-medium-0" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a>. “Dr. Navarro has appealed and will raise a number of issues on appeal that he contends are likely to result in the reversal of his conviction, or a new trial.”
The Department of Justice charged Navarro after Congress voted to hold him in contempt after they subpoenaed him to meet with House lawmakers and produce certain documents that they had requested. 
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The House also previously voted, mostly along party lines, to recommend other Trump aides &#8211; including Steve Bannon, Dan Scavino, and Mark Meadows – to the Justice Department for contempt of Congress charges. Bannon, who was also convicted of contempt of Congress charges, was sentenced to four months in prison but has yet to serve any time as his case goes through the appeals process.
After he was indicted, Navarro <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trying-to-intimidate-me-peter-navarro-rips-january-6-committee-doj-after-indictment" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> that the January 6 Committee was trying to intimidate him.
“Congress has weaponized the investigatory powers of congress in a way which is unconstitutional,” Navarro said in June 2022 after a court hearing on the indictment. “The people of America need to understand, Congress has the right to investigate, but only for non-punitive, legislative purposes. What that committee is doing is investigating for punitive purposes.”
“They intercepted me getting on the plane and they put me in handcuffs, they bring me here, they put me in leg irons, they stick me in a cell,” he said. “They just came with the full force of the federal government and put the hammer down trying to intimidate me.”

Peter Navarro Indicted For Contempt Of Congress

Former Trump White House Aide Peter Navarro Ordered To Report To Federal Prison

Courts

Department of Justice

Peter Navarro

House Judiciary Chair <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/jim-jordan" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Jim Jordan</a> (R-OH) is looking into whether GoFundMe and Eventbrite cooperated with federal law enforcement during their investigation into the financial transactions of supporters of former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/donald-trump" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Donald Trump</a>. 
Jordan wrote to executives at both companies on Monday, asking them to provide any communications with the FBI and the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, a bureau of the Treasury Department. He noted that FinCEN emailed banks about flagging “MAGA” and “TRUMP” transactions. 
After the January 6, 2021, breach at the U.S. Capitol, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-flagged-terms-like-trump-maga-for-banks-to-comb-through-customer-data-jordan-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">FinCEN asked banks</a> to help federal law enforcement identify transactions of Trump supporters and others who purchased religious texts or visited certain outdoor stores, such as Cabela&#8217;s and Bass Pro Shops. FinCEN provided the banks with documentation on various typologies, suggested search terms, and also pointed them to crowdfunding sites, according to Jordan. The congressman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-flagged-terms-like-trump-maga-for-banks-to-comb-through-customer-data-jordan-says">previously said</a>, &#8220;FinCEN warned financial institutions of &#8216;extremism&#8217; indicators.&#8221; 
Jordan said in <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2024-03-04%20JDJ%20to%20GoFundMe.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">his letter</a> to GoFundMe CEO Tim Cadogan that FinCen “emailed financial institutions a list of ‘crowdfunding sites’ that included GoFundMe, Eventbrite, and Anedot, among others, and explained how financial institutions could use a ‘transaction reference’ to identify customers making certain transactions on crowdfunding sites.”
“For example, in the email, FinCEN alerted financial institutions to customers’ use of Eventbrite, noting that ‘people have been observed using this site to post an event and sell tickets including bus tickets to the demonstrations,’” Jordan added. 
Jordan noted how transactions for individuals who “purchased tickets to events in support of President Trump” were flagged by FinCEN as potential targets for investigation. 
“Despite these transactions having no apparent nexus to criminal activity — and, in fact, relate to Americans exercising their First Amendment rights — FinCEN seems to have adopted a characterization of these Americans as potential threat actors,” Jordan wrote. “This kind of pervasive financial surveillance, carried out in coordination with federal law enforcement, without legal process, into Americans’ private transactions is alarming and raises serious concerns about the federal government’s potential abuses of Americans’ fundamental civil liberties.”
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In his letters, Jordan requested any communications from the FBI or FinCEN to either GoFundMe or Eventbrite. He gave the companies a March 18 deadline to comply with his requests. 
The revelations about the federal government’s investigation into Trump supporters have lawmakers concerned about potential violations of constitutional liberties, the government’s use of private financial information, and coordination between FinCEN and the private sector.
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-flagged-terms-like-trump-maga-for-banks-to-comb-through-customer-data-jordan-says">Feds Flagged Terms Like &#8216;Trump,&#8217; &#8216;MAGA&#8217; For Banks To Comb Through Customer Data, Jordan Says</a>

House Oversight Committee Holds Biden Impeachment Hearing

Jim Jordan Investigating Whether GoFundMe And Eventbrite Helped Feds Snoop On Trump Supporters

