It’s been fully 19 months since the events of January 6, and the FBI’s explanation for the January 6 pipe bombs is in fundamental conflict with a growing body of widely available facts. Revolver has chronicled the chasm between the official story and the mounting inconsistencies here, here and here.
But five facts about the pipe bombs are particularly strange, and their significance has never been fully explicated or connected. We will attempt to do so here.
Those five facts are:
- The pipe bombs — according to the Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sund and Inspector General — were planted as a “diversion” to distract law enforcement shortly before 1 p.m., when the breach of the Capitol’s perimeter was just getting started. According to the official timeline, the breach started just one minute after Capitol Police were informed about the pipe bombs just two to three city blocks away.
- The pipe bomber used an old-fashioned mechanical timer with a one hour max time setting, but planted the bombs at roughly 8 p.m. the night before January 6 — 17 hours before they were found.
- The pipe bombs were constructed with no remote detonation ability, meaning their purpose as a diversion relied solely on the “luck” of being found at the right time, between noon and 1 p.m., to match the one-hour timer appearing to target the 1 p.m. Congressional certification vote.
- The first pipe bomb was found at 12:40 p.m., with 20 minutes left on the timer, perfectly matching the exact timing needed both to “divert” police as the breach began at 12:50 p.m., and to convince police the bomb was timed to the 1 p.m. Congressional vote.
- The timer didn’t just have 20 minutes left. It was left stuck on the 20 minute dial.
Did the pipe bomber just happen to luck into the craziest coincidence of the century — that his pipe bombs happened to be discovered at just the right time to create the desired diversion from the initial attack on the Capitol perimeter that began at 12:50 p.m., just ten minutes before Congress’ 1:00 p.m. session to certify the electoral votes?
Or did the pipe bomber somehow know the bombs would be found at exactly 20 minutes to 1 p.m. — and if he did know that, how did he know it?
A careful analysis of the implications of such questions turns out to be absolutely devastating to the official narrative of the January 6 pipe bombs.
Join us as we examine the issue in greater detail…
The Diversion Theory
Stephen Sund, the Chief of the Capitol Police on the day of January 6, testified in numerous written and oral statements that he strongly believed the pipe bombs were not planted so much to detonate, but rather to divert law enforcement resources away from the Capitol as the attack on the perimeter began at 12:50 (the barricade was actually penetrated at 12:53).
In fact, Sund, the Capitol Police Chief, cited the pipe bombs being discovered at the same time as the initial attack on the Capitol perimeter as being one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that January 6 itself was a “coordinated” attack.
Here is Stephen Sund in his own words:
“We were dealing with two pipe bombs that were specifically set right off the edge of our perimeter to, what I suspect, draw resources away,” Sund told lawmakers. “I think there was significant coordination with this attack.”
The Capitol Police Inspector General was similarly struck by the timing of the pipe bombs’ discovery, and seemed to insinuate that the diversion theory is the most likely explanation for such a pitch perfect coincidence in timing between Capitol police being alerted to pipe bombs at 12:49 PM and and the initial attack on the west side perimeter of the Capitol at 12:50 PM:
During a House Oversight Committee hearing in May, D.C. Capitol Police Inspector General Michael Bolton said that when the pipe bombs were discovered the morning of Jan. 6, three teams left to investigate the threat, leaving just one team in charge of protecting the Capitol.
“If those pipe bombs were intended to be a diversion, it worked,” Bolton testified.
Indeed, it’s hard to conceive of a viable alternative to the diversion theory. The amateur pipe bombs were simply dropped off, and according to surveillance footage provided by the FBI, they were dropped off at roughly 8 p.m. the night before with a dud one-hour timer mechanical timer attached.
For reference, here is an image of the pipe bomb discovered at a park bench just feet away from the DNC building:
Visual inspection indicates twelve intervals on the mechanical kitchen timer clock, suggesting that the device is a typical radial dial, mechanical one hour kitchen timer with each interval representing five minutes. There are rare two-hour mechanical timers in which each interval represents ten rather than five minutes, though this timer doesn’t appear to be one of these models—and even if it were it would not change our analysis.
Note: There also exist 24-hour mechanical timers, though they look far different and more sophisticated than the ones used in the DNC and RNC pipe bombs.
The following CBS report provides further corroboration that the timer used in the pipe bombs is a one-hour mechanical kitchen timer with no remote detonation capabilities:
The FBI said the bombs were placed outside the RNC and DNC the night before the attack, between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. January 5. According to a source familiar with the investigation, the FBI has been reviewing hundreds of videos taken around that time.
