A federal judge ruled Monday that President Donald Trump’s generous pardon for the Jan. 6 rioters does not apply to a Virginia man accused of planting two pipe bombs in Washington, D.C., the night before the 2021 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol.
Prosecutors allege that Brian Cole Jr. planted the bombs outside the headquarters of the Republican and Democratic National Committees on the night of January 5, 2021. His lawyers argued in March that Cole should be covered by Trump’s pardon because the alleged conduct was “so inextricably and clearly connected” to the events at the Capitol on Jan. 6.
On his first day in office last year, Trump pardoned nearly every person convicted of the attack on the U.S. Capitol, marking the end of a sweeping four-year Justice Department investigation.
In a three-page order, U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali, an appointee of President Joe Biden, rejected Cole’s argument that he should be included in that pardon.
“Even assuming that the conduct Cole is accused of ‘related to the events that occurred at or near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021,’ the pardon is expressly limited to people who were ‘convicted of crimes’ related to those events,” Ali wrote. “Cole was not found guilty of the conduct in question when the President issued the pardon; Moreover, charges were brought against him only many months after the proclamation of the President.”
Cole is due back in court Wednesday for a status hearing.
When Cole’s lawyers asked the court in March to drop the lawsuit against him, a White House spokesman disputed the defense’s arguments.
“The homemade bombs were planted on January 5th. The pardon was specific to the events at or near the Capitol on January 6 and clearly does not apply to this scenario,” the official said in a statement to CNN at the time.
The FBI arrested Cole in December at the home where he lived with his parents. He pleaded not guilty in January to federal charges of transporting and attempting to use explosives.
The FBI alleges that Cole collected bomb-making supplies for months before leaving functional explosive devices outside political offices.
During an interview with the FBI, Cole told investigators he believed the 2020 election was stolen, CNN previously reported. Investigators also said they linked Cole’s phone data to cell towers in the Capitol Hill area of Washington, D.C. They said the calls and text messages he sent matched time stamps taken from surveillance cameras that showed the terrorist’s movements the evening he installed the devices.
CNN’s Evan Perez, Hannah Rabinowitz, Holmes Lybrand and Dugald McConnell contributed to this report.