Congress

GoFundMe

Jim Jordan

MAGA

The FBI arrested a Blaze Media journalist who frequently reports on the January 6 Capitol riot, putting the investigative journalist on full display for a &#8220;perp walk&#8221; even after he turned himself in to authorities.
The arrest, captured on video and posted by TheBlaze founder Glenn Beck, shows a handcuffed and jacket-less Steve Baker being escorted by FBI agents from a building to a car.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
The FBI HANDCUFFED Blaze Media investigative journalist <a href="https://twitter.com/TPC4USA?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@TPC4USA</a> and made him take a PERP WALK for his reporting on January 6th. This is unbelievable. <a href="https://t.co/yA2PILM9yk">pic.twitter.com/yA2PILM9yk</a>
&mdash; Glenn Beck (@glennbeck) <a href="https://twitter.com/glennbeck/status/1763593019654021560?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">March 1, 2024</a></blockquote>
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Baker was <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/blaze-news-investigative-writer-steve-baker-whos-been-reporting-on-january-6-handcuffed-charged" target="_blank" rel="noopener">charged</a> with four misdemeanors related to his reporting at the U.S. Capitol back on January 6, 2021.
The four charges are knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building or grounds without lawful authority; disorderly and disruptive conduct in a restricted building or grounds; disorderly conduct in a capitol building; and parading, demonstrating, or picketing in a capitol building.
Earlier this week, the FBI ordered Baker to surrender himself on Friday morning. Baker said the FBI told him to arrive at the field office in &#8220;shorts and sandals,&#8221; but he arrived in a suit and tie instead.
Baker <a class="rm-stats-tracked" href="https://www.theblaze.com/news/blaze-media-investigative-journalist-steve-baker-says-justice-department-will-be-charging-him-for-his-jan-6-reporting" target="_self" rel="noopener">announced</a> back in December that he expected the Justice Department to charge him over his reporting on January 6. On Tuesday, he spoke out about his upcoming arrest, stating that he was required to turn himself in at 7 a.m. and that he would be transported to the Dallas courthouse for a 10 a.m. hearing before the magistrate.
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🚨BREAKING🧵- This time, it’s really happening.
Unlike the two previous threats my attorneys received from <a href="https://twitter.com/FBI?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@FBI</a> / <a href="https://twitter.com/TheJusticeDept?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@thejusticedept</a> (Nov. 21 and Dec. 23), my self-surrender for alleged J6 crimes is set for this Friday morning in Dallas, TX. There is now a signed arrest warrant.⬇️
&mdash; Steve Baker &#8211; TPC (@TPC4USA) <a href="https://twitter.com/TPC4USA/status/1762652438727627133?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 28, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;My attorneys have also been assured by the gov. that this will be an ‘in and out’ affair and that they have &#8216;no intention&#8217; of detaining me,&#8221; Baker said. &#8220;But, rather than issuing a simple order to appear, they seem to feel the need to give me a dose of the personal humiliation treatment.&#8221;
Beck, who is also the co-founder of Blaze Media, expressed his support for Baker on Friday.
&#8220;When the United States government can come after individuals, that&#8217;s when you know our republic is crumbling. I&#8217;ve always said that if they can go after Donald Trump, they will go after people like you and me. And now they are. But Steve Baker is not deterred, and neither are we,&#8221; Beck <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/columns/opinion/free-press-under-fire-steve-bakers-battle-and-ours" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a> in an op-ed.
The federal investigation into Baker began before he joined The Blaze when he was an independent journalist.
The charging documents against Baker reference a YouTube video in which he allegedly said he followed rioters into former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi&#8217;s office on January 6.
In that video, Baker said the &#8220;only thing I regret&#8221; is that he did not steal computers because &#8220;God knows what I could&#8217;ve found,&#8221; according to the documents.
&#8220;They got Pelosi&#8217;s office and it couldn&#8217;t happen to a more deserving b****,&#8221; Baker said in the video, according to the documents.
In another video that Baker allegedly recorded outside the Capitol, he said, &#8220;Look out your windows b****es, look what&#8217;s coming,&#8221; the documents note.
Later in a local news interview, Baker said he was &#8220;quite excited to see this going on,&#8221; adding, &#8220;Do I approve of what happened today? I approve 100%.&#8221;
Baker <a href="https://www.glennbeck.com/radio/jan-6-journalist-fbi-arrest" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in an interview this week that it is &#8220;common&#8221; for law enforcement to allow the press to cross a police line to document events of public interest.
He accused the government of &#8220;selective prosecution,&#8221; saying that dozens of other reporters entered the Capitol on January 6.
Since January 6, Baker&#8217;s reporting on January 6 <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/columns/analysis/harry-dunns-account-of-january-6-does-not-add-up-at-all" target="_blank" rel="noopener">questioned</a> whether a Capitol Police officer perjured himself in the trial of the Oath Keepers. He has also written an article questioning another Capitol Police officer&#8217;s account of January 6.