According to a report obtained by CBS News, the bombs contained only one method of detonation — a 60-minute kitchen timer. The report — which was written by the National Explosives Task Force, a multi-agency group that coordinates explosive expertise for law enforcement and intelligence agencies — suggested there was no evidence of a second or remote detonation method such as a cell phone.
By the way, for members of Congress reading this (and there are many), this National Explosives Task Force Report will be one of the very first things we’ll need to subpoena—it’s outrageous that CBS News is sitting on this report that has gone virtually undiscussed in the media.
For reference, below is an image of the pipe bomb discovered next to the RNC building. Though the image is less clear than that of the DNC pipe bomb, it is clear enough to see that it’s the same type of mechanical timer as used in the DNC pipe bomb:
If the timers actually worked, and they actually caused the devices to detonate, they couldn’t have served as a “diversion” to the breach team attacking the Capitol perimeter, because they would have detonated around 9 p.m. on January 5th and hit mostly abandoned buildings long past the end of business hours. The effect of this would have been the opposite of the diversion Sund postulates, and likely would have resulted in reinforced security at and around the Capitol for the duration of the 6th; security which may have even prevented the Capitol breach entirely.
The diversion effect in question also wouldn’t have worked even if the pipe bombs had gone off or were simply discovered anytime during the morning on the 6th. Again, the discovery of such bombs so close to the Capitol in the morning of the 6th would have meant evacuations and reinforced security around the Capitol far earlier on, making it much more difficult for a breach to occur later on in the day.
For the diversion effect to work, the pipe bombs would have had to be discovered in a manner that was pretty closely synchronized with the initial attack on the Capitol perimeter at 12:50.
It appears that the only way the “diversion” theory makes sense is if the pipe bomber knew someone would specifically discover and report the devices to authorities shortly before 1 p.m.
And that’s where things start to get weird. As mentioned in the summary above, not only was the first pipe bomb discovered near the RNC building at 12:40, it was discovered with the mechanical timer actually stuck on the 20 minute dial, as confirmed in this Madison Magazine piece entitled, “A Madison woman found the RNC pipe bomb in D.C.” (emphasis ours):
At noon on Wednesday, Jan. 6, Karlin Younger, working from home in Washington, D.C., decided to use the lunch hour to do laundry.
…
Even though she’s now in D.C., Younger has still worked remotely since the pandemic. Her apartment is in Washington’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, just a couple of blocks from the Capitol itself.
To reach the laundry room, Younger must walk out the front of her building and walk around to the back via an alleyway that’s shared with the Republican National Committee building, which is located at 310 First St. Southeast.
“It’s an old city block with the buildings flush together,” Younger says. She started her laundry, returned to her apartment, and then around 12:40 p.m. went back out to put her clothes in the dryer.
Younger closed the back gate and as she did so, looked down at what she thought was a piece of garbage or recycling intended for the cans that sit near the gate.
Then she looked a little closer.
“It was right next to the garbage can,” she says. “I saw a tangle of wires. I looked closer and saw a six-inch pipe capped on both ends. Then I saw a timer that was stuck on the number 20. It was a radial dial.”
Younger peered closer. Was it 20 seconds ticking down?
“Thankfully, it was 20 minutes showing on the dial,” she says.
The pipe bomb’s 12:40 p.m. discovery enabled Capitol police to began responding at 12:49, just one minute before the first and decisive attack on the West Capitol perimeter began. In other words, we see nearly perfect timing to divert resources away from the breach. Not only was the timing of the RNC pipe bomb discovery nearly perfect from the standpoint of diverting from the 12:50 p.m. attack on the Capitol barricades, it was precisely perfect from the stand-point of lining up with the 1:00 p.m. beginning of the election certification process at the Capitol. Indeed, the bomb was discovered at 12:40 p.m. with 20 minutes left on the timer, indicating that it was set to go off at the precise moment the congressional proceeding was set to begin.
How remarkable that the pipe bomb was discovered at the exact perfect time to both divert resources from the initial breach of the Capitol and to create the impression that a MAGA terrorist intended the bomb to go off at exactly the moment the controversial election certification proceedings in Congress were to begin!
But that presents a big problem for the Feds: it turns out none of the people who found the pipe bombs were Trump supporters.
For some reason, Capitol Police Chief Stephen Sund thought the RNC pipe bomb was found by an RNC building employee, but the current official story is that he was mistaken.
