Delayed Pipe Bomb Arrest Reveals a Partisan Biden FBI
by John D. O’Connor
The following is an article originally published on American Greatness. Read it HERE.
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There are commonsensical explanations for the FBI’s five-year delay in solving the January 5-6, 2021, pipe bomb case. But, as would be expected, the New York Times and other mainstream media chose to point to “right-wing” conspiracy theories circulating during the long investigative dormancy, rather than the blatant pro-Biden, anti-Trump FBI partisanship, which likely caused the delay.
To be sure, various conservative commentators, prominently among them Dan Bongino, had claimed that the failure to solve the case showed that the pipe bomb was just an FBI “setup” to smear Donald Trump for January 6.
This theory was not lacking in solid inference if one assumes a straight-shooting FBI not obstructed by a biased White House. Specifically, the Biden White House and Congressional Democrats, using their media megaphone, transmogrified the democratic January 6 protests into far more than the isolated, emotional ugliness they were. In short, the January 6 protest was an understandable populist reaction to an election for which any democracy worth its name should be ashamed.
The January 5-6, 2021, pipe bombs were planted near both the DNC and RNC headquarters. It was possible that whoever was responsible was a pro-Trumper, which was just fine with Biden loyalists. Since the crime, as long as it was unsolved, did not spoil their January 6 narrative, avoiding any solution was a no-risk strategy. In short, no one at the FBI or White House wanted to solve this crime.
In other words, actually nailing the perpetrator might yield an answer that would puncture the juvenile theater of anti-MAGA paranoia that Congress was enacting ad infinitum. The pipe bomb criminal, after all, could be pro-Biden and anti-protest, as we know existed within the January 6 melee, such as “Activist John” Sullivan of Antifa, a group that we are still lectured does not exist. In short, there was nothing for Biden or the FBI elite to gain from solving this pipe bomb case.
But it was clear that the bomb planting was solvable with nothing more than hard, gritty sleuthing. According to the FBI’s own records, the suspect could be seen in surveillance footage wearing “Nike Air Max Speed Turf” shoes, which are black and gray with the yellow Nike logo. Fewer than 25,000 of these shoes were sold between August 2018 and January 2021. Furthermore, only a small percentage of the shoes had been sold in the D.C. metropolitan area, the most logical focus of investigation. Even more narrowing was the suspect’s 5’7” height.
The bomb was made from certain galvanized steel pipes with end caps, each with an identified serial number. So, identifying the possible seller would be drudgery, but not complicated work.
It seemed clear to any observer that the FBI could solve this case, if it so desired, even if it took some months. But at the same time, the FBI was deeply involved in conducting an energetic dragnet throughout the country for anyone who might have breathed near the January 6 protest.
While the FBI was conducting a lengthy, time-consuming dragnet searching for January 6 cell phone use and D.C. hotel receipts, accompanied by interviews throughout the country, there appeared to be nothing but official apathy on the pipe bomb investigation.
One rational conclusion, therefore, was ineluctable: the FBI was not investigating the pipe bomb case, to the point of an apparent cover-up. Since the Biden White House, in contrast to this languor, was clearly pushing the January 6 protest with thousands of agents, one further, highly rational conclusion was that the FBI was covering up the pipe bomb crime for political purposes.
In furtherance of this rational deduction, perhaps the “crime” was not a true crime at all but, rather, a “setup,” a fabricated crime pushed by the FBI to help its incoming Biden bosses point to Trump’s supporters.
The truth, we now know, was very close to these suppositions. There was, in fact, a deliberate cover-up by the FBI, and there was a political motive to it. But there had been a real crime, not a fabricated one. So, the “conspiracy theories” were quite close to the mark and logically sensible. They depended on the rational inference that if this had been a real crime, not a setup, the FBI would have investigated and solved it.
That the FBI had not been seriously investigated was proven on January 2, 2025, as the FBI belatedly released new surveillance footage and informed the public of the suspect’s 5’7” height. Please note that this important public disclosure, which could help identify the suspect, was made only as Trump was about to take office. So, with sufficient investigative rigor, the crime was soon solved in eleven months, or about eight months after Kash Patel and Dan Bongino were finally in place as the Director and Deputy Director of the FBI, respectively. The FBI had not needed five years.
The media’s conclusion today, therefore, should have been that Biden’s FBI had ignored this case for political purposes and that the conservative suspicions of partisan motive were substantially well-founded, if slightly off in the application by some rightfully suspicious observers.
But it should not surprise us that the media, which had shrugged off the FBI’s lassitude for over four years, now emphasized the assertedly wild conspiracy theories of the right as the real story of the recent arrest. The New York Times sneered, “Mr. Bongino attempted a tire-shredding U-turn…” This reference was meant to smear Bongino, but it ignored that, when he voiced his suspicions about an FBI setup, he did not possess the investigative file. And, yes, it ignored that his prior doubts were not paranoid at all but highly rational, as we show here.
If there had been a misjudgment on the right, it was that the FBI would not fail to do its duty. At least if this had been an FBI setup ordered by the White House, the complicit FBI would be acting as ordered, even if it were nakedly partisan. The much-maligned “right wing” erred only, it seems, in not being cynical enough about the FBI, which was, in fact, neglecting its duty.
One conclusion did not change and was indeed confirmed by the arrest: the mainstream media will contort itself acrobatically to avoid any discussion that our democracy did not see its finest hour in the 2020 election. The more they can cast conservatives as wild conspiracy theorists, the more they can plausibly argue that all criticisms of the 2020 election were irrationally misguided.
Rather than see the recent arrest of the pipe bomber as proving a politicized, corrupt FBI, the media has resorted to its tired tale that any alleged democratic failing is just another right-wing “conspiracy theory.” And rather than being the watchdogs of democracy (a critical part of which is fair elections), the mainstream media has chosen to be a watchdog for America’s corrupt election fixers, our modern Tammany Hall.
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John D. O’Connor is a former federal prosecutor and the San Francisco attorney who represented W. Mark Felt during his revelation as Deep Throat in 2005. O’Connor is the author of the books The Mysteries of Watergate: What Really Happened and Postgate: How the Washington Post Betrayed Deep Throat, Covered Up Watergate and Began Today’s Partisan Advocacy Journalism.