An FBI agent uses a gun in action

WATCH: FBI Arrests Blaze Reporter Over January 6 Reporting

FBI Arrests Blaze Reporter Over January 6 Reporting

Biden Administration

BlazeTV

The Republican National Committee’s director of security said that the explanation of the purported January 6 pipe bomb plot, and the response by authorities, “make no sense whatsoever.”
Kenneth Capolino, a former Capitol Police officer who went on to work as the RNC’s director of security, was the man who personally alerted Capitol Police to the bomb near the RNC and managed the emergency response.
Capolino told The Daily Wire, in his first public remarks on the incident, that it looked like a stereotypical IED, or improvised explosive device, that is used by law enforcement in training sessions. “Any of the IED awareness training I’ve been to with law enforcement, that&#8217;s like the quintessential training device,&#8221; he told The Daily Wire. &#8220;That’s exactly what it looks like.&#8221;
His firsthand account adds to questions about the purported pipe bombs, which went undetected for a long period of time outside both the RNC and its Democrat counterpart, the Democratic National Committee. The bomb plot is by far the most dramatic part of January 6, but the FBI has made no progress in determining who planted them — and Democrats investigating the plot appear to have gone <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fbi-said-there-were-pipe-bombs-on-january-6-evidence-points-to-a-coverup-congressman-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">out of their way to avoid mentioning</a> their existence since.
Capolino says law enforcement would be able to identify the device immediately upon seeing it.
“They set up scenarios like that so you know what to look for, so they have to make training devices,&#8221; he said. &#8220;There was so much about January 6, but nothing about the pipe bombs, which I thought was so, so strange.&#8221;
The bomb, found minutes before protesters entered the Capitol, was attached to a 60-minute egg timer, but it had been there since the night before. “I was two feet from it. Why would someone construct a device with a one-hour kitchen timer, place it 8:30 p.m. the night before, if they intended for it to detonate 16 hours later?” he asked.
Though referred to in the media as the RNC bomb, it was actually at the neighboring Capitol Hill Club, a Republican hangout. Capolino said his guards would have found it during their hourly sweeps if it was on RNC property.
A similar bomb was found minutes after the RNC bomb was detected, directly in front of the DNC beside a bench, raising questions about how the DNC would not have located it for seventeen hours, despite a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bomb-sniffing-dog-was-at-dnc-on-january-6-raising-further-questions-about-undetected-pipe-bomb">bomb-sniffing dog</a> that walked by it. Kamala Harris, at the time a U.S. Senator and the vice-president elect, was at the DNC, meaning there would likely be extra security in place, Capolino explained.
Capolino said it’s implausible that the Secret Service would not have swept the DNC premises before Harris entered, and that “if anyone was patrolling the DNC that should have been found at like 9 p.m.”
But Capolino said that whether or not it was a real bomb, the FBI’s story that it was placed at 8:30 p.m. on January 5 is true, at least for the Capitol Hill Club. He personally retrieved, reviewed, and handed over to the FBI, RNC footage showing the suspect. “We have the guy walking through the back alleyway at that time,” he said.
Surveillance video identified recently by Rep. Thomas Massie showed that after a passerby informed police officers of the DNC bomb, the officers dawdled casually for multiple minutes, even letting children walk in front. Capolino said that was odd: “Our response at the RNC was very quick. Watching the video of the DNC response, I was surprised at the delay in reaction.&#8221;
The DNC would not tell The Daily Wire whether, like the RNC, it evacuated staff from the building upon finding the bomb.
Massie told The Daily Wire that residents of Capitol Hill reported that it wasn’t until about six months ago—more than two years after the fact—that the FBI knocked on doors in the area to ask residents if they had seen anything related to the bomb.
Capolino said that although he provided video to the FBI immediately after the event, the FBI showed up at the home of the security officer who was manning the booth six months ago to reinterview him, and asked for his supervisor’s information, “but I never heard from them.”
The FBI initially released only a couple of grainy pictures of the suspect, despite the existence of many more videos and photos. The still photos made it impossible for people to identify the suspect by the way he walked, Capolino said.
“I’m the last one to speculate, but it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t at all,” he said.
Eight months later, the FBI released <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/washingtondc/news/press-releases/fbi-washington-field-office-releases-video-and-additional-information-regarding-the-pipe-bomb-investigation-090821" target="_blank" rel="noopener">video</a> that showed that after the suspect placed the purported bombs, he circled back to the Capitol Hill Club and, while directly in front of the scene of the crime, waved to a police officer who drove by. &#8220;This may be something or nothing,&#8221; Capolino said.
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-699369" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/wave-395x576.jpeg" alt="Surveillance footage shows that after the suspect placed the pipe bombs on January 5, he waved to a police officer. / FBI" width="395" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/wave-395x576.jpeg 395w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/wave-206x300.jpeg 206w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/wave-768x1119.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/wave.jpeg 874w" sizes="(max-width: 395px) 100vw, 395px" /></div>
The FBI has arrested more than 1,200 people for charges as minor as trespassing at the Capitol on January 6, using high-tech techniques like “geofencing” cell phone records. But despite video showing the suspect using a cell phone on January 5, an FBI official told Congress that it could not find the suspect in cell phone records, perhaps because a batch of cell phone data had gone missing.
Journalist <a href="https://www.declassified.live/p/darren-beatties-latest-on-the-j6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Julie Kelly</a> reported that the Capitol Hill resident who found the bomb near the RNC, Karlin Younger, worked for an FBI contractor. The news outlet <a href="https://public.substack.com/p/fbi-claim-that-alleged-january-6" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Public</a> on Monday quoted a security analyst questioning Younger’s demeanor in the video of her discovering the bomb, saying she “never expressed any worry” and “leaned down and placed her ear near the device to listen if the timer was ticking.”
Younger approached the RNC’s guard shack to ask for whoever was in charge. The guard summoned Capolino.
“I spoke to her and she said, ‘I was taking out my garbage and I see this weird pipe thingy with wires coming out of it,’ so I ran over there and there it was next to the garbage cans,” he said. He took a picture of the bomb and walked towards the Capitol South Metro station, where he knew a Capitol Police officer would be stationed, and showed him the picture.
“He immediately alerted USCP command center via radio, I used the guards that I had to set up containment while Capitol Police set up their quarantine, then we went into the building to evacuate while that was going on. Shortly after that was when the FBI used their bomb robot. I saw them manipulating the robot. I&#8217;m not sure what method of disposal they used for the device, but I believe they disrupted it,” he said.
As a result of law enforcement closing off the area, they noticed a red pickup truck full of a cache of weapons, Capolino said. The truck was parked in a prominent spot in front of the RNC and near the Capitol South Metro, a highly-policed area. “So there were two separate FBI crime scenes going on simultaneously,” he said.
The owner of the vehicle eventually identified himself to law enforcement because the pipe bomb quarantine prevented him from retrieving his vehicle.
To Capolino, the pipe bomb and the truck full of weapons and Molotov cocktails directly outside of the RNC and next to Capitol office buildings, were the most dramatic and dangerous elements of the day. Yet the pipe bombs were barely ever spoken of, and few even know the red pickup truck incident occurred.
“That doesn’t sit well with me. They’re not even talking about it,” he said.
<div class="image"><img decoding="async" loading="lazy" class="size-large wp-image-699357" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/coffman-truck-912x576.jpeg" alt="A pickup truck full of weapons was parked in front of the RNC on January 6 and was discovered by officers responding to a pipe bomb. The DOJ gave its driver a favorable plea deal. / Ken Capolino" width="912" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/coffman-truck-912x576.jpeg 912w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/coffman-truck-300x189.jpeg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/coffman-truck-768x485.jpeg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/02/coffman-truck.jpeg 1208w" sizes="(max-width: 912px) 100vw, 912px" /></div>
Court records confirm the red pickup truck incident and show that prosecutors offered a lenient plea deal to the owner of the weapons cache, even advocating for the judge to give him a lower sentence.
The records show that <a href="https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/29098805/united-states-v-coffman/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Lonnie Leroy Coffman</a>, a 72-year-old veteran of the Vietnam war and Alabama resident, parked the pickup truck containing “loaded firearms within arms-reach of the driver’s seat, including a 9mm handgun, a rifle, and a shotgun. Also inside the pickup truck and in its covered bed were hundreds of rounds of ammunition, large-capacity ammunition feeding devices, a crossbow with bolts, machetes, camouflage smoke devices, a stun gun, cloth rags, lighters, a cooler containing eleven… Molotov cocktails” modified to operate like napalm. Coffman also had a gun on his person.
Prosecutors charged Coffman with 17 counts, then agreed to dismiss all but one count of possession of an unregistered firearm, a federal offense, and carrying a pistol without a license, a violation of city law.
They took a tone more sympathetic than that taken in the prosecution of unarmed protesters, with the prosecutor saying at sentencing that “he met with a woman who felt sorry for him and who also had her vehicle within that law enforcement perimeter, and she kind of felt sorry for him. It was cold. They didn&#8217;t know what to do, and they ended up going — jumping on the Metro and going to Pentagon City and sharing a pizza.”
Prosecutors never mentioned why Coffman had the weapons if they were so sure he did not intend to use them, leading the judge to say that “the key unanswered question for me, which is still frankly unanswered and probably won&#8217;t be able to be answered, is what was the purpose of driving all the way from Alabama to D.C. with these destructive items in his possession?”
Coffman was sentenced to 46 months in prison. The Department of Justice has sought stiffer sentences for at least 134 people who entered the Capitol than it did for the man who parked a truck full of guns and Molotov cocktails in one of D.C.’s prime locations, a Daily Wire review of sentencing records showed.
Prosecutors presented some evidence that suggests Coffman was not an FBI plant, including that he “was identified by law enforcement several years ago as a participant at an armed gathering of militia groups in Texas,” that he had notes about “leftists,” and that he had tried to contact Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) about election fraud concerns. (Cruz’s staff thought he was behaving oddly and rebuffed him.)
Democrats mentioned the pipe bombs and the red pickup truck only in the appendix of their January 6 report, on page 706. Then-Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund has called the pipe bombs a “diversionary” tactic that caused police to divert resources at a critical time, leading to trespassers entering the Capitol unimpeded.
Capolino, who previously was a senior member of a Capitol Police SWAT team, said he believes there should be more transparency around the events of that day.
“This whole thing just doesn’t make sense,&#8221; Capolino said. &#8220;People need to have all the information to find out what was actually going on. I don’t feel like the public is getting all the information.”
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-tied-january-6-pipe-bomber-to-metro-card-of-ex-gov-official-but-blocked-interview-of-him-former-agent-says">FBI Tied January 6 Pipe Bomber To Metro Card Of Ex-Gov Official, But Blocked Interview Of Him, Former Agent Says</a>

