The J6 Pipe Bomber Arrest Only Made the Conspiracy Theories Worse

MAGA has had the most predictable response to learning the suspect is an election truther.

Dan Bongino, deputy director of the FBI, on December 4, 2025 announcing the arrest of Brian Cole Jr., who allegedly placed pipe bombs near the Republican and Democratic National Committee offices on January 6, 2021. Bongino is flanked by (from left) Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for Washington, D.C.; ATF Special Agent in Charge Anthony Spotswood; and Attorney General Pam Bondi. (Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)

Pipe Bomb Blues

For years, right-wing media outlets have ruminated on the mysterious pipe bomber who planted explosives outside the Democratic and Republican National Committees ahead of January 6th. Was it a deep-state provocateur working for the FBI? Or perhaps a liberal out to ruin Trump’s otherwise legitimate hopes of overturning the election?

Glenn Beck has called the pipe bomber’s identity “the biggest scandal of my lifetime, maybe in the last hundred years.” During his talk-radio days before he became deputy FBI director, even Dan Bongino was convinced something nefarious was afoot. In Bongino’s telling, the FBI knew the pipe-bomber’s identity but were choosing to cover it up because its disclosure would be politically embarrassing. Referring to himself in the third person as “Danny Boobotz,” Bongino declared he had been right about a coverup all along.

“It’s a freakin’ inside job!” Bongino said in early January.

So right-wing media figures should have been relieved on Thursday when the FBI announced the arrest of 30-year-old Brian Cole Jr. as the pipe bomber suspect. Yet the response from conservative media has overwhelmingly been the opposite. They believe that