As indicated in the excerpt above, public record currently maintains that the GOP device was found randomly by a pedestrian called Karlin Younger on the way to do laundry. For more details on Younger’s background, we recommend that everyone read Julie Kelly’s excellent piece on the pipe bombs at American Greatness.
If the official story of the RNC pipe bomb’s discovery seems like a remarkable coincidence, the fact that the DNC pipe bomb wasn’t discovered until after the RNC pipe bomb is arguably stranger and less plausible still.
The DNC and RNC bombs, according to the FBI, were not even planted in the dead of night.
The DNC pipe bomb was planted at 8 p.m., and it wasn’t buried in some ditch somewhere. It was planted right out in the open by a park bench right on the corner of South Capitol and Canal Street:
So the pipe bomber – according to the official story — was counting on no one using that scooter and having a functional right eyeball for the next 16 hours. The pipe bomber was also counting on no one sitting on either of these two giant park benches in a high-foot traffic zone the entire next morning. Anyone living near or working in the DNC building getting their morning coffee and sitting on these benches between 6 a.m. through 11 a.m. would have completely ruined the pipe bomber’s alleged “diversion” plan.
A Google street map walk through of the pipe bombers path depicts guards in front of the DNC building within spitting distance of where the pipe bomb was planted:
We took the above image from Google street view, so that particular image was just from some random day. But January 6 wasn’t just any day–it was an especially high traffic day in that area around the Capitol, making it still more implausible that no one would notice the pipe bomb until after the RNC pipe bomb had been reported at 12:49 p.m.
It gets even worse. The DNC pipe bomb didn’t just have to evade the detection of passersby, pedestrians, police officers, and routine security guards at the DNC building—it had to evade the detection of the United States Secret Service:
Kamala Harris, then vice-president-elect, drove within yards of a pipe bomb left outside the Democratic National Committee on January 6 2021 and remained inside for nearly two hours before the bomb was found, it was reported on Monday.
Harris’s proximity to the bomb was known previously, but not how close or for how long. CNN reported the new details in the case, part of alarming events in Washington on the day Congress met to certify Joe Biden’s election victory over Donald Trump.
…
The White House and Harris’s office did not comment on CNN’s pipe bomb report. A Secret Service spokesperson told CNN that “in order to maintain operational security”, it did not comment on protection arrangements.
CNN said a “law enforcement source” said the Secret Service “swept the interior of the building, the driveway, parking deck and entrances and exits prior to [Harris’s] arrival” and Harris was “evacuated using an alternate route away from the bomb”.
For the pipe bombs to have had the desired diversionary effect (synchronized with the initial attack on the Capitol and the beginning of the 1:00 p.m. certification process) the pipe bomb planted out in the open by a park bench outside of the DNC would have to have evaded detection by pedestrians, motorists, scooter users, DNC security guards, police, and the U.S. Secret Service. The pipe bomb was mere feet away from the entrance to the DNC building, and the Secret Service we are told simply overlooked it during its sweep of the “parking deck and entrances and exits” of the DNC building prior to VP-elect Harris’ arrival.
As icing on the cake, we must note reports that the pipe bombs contained live explosive material:
The device was considered “live,” meaning it contained viable explosive material, according to Steven Blando, a spokesman for the Washington Field Division of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. It was disarmed at the site, Blando told The Post.
Around 1:15 p.m., officials have said, the second bomb was discovered several blocks away next to a bench outside the DNC. It, too, was live and was disarmed on site, Blando said.
This would mean that not only did the Secret Service have to overlook the pipe bomb on a visual inspection during a sweep of the DNC premises, but that the Secret Service’s bomb sniffing dogs had to have mysteriously gotten Covid on January 6th such that they weren’t able to sniff out explosive material just feet away?
Remember, this is the same Secret Service whose text messages have all mysteriously been wiped and permanently disappeared.
Again, the fact that the DNC pipe bomb was not found until after the RNC pipe bomb was reported is just as astonishing as the fact that the RNC pipe bomb was discovered at 12:40 with the timer stuck at 20 minutes left, perfectly coinciding with the breach of the Capitol and the 1:00 p.m. Congressional certification proceeding. And yet, both of these independently remarkable “coincidences” had to occur together in order for the “diversion” to work.
Meanwhile, a very strange report from CBS journalist Scott McFarlane last April noted that the “FBI is concerned possible witnesses think pipe bombs were planted on Jan. 6.”
FBI tells me it has CANVASSED the Capitol Hill neighborhood looking for security camera video & witnesses to the person who planted pipe bombs outside RNC & DNC headquarters on Jan. 5
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) April 13, 2021
FBI is concerned possible witnesses think pipe bombs were planted on Jan. 6.