The device witnessed on January 6, 2021 behind the Capitol Hill Club near the RNC / Ken Capolino

EXCLUSIVE: RNC Security Officer Who Was First Responder To Jan 6 Pipe Bomb Says Official Story ‘Makes No Sense Whatsoever’

Newly uncovered video shows that a bomb-sniffing dog was at the Democratic National Committee (DNC) on the morning of January 6, 2021, without detecting a supposed pipe bomb that was sitting only a few feet away.
The security footage adds to the major questions about the supposed pipe bombs that were planted on the eve of January 6 at the DNC and near the Republican National Committee (RNC). The FBI says the bombs were planted around 8 p.m. on January 5, but remained undetected until the next afternoon, when they were both discovered within minutes of the Capitol being breached by trespassers.
The Capitol Police have said the findings of the bombs diverted resources at a critical time, thus allowing January 6 demonstrations at the Capitol to get out of hand.
The attempted bombing of political headquarters would be by far the most newsworthy aspect of January 6, compellingly making the case that it was a deadly insurrection. Yet Democrats and law enforcement have barely mentioned them since.
Kamala Harris was at the DNC at the time, a fact she concealed to the extent that the Department of Justice <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fbi-said-there-were-pipe-bombs-on-january-6-evidence-points-to-a-coverup-congressman-says">falsely stated</a> that she was at the Capitol and used that non-fact to suggest that trespassers there might have been endangering her.
She gave a speech likening January 6 to Pearl Harbor and September 11, but she went out of her way not to mention the pipe bombs, saying that she was safe only because she “had left” the Capitol, instead of saying that she had gone to the DNC, where a pipe bomb was found just a few feet away.
The fact that people did not know the vice president-elect was at the DNC avoided questions about how a bomb could have avoided detection given that the Secret Service would perform sweeps of locations where a high-level protectee such as the Vice President-elect went.
But the new video, released by House Committee on Administration Oversight Subcommittee Chair Barry Loudermilk (R-Georgia) and first <a href="https://www.declassified.live/p/bomb-sniffing-dog-performed-vehicle" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reported by Julie Kelly</a>, shows that a bomb-sniffing dog was present, perhaps even separately from Harris’ detail.
At 9:29 a.m., a security camera pointed to the DNC shows a bomb-sniffing canine and his handler walk into frame from the right side, as the handler walks the dog around the walls of the building. The purported pipe bomb was sitting by a bench some 20 feet to the right of the camera frame, suggesting that the dog walked right by it just before entering the camera’s view.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
FBI claimed a viable pipe bomb was placed at DNC on J5. But thanks to <a href="https://twitter.com/julie_kelly2?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@julie_kelly2</a> &amp; <a href="https://twitter.com/HouseAdmin?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@HouseAdmin</a> here is new video of a bomb sniffing dog clearing DNC on the morning of J6. When was the “bomb” placed? Was it really viable? Who placed it? Why? 🦗 🦗 🦗 <a href="https://t.co/QTiPdMsUxm">pic.twitter.com/QTiPdMsUxm</a>
&mdash; Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) <a href="https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1757605317137850852?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 14, 2024</a></blockquote>
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At 9:44 a.m., a small SUV pulls into the DNC driveway, and the handler opens its doors and has the dog stick its snout into each one. After the dog does not alert, the SUV is allowed to enter.
The DNC did not respond to questions from The Daily Wire about what type of security it has, whether it has a dog on site, and how the bomb was not detected.
Harris arrived at the DNC at 11:25 a.m.
Video from the same camera, released by Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), shows officers’ curious reaction when they are notified of the bomb at 1:05 p.m. A man comes into the frame from the right, just as the bomb-sniffing dog did, and goes up to a police car and speaks to officers in a black SUV and a local police cruiser. The officers remain in their vehicle for several minutes afterwards, before <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fbi-said-there-were-pipe-bombs-on-january-6-evidence-points-to-a-coverup-congressman-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">milling about casually</a>. They allow a group of children to cross the road and walk directly in front of the bomb. An officer eventually takes a picture of the bomb with his phone.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fbi-said-there-were-pipe-bombs-on-january-6-evidence-points-to-a-coverup-congressman-says">The FBI Said There Were ‘Pipe Bombs’ On January 6. Evidence Points To A Coverup, Congressman Says</a>
Harris exited the DNC at 1:17 p.m. The DNC would not tell The Daily Wire whether the building was evacuated after the bomb was found.
The supposed bomber was never found, despite the FBI using high-tech methods to track down hundreds of people for minor crimes like trespassing during the Capitol riot. The FBI released a wanted poster with only two grainy pictures of the suspect. A camera is trained at the bench where the bomb was planted, but no video from that camera was released of the bomb actually being placed.
Former FBI agent Kyle Seraphin told The Daily Wire that he was assigned to surveil the home of a former Air Force officer who, he was told, the FBI had quickly <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-tied-january-6-pipe-bomber-to-metro-card-of-ex-gov-official-but-blocked-interview-of-him-former-agent-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">tied to the bombing</a> by using cameras to follow the person into the subway, and identifying the Metro farecard that was used. He was blocked from interviewing the man, and quickly pulled off the surveillance and assigned to review mundane leads about trespassers, he said.
The then-head of the FBI&#8217;s Washington Field Office, Steve D’Antuono, hyped the bombs to the media, saying &#8220;They would have exploded. They could have exploded,&#8221; before acknowledging under oath that the bombs were connected to 60-minute kitchen timers that could not have detonated the bombs more than 17 hours later.
Massie told The Daily Wire that “This is an ongoing coverup at this point… It doesn’t make any sense why they wouldn’t be promoting that threat to advance that narrative unless they had something to do with the pipe bombs and they’re trying to memory-hole the whole thing to avoid embarrassment,” he said of Democrats and law enforcement.
Related: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-tied-january-6-pipe-bomber-to-metro-card-of-ex-gov-official-but-blocked-interview-of-him-former-agent-says">FBI Tied January 6 Pipe Bomber To Metro Card Of Ex-Gov Official, But Blocked Interview Of Him, Former Agent Says</a>

