The Virginia man arrested and charged with placing pipe bombs outside of the Republican and Democratic National Committees the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the U.S. Capitol told investigators in a lengthy confession that he wasn’t targeting the joint session of Congress that was convening to certify former President Joe Biden’s election win, according to a new court filing.
In a multiple-hour interview with authorities following his Dec. 4 arrest, Brian Cole allegedly admitted his actions in placing the pipe bombs after initially denying any involvement, prosecutors said.
Cole denied in the interview being an openly political person, but said in the wake of the 2020 election, he began following news on YouTube and Reddit and felt like “something was wrong” and that people who felt “that their votes are like just being thrown away” were being ignored, according to prosecutors.
“When asked why he placed the devices at the RNC and DNC, the defendant responded, ‘I really don’t like either party at this point,'” prosecutors said in their filing, describing the interview. “[Cole] also explained that the idea to use pipe bombs came from his interest in history, specifically the Troubles in Ireland. The defendant denied that his actions were directed toward Congress or related to the proceedings scheduled to take place on January 6.”
Cole allegedly said in the interview that he had actually intended for the devices to detonate and set 60-minute timers on both after planting them outside of the DNC and RNC. After leaving them, he said he went to his car, picked up food from a restaurant in Virginia and then returned home.
C.D. Hylton High School
“According to the defendant, he was not really thinking about how people would react when the bombs detonated, although he hoped there would be news about it,” the filing said. “The defendant stated that he had not tested the devices before planting them. He claimed that when he learned that the devices did not detonate, he was ‘pretty relieved,’ and asserted that he placed the devices at night because he did not want to kill people.”
After Cole saw himself on the news in videos released by the FBI seeking tips on his identity, Cole said he discarded all of his bombmaking materials at a nearby dump and said he never told anyone about his actions in the nearly 5 years since Jan. 6. They also say over the past years he appeared to wipe data from his personal cell phone “nearly one thousand times.”
Prosecutors revealed the alleged details of Cole’s confession in a filing urging a judge to keep him detained pending trial, arguing his alleged actions and choice of the DNC and RNC as targets “demonstrates the extreme and deeply dangerous nature of his conduct.”
“In his own words, the defendant did so because he did not ‘like either party,’ but ‘they were in charge’ and thus were, in the defendant’s mind, an appropriate target for extreme acts of violence,” prosecutors said. “The defendant’s choice of targets risked the lives not only of innocent pedestrians and office workers but also of law enforcement, first responders, and national political leaders who were inside of the respective party headquarters or drove by them on January 6, 2021, including the Vice President-elect and Speaker of the House.”
The government added it was ultimately a factor of “luck, not lack of effort” that the devices failed to detonate and no one was harmed.
Cole is set to appear in court on Tuesday for his detention hearing at 1 p.m.
ABC News has reached out to Cole’s attorneys for a comment.