RNC/DNC pipe bomb suspect

Bomb-Sniffing Dog Was At DNC On January 6, Raising Further Questions About Undetected Pipe Bomb

Thomas Massie

According to a new video released by Christopher Rufo, Disney&#8217;s hard left turn into politics can be traced back to then chairman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/bob-iger" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bob Iger&#8217;s</a> reaction to the January 6th riot on Capitol Hill.
&#8220;I&#8217;ve obtained exclusive new video from Disney marking the exact moment the company decided to become political—days after January 6, 2021,&#8221; Rufo said in an <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1757483737888194746" target="_blank" rel="noopener">X post</a> teasing the video.
A short time later, he posted the two-minute clip with the following caption: &#8220;In January 2021, then-Disney chairman <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/disney-ceo-bob-iger-hosting-fundraiser-vulnerable-paul-bois" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Bob Iger</a> told employees he was committing the company to &#8216;taking a stand&#8217; on politics because of January 6, then praised himself for making Black Panther, which he said was an example of &#8216;diversity and inclusion.'&#8221;
WATCH:
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EXCLUSIVE: In January 2021, then-Disney chairman Bob Iger told employees he was committing the company to &quot;taking a stand&quot; on politics because of January 6, then praised himself for making Black Panther, which he said was an example of &quot;diversity and inclusion.&quot; <a href="https://t.co/Rb41540cGW">pic.twitter.com/Rb41540cGW</a>
&mdash; Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) <a href="https://twitter.com/realchrisrufo/status/1757494954895815142?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 13, 2024</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;We&#8217;ve kind of shied away from politics, and in doing so, I think we&#8217;ve shied away from talking about issues that aren&#8217;t political at all,&#8221; Iger began, arguing that people were so afraid of what might be considered political, they avoided what he believed to be important but apolitical topics.
&#8220;Because we believe in doing so, maybe it looks like we were taking a stand, but in that reality, we should be taking a stand,&#8221; he continued. &#8220;By the way, I take responsibility for this. I was CEO for 15 years. And so I managed the company&#8217;s public-facing processes and how we were portraying ourselves.&#8221;
Iger went on to use January 6th as an example, saying that he believed it was time for the company to be &#8220;less cautious&#8221; about weighing in on events like that going forward.
<a href="https://onelink.to/dwapp" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" aria-describedby="sk-tooltip-9096" data-saferedirecturl="https://www.google.com/url?q=https://onelink.to/dwapp&amp;source=gmail&amp;ust=1700760801843000&amp;usg=AOvVaw2PQrVSrJfhxNb4LcARqniG">CLICK HERE TO GET THE DAILYWIRE+ APP</a>
&#8220;That&#8217;s not political on our part at all,&#8221; he said. &#8220;We know that what we saw was fundamentally wrong and it was rooted in hatred, disrespect, and contempt and intolerance.&#8221;
Iger followed with a call to lean in more to projects like &#8220;Coco&#8221; and &#8220;Black Panther,&#8221; saying that he had allowed himself to get self-congratulatory and &#8220;complacent&#8221; rather than building on those projects to push further projects championing diversity.
Rufo made headlines with an earlier series of videos showing just how deep the &#8220;<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/not-at-all-secret-gay-agenda-disney-employees-break-down-adding-queerness-to-shows-and-degenderizing-theme-parks" target="_blank" rel="noopener">not at all secret gay agenda</a>&#8221; went in Disney programming — a series of videos that ultimately prompted Daily Wire co-founder Jeremy Boreing to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-daily-wire-releases-new-kids-app-bentkey-with-full-slate-in-surprise-drop" target="_blank" rel="noopener">launch the Bentkey kids streaming app</a>.

“The King’s Man” World Premiere – Arrivals

New Video Ties Disney’s Hard Left Turn To Bob Iger’s Reaction To January 6th

New Video Ties Disney's Hard Left Turn To Bob Iger's Reaction To January 6th

Bob Iger

Disney

Diversity Equity and Inclusion (DEI)

Media

U.S.

A former FBI agent said that the Bureau quickly believed that it tied the person who planted pipe bombs at the Democrat National Committee and the Republican National Committee to a particular Metro fare card and license plate, but did not allow him to interview the person of interest and pulled his team off of the lead.
The allegation raises more questions about the pipe bombs, which were by far the most violent aspect of the January 6 protests, but which Democrats and authorities have seldom mentioned since.
Kyle Seraphin, who led FBI surveillance teams, told The Daily Wire that shortly after January 6, a counterintelligence team met him at a firehouse in Falls Church, Virginia to brief him on his next surveillance target: They had used security footage to follow the person into a Metro station after he planted the bombs, and identified the fare card that was used.
That fare card then allowed them to determine that the person got off at a Metro stop in Northern Virginia, where surveillance footage showed the person entering a car. Both the car and the fare card were in the name of the same person — a retired Air Force chief master sergeant who was now working as a contractor with a security clearance, they said.
Seraphin and his team were assigned to stake out the person’s row house for days, but the FBI blocked his request to interview the person, he said. Then they were called off the target completely and told to pore through low-priority leads about minor January 6 participants, he said.
“Allegedly someone threw bombs around the Capitol which could have killed congressmen or a busload of nuns or anything, and the answer is you can’t follow this guy around — you have to go to headquarters and read ‘leads’ where someone said &#8216;I might’ve went to high school with some guy that was standing around the Capitol?&#8217;” Seraphin told The Daily Wire.
Seraphin said the bomber wasn’t necessarily the same person of interest to whom the car and card were registered to, but that it was a highly specific lead that, if pursued, had a good chance of leading investigators to the suspect. &#8220;They found people based on their earlobes that were hanging out by a flagpole,&#8221; he said of the Bureau&#8217;s persistence in pursuing more minor January 6 wrongdoings.
He said the case was being run by the counter-intelligence division, which are not “manhunters” used to apprehend people and build prosecutable cases. He said that team called in his surveillance team, only to go ahead and quickly cut it off.
He said it was not surprising that the FBI would have traced the bomber, and, in fact, it would be more surprising if it hadn’t. “They can do telephonic capture and triangulate your phone in real-time&#8230; The bureau is far too competent to fail this,” he said. “When they had the World Trade Center bombing in ‘93 they went under four stories of rubble and were able to find a partial VIN number that they used to track it down to the people responsible. And you’re telling me you had a pristine, non-detonated bomb and they couldn’t find anything on it?”
The FBI has released only a couple of grainy pictures of the bomber, despite massive security camera coverage on Capitol Hill. Though the bomber was seen talking on a phone, it has said it may not have been able to identify him with cell phone records because a database was corrupted.
The <a href="http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2023/may/12/jan-6-pipe-bombs-rnc-dnc-were-inoperable-says-ex-a">Washington Times</a> first reported the allegation in May 2023. The article, which was paywalled, did not get widespread attention, yet when the House Judiciary Committee <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2023-06-07-ti-of-steven-dantuono-redacted.pdf">interviewed</a> Steve D’Antuono, the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, it seemed to be on his mind.
“People like Kyle Seraphin and others that are not a case agent, have no knowledge of the case, have no knowledge of what happened in the case, he also made another accusation too that there was an individual with a Metro card. My understanding is all that was chased down. There was a lead that was chased down, but he says that we didn&#8217;t chase it down,” D’Antuono said.
His comment seemed to confirm that the Metro card lead did exist, and he did not explain how or why it ultimately resulted in nothing.
The FBI’s Washington Field Office did not return The Daily Wire’s request for an explanation of why the lead was believed to be a dead end.
Immediately after claiming that Seraphin would not know details because he was not a “case agent,” D’Antuono acknowledged that he himself did not know even basic details about the investigation because he was far removed from case agents as a top leader.
D’Antuono went on ABC to hype up the apparent MAGA terrorist threat in 2022 to say that, “They would have exploded. They could have exploded,” calling the pipe bombs “viable” devices, as The Washington Times recounted.
But in the transcribed interview with Congress, he acknowledged that the bombs had 60-minute kitchen timers attached to them, and that they had not exploded 17 hours later. “I saw the same kitchen timer as you. I agree. I don&#8217;t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren&#8217;t supposed to go off,” he said.
Seraphin said that when he was assigned to the case, he asked about the bombs, and his team was briefed by the FBI that they were not at risk of detonating. “It was an officer safety question. You’re gonna work a case differently if they’re not real, you can get closer,” he said.
Rep. Thomas Massie, a member of the Judiciary Committee, asked D’Antuono about the pipe bombs after uncovering <a href="https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1748135724681933251">video</a> that showed a person pointing out the pipe bomb to officers outside the DNC, only to have the officers react with no urgency, even letting children cross the street afterward.
Massie told The Daily Wire that the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-fbi-said-there-were-pipe-bombs-on-january-6-evidence-points-to-a-coverup-congressman-says">officers’ reaction</a> was not congruent with someone who believes they have just learned of what might be a real bomb feet away from a party headquarters, and raises the question of whether they knew it was planted there.
Some of those personnel were Secret Service guarding Kamala Harris, who was in the building at the time. The Department of Justice initially falsely stated that Harris was in the Capitol, not the DNC, which allowed them to avoid the question of why the Secret Service didn’t find the bomb. Seraphin said there’s “zero chance” that the Secret Service would have missed a pipe bomb sitting in almost plain sight when preparing a site for the Vice President-elect. “They’re far too good for that,” he said.
Seraphin said of the video, “That’s not how you react to a bomb, I don’t care who you are,” unless they had reason in advance to “believe it wasn’t real.”
Both bombs were purportedly planted around 8 p.m. the night of January 5, and remained unreported until both were discovered within minutes of each other at the exact time that the Capitol was being breached. Capitol Police have said that January 6 got out of hand because they were forced to divert resources to the bombs instead of crowd control.
Harris has gone out of her way not to mention the bomb, even implying that she was safe from January 6 because <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/06/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-marking-one-year-since-the-january-6th-deadly-assault-on-the-u-s-capitol/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;I had left&#8221;</a> — when, in fact, she had left for a location roughly 30 feet away from a purported bomb.
Darren Beattie, a reporter for <a href="https://revolver.news/2022/08/release-the-tape-revolver-has-definitive-proof-fbi-is-hiding-critical-footage-of-jan-6-pipe-bomber/">Revolver News</a> who has uncovered numerous discrepancies around the pipe bombs, joined Massie for an <a href="https://twitter.com/i/spaces/1vAxRvRLdrVxl?s=20" target="_blank" rel="noopener">online chat</a> on Thursday. He said that in addition to the details that don’t add up, there is the glaring fact that Democrats have omitted all mention of the most dramatic part of January 6, even as they seek to cast it as a violent insurrection.
&#8220;How dark, how dirty, how damning, how embarrassing does the truth have to be for these salivating political opportunists have to be to forgo the obvious political advantages of this talking point?” he asked.

Photos released by the FBI of the person who they say planted bombs on January 5, 2021 / FBI

FBI Tied January 6 Pipe Bomber To Metro Card Of Ex-Gov Official, But Blocked Interview Of Him, Former Agent Says

A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/u-s-house-of-representatives" target="_blank" rel="noopener">House</a> panel has recovered more than 100 &#8220;deleted&#8221; and encrypted files from the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/january-6-committee" target="_blank" rel="noopener">January 6 Committee</a>, a GOP investigator announced on Monday.
Rep. Barry Loudermilk (R-GA), chairman of the House Administration Subcommittee on Oversight, affirmed the retrieval as part of a counter-inquiry into the January 6 Committee that <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/jan-6-panel-shutting-down-after-concluding-18-month-investigation#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20(AP)%20%E2%80%94%20The%20House,prosecuting%20former%20President%20Donald%20Trump." target="_blank" rel="noopener">shut down</a> at the beginning of 2023.
&#8220;The former J6 Select Committee went to great lengths to prevent Americans from seeing all the evidence produced in their investigation,&#8221; Loudermilk <a href="https://twitter.com/RepLoudermilk/status/1749487685972971608" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> in a post to X. &#8220;Our Subcommittee has recovered over 100 deleted &amp; encrypted files. What else were they trying to hide?&#8221;
Loudermilk was responding to a Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/house-committee-jan-6-deleted-encrypted-117-files-was-required-share-house-gop-sources" target="_blank" rel="noopener">report</a> that said he wrote to Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), who chaired the January 6 Committee, demanding a list of passwords that would allow his forensic team to gain access to the locked files. Thompson replied with a letter that <a href="https://twitter.com/BennieGThompson/status/1749912931913933006" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claimed he had &#8220;no idea&#8221;</a> what Loudermilk was talking about when it came to encrypted, password-protected files.
The pair have traded a number of letters over the past year in which Loudermilk <a href="https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/08/Loudermilk-Letter-to-Thompson-6.26.23.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">raised</a> concerns about the January 6 Committee not properly archiving video recordings of interviews and depositions in the House as well as transcripts mentioned in a letter to the Homeland Security Department that <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/january-6-panel-alerts-white-house-about-anonymous-witnesses" target="_blank" rel="noopener">referenced</a> &#8220;important information&#8221; gained &#8220;from an unnamed Secret Service witness.&#8221;
Thompson has <a href="https://static.foxnews.com/foxnews.com/content/uploads/2023/08/Thompson-letter-to-Loudermilk-7.7.23.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">insisted</a> the January 6 Committee was &#8220;was not obligated&#8221; to archive all video recordings of transcribed interviews or depositions, but he conceded the panel &#8220;did not have the opportunity to properly archive&#8221; certain sensitive materials because it was dissolved before the completion of an executive branch review of information that could be damaging to witnesses if released.
In his newest letter, Loudermilk said one of the recovered files &#8220;disclosed the identity of an individual whose testimony was not archived by the Select Committee.&#8221; He added that the &#8220;hard drives archived by the Select Committee with the Clerk of the House contain less than 3- terabytes of data,&#8221; suggesting some data may be missing as Thompson had touted a 4-terabyte digital archive.
Loudermilk also wrote to the White House and DHS general counsels seeking &#8220;unedited and unredacted transcripts&#8221; of testimony given to the January 6 Committee by the White House and DHS, per Fox News. He set a January 24 deadline for those requests.
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Whatever information may be in the protected files remains a mystery, though the <a href="https://twitter.com/KerryPicket/status/1749810781540245782" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Washington Times noted</a> that Loudermilk said the missing documents include information shared with the Department of Justice and Fulton County District Attorney. Former President Donald Trump, who is being prosecuted in January 6-related cases, said the records <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/111800280605939981" target="_blank" rel="noopener">would have &#8220;exonerated&#8221;</a> him.
The January 6 Committee was bipartisan, with then-Reps. Liz Cheney (R-WY) and Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) as members, but many Republicans have criticized the endeavor. Loudermilk himself accused the panel of spreading false allegations about him giving a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/target-of-reconnaissance-tour-story-fires-back-at-january-6-committee" target="_blank" rel="noopener">&#8220;reconnaissance tour&#8221;</a> a day before the U.S. Capitol breach on January 6, 2021. Now, there are obstruction claims.
&#8220;It should come as a surprise to no one that Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney’s fake committee illegally deleted records of their sham investigation and obstructed justice,&#8221; House GOP Conference Chairwoman Elise Stefanik (R-NY) said on Tuesday.

Bennie Thompson

House GOP Investigator Says More Than 100 ‘Deleted’ Jan 6 Committee Files Recovered

GOP Investigator Says More than 100 'Deleted' Jan 6 Committee Files Recovered

Capitol Riot

House Republicans

Democrats have strained to make the case that January 6, 2021, was a violent “insurrection,” even resorting to false claims such as that police officers were murdered to make their case. But they have gone out of their way to avoid the one incident that would seemingly best make their point — the two purported pipe bombs outside the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee.
Now a Republican lawmaker who pored over thousands of hours of video footage and other evidence from January 6 alleges that the bombs may have been planted with the involvement of law enforcement. He believes Democrats have backed off from the incidents for fear that the truth would be discovered.
“This is an ongoing coverup at this point,” Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Kentucky), a member of the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, told The Daily Wire. “If there were indeed two operable pipe bombs, that would be the biggest threat that existed on January 6 &#8230; It doesn’t make any sense why they wouldn’t be promoting that threat to advance that narrative unless they had something to do with the pipe bombs and they’re trying to memory-hole the whole thing to avoid embarrassment.”
<a href="https://twitter.com/RepThomasMassie/status/1748135724681933251" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Video</a> identified by Massie shows officers reacting nonchalantly after they were notified of the pipe bomb, milling slowly around the area and even letting children walk in front of it afterward. The soon-to-be vice president Kamala Harris was in the building at the time, a fact that the Department of Justice made misstatements about for months.
The video raises questions about how a Secret Service sweep before she entered did not detect a pipe bomb in plain sight some 30 feet from them.
“It’s the worst scandal of January 6, that’s for sure,” Massie said. “[A pipe bomb] is made to maim and kill&#8230; And the people who were protesting that day did not have weapons meant to maim and kill. So you would think they would be very focused on these pipe bombs, but they aren’t.”
The Democrat-run January 6 committee chaired by Rep. Bennie Thompson did not mention the pipe bombs — by far the most sensational aspect of the day — at all in the body of its nearly 900-page final report on the day, except for a <a href="https://www.jan-6.com/_files/ugd/acac13_ffa28ed6c2694272a265860e447122c7.pdf">brief mention in an appendix</a>.
In 2022, Harris called January 6 a “deadly assault” and likened it to September 11 and Pearl Harbor, but went out of her way not to mention being the target of an apparent bomb, instead saying that she was safe from the Capitol because “<a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2022/01/06/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-marking-one-year-since-the-january-6th-deadly-assault-on-the-u-s-capitol/">I had left</a>,” referring to her secret trip to the DNC.
Security cameras also captured a person apparently planting the bomb on the night of January 5, but former top FBI Washington official Steven D’Antuono <a href="https://judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/republicans-judiciary.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/2023-06-07-ti-of-steven-dantuono-redacted.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">testified</a> that he was “flabbergasted” to find that video footage turned over by the DNC was of far lower quality than would be expected of modern cameras.
The bomb planter can be seen appearing to use a cell phone, but data from a cell phone company was “corrupted,” and the FBI wasn’t able to find any records for the suspect, D’Antuono testified.
“Every modern data system keeps backup. I don’t believe it could be corrupted without the ability to recover it,” Massie told The Daily Wire.
The FBI also said the bombs were “viable.” But they were connected to a 60-minute kitchen timer, making it impossible to trigger an explosion the next day, D’Antuono testified.
Massie, an engineer, said that a kitchen timer “doesn’t create an electrical impulse, you would need a battery to ignite.” The FBI told him details that made the bomb sound scary, such as its length and the fact that it had a timer, but said it was “not authorized” to tell him whether it had a battery. D’Antuono <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/reward-climbs-500k-information-suspect-pipe-bombs-day/story?id=96184838">told</a> ABC that “they would have exploded,” but acknowledged under oath that a 60-minute timer could not set off a device more than 17 hours later.
“We need to talk to the person who allegedly found the bomb,&#8221; Massie said, &#8220;and I&#8217;ve got a lot of questions for them. For instance: How hard did you look for the third bomb? Like, unless you know there are [only] two bombs, why would you quit looking after you found two? Wouldn&#8217;t you go into overdrive with a bunch of dogs and start trying to find bombs everywhere?”
“That doesn&#8217;t seem to have happened. It&#8217;s almost as if, ‘Okay, well, the first bomb has been discovered. Let&#8217;s go get that other one. And then we&#8217;ll be done with this part of the exercise,&#8217;” he added.
<a href="https://revolver.news/2024/01/secret-service-foreknowledge-or-criminal-negligence-damning-new-evidence-surfaces-fbi-january-6-pipe-bomb-story/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Revolver News</a> was the first to report on the video, and has raised a slew of questions about law enforcement’s handling of a would-be terrorist attack. Last year it reported that the FBI released footage from a <a href="https://revolver.news/2022/08/release-the-tape-revolver-has-definitive-proof-fbi-is-hiding-critical-footage-of-jan-6-pipe-bomber/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">camera pointing directly at the DNC bench</a> during a different time period, and that the same camera therefore should have captured a clearer shot of the suspect placing the bomb.
&#8220;We believe there are probably alternate videos of the January 5 suspect that they have not released to us,&#8221; Massie said.
Both bombs allegedly sat undetected for some 17 hours, until coincidentally being discovered within minutes of each other, virtually at the exact moment that tensions escalated at the Capitol.
D’Antuono, who said he ran the investigation for two years, testified that he did not know whether the FBI ever interviewed the person who found the DNC bomb. <a href="https://www.theblaze.com/revealed-a-plainclothes-capitol-cop-found-the-dnc-pipe-bomb" target="_blank" rel="noopener">The Blaze</a> reported this week that the person was an undercover police officer, citing congressional sources.
The FBI said the suspect walked some <a href="https://www.fbi.gov/contact-us/field-offices/washingtondc/news/press-releases/fbi-washington-field-office-releases-video-and-additional-information-regarding-the-pipe-bomb-investigation-090821" target="_blank" rel="noopener">six blocks </a>between the two locations, in one of the most heavily policed and monitored locations in the world, but it has not managed to identify even the suspect’s gender, despite offering a $500,000 reward for information.
Massie said he visited the alley between the RNC and the Capitol Hill Club, a Republican hangout, where the second purported bomb was found. “There’s all kinds of cameras back there, private individuals have cameras,” he said, adding that he&#8217;s been told by area residents that the FBI did not ask them if they had seen anything until nearly a year later.
“This looks really bad for the FBI, ATF, anyone involved, Secret Service” Massie said. “To defend the integrity of their organizations they need to provide answers.”

Police officers mill about and let children cross the road after a bomb was reported outside the DNC while Kamala Harris was inside on January 6. / US House of Representatives

The FBI Said There Were ‘Pipe Bombs’ On January 6. Evidence Points To A Coverup, Congressman Says

Senator <a class="c-link c-link--focus-visible" href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/tim-scott" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer" data-stringify-link="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/tim-scott" data-sk="tooltip_parent">Tim Scott</a> (R-SC) pressed Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen on Friday over a report that said federal officials instructed banks to turn over customer data of transactions flagged with terms like “TRUMP” or “MAGA.”
Scott’s letter came after documents obtained by the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government showed that the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) had flagged the terms as part of its investigation related to the January 6 riot. Banks were also told to look at transactions involving the purchase of religious texts and outdoor sporting goods stores like Cabela’s. 
“These allegations, if true, represent a flagrant violation of Americans’ privacy and the improper targeting of U.S. citizens for exercising their constitutional rights without due process,” Scott, the ranking member of the Senate Banking Committee, <a href="https://www.banking.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/rmscottlettertofincen11924.pdf" target="_blank" rel="noopener">wrote</a>. 
FinCEN reportedly asked banks to help federal law enforcement identify transactions of persons of interest using specific typologies and Merchant Category Codes after January 6, 2021. The letter was also sent to FinCEN Director Andrea Gacki.
In the letter, Scott asked Yellen if the Treasury Department had any role in soliciting private financial data from the banks and whether it was directed to do so by the FBI or the Justice Department. Scott also asked Yellen about what religious texts were seen as indicative of extremism and why sporting goods store shoppers were targeted in the federal investigation. 
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“These allegations are particularly concerning given past efforts to weaponize the financial system and payment activity against politically disfavored, lawful activity. Under the Obama- administration’s ‘Operation Choke Point’ initiative, the Department of Justice (DOJ) coordinated with federal financial regulators to intimidate financial institutions into denying services to legitimate businesses that the administration was ideologically opposed to, including gun retailers,” Scott said. 
On Thursday, House Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/feds-flagged-terms-like-trump-maga-for-banks-to-comb-through-customer-data-jordan-says" target="_blank" rel="noopener">requested an interview</a> with Noah Bishoff, the former director of the Office of Stakeholder Integration and Engagement in the Strategic Operations Division of FinCEN, to discuss the report. 
The letter asks Bishoff to be prepared to speak to lawmakers about what safeguards FinCEN has in place to safeguard constitutional liberties, the government’s use of private financial information, and coordination between FinCEN and the private sector.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen Holds Meeting Of The Financial Stability Oversight Council

Tim Scott Presses Treasury Secretary Over Flagging Of ‘Trump,’ ‘MAGA’ Transactions

Janet Yellen

Tim Scott

Treasury Department

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