Here's clip ==> pic.twitter.com/dpRHfDgerI
Witnesses saw the pipe bomber planting the bombs on January 6, not at 8 p.m. on January 5? What’s going on here? Don’t we have a video of the pipe bomber planting the pipe bomb, so we can verify the truth here?
Indeed, as we conclusively demonstrated in our previous bombshell piece, the FBI absolutely has the money shot surveillance footage of the pipe bomber allegedly planting the DNC pipe bomb. For some reason, however, the FBI is refusing to release this critical piece of footage to the public:
We know FBI is hiding critical footage of the DNC pipe bomber
— Darren J. Beattie 🌐 (@DarrenJBeattie) August 5, 2022
Will DNC join us in demanding for its release? pic.twitter.com/NLcoJR0by9
The FBI is desperate for the public’s help in finding the pipe bomber, so why not release this critical footage?
Here is the public face of the pipe bomb investigation, Assistant Director in Charge of the Washington D.C. FBI Field office Steven D’Antuono, begging for the public’s help in identifying the pipe bomber:
If that name and face look familiar, we should remind our readers that Steven D’Antuono wasn’t always the Assistant Director of the D.C. FBI Field Office. Indeed, before D’Antuono enjoyed this coveted post he ran the FBI Field Office in Detroit Michigan, where he oversaw the absolutely disastrous failure of an entrapment operation known as the Michigan Kidnapping plot. Revolver roundly skewered that plot in a piece entitled, “Unindicted Co-Conspirators in 1/6 Cases Raise Disturbing Questions of Federal Foreknowledge”:
A look at the annotated indictment reveals that at every level of the [Michigan Kidnapping] plot, FBI operatives played the most important leadership roles:
-The plot’s “explosives expert,” who the plotters were accused of planning to buy bombs from, turned out to be an FBI agent.
-The head of transportation for the militia outfit turned out to be an undercover FBI agent.
-The head of security for the militia outfit turned out to be an undercover FBI informant.
-At least two undercover FBI informants were active participants in the initial June 6, 2020 meeting in which the plot to storm Capitol buildings was allegedly hatched — meaning at least three FBI informants infiltrated before the conspiracy even started.
Indeed, Revolver News was one of the very first to report that just days after the so-called kidnapping plotters were arrested in October (12 out of the 26 “plotters” turned out to be feds) FBI Director Christopher Wray quietly promoted D’Antuono to the key position in the Washington D.C. field office that he currently enjoys.
It is important to emphasize that Wray promoted D’Antuono to the D.C. post in October, which means that D’Antuono is not just the FBI’s key investigator for January 6 post facto, but that Christopher Wray positioned D’Antuono to his D.C. post in the critical months leading up to and including January 6th. This means that the man who oversaw the Michigan Kidnapping entrapment operation is not only in charge of the pipe bomb and January 6 investigations, but he was in charge at the D.C. office in the months leading up to and during January 6 and January 5, when the pipe bomber planted the bombs.
Why, of all people, would Christopher Wray choose D’Antuono to fill that post during this time?
Note Christopher Wray’s body language when Senator Ted Cruz mentions D’Antuono’s name in a recent exchange:
Of all of the strange coincidences above in relation to the so-called January 6 pipe bomber, we must add one more.
That is, the exact circumstances of the pipe bomb were actually predicted by at least one government agency. Of particular interest in this regard is a Washington D.C. Fusion Intelligence Center run by an individual called Donell Harvin, who served as Chief of Homeland Security and Intelligence for the District of Columbia. Consider the following information about Harvin’s office’s concerns prior to January 6 from a Washington Post report (emphasis ours):
For days, Donell Harvin and his team had spotted increasing signs that supporters of President Donald Trump were planning violence when Congress met to formalize the electoral college vote, but federal law enforcement agencies did not seem to share his sense of urgency. On Saturday, Jan. 2, he picked up the phone and called his counterpart in San Francisco, waking Mike Sena before dawn.
Sena listened with alarm. The Northern California intelligence office he commanded had also been inundated with political threats flagged by social media companies, several involving plans to disrupt the joint session or hurt lawmakers on Jan. 6.
He organized an unusual call for all of the nation’s regional homeland security offices — known as fusion centers — to find out what others were seeing. Sena expected a couple dozen people to get on the line that Monday. But then the number of callers hit 100. Then 200. Then nearly 300. Officials from nearly all 80 regions, from New York to Guam, logged on.
In the 20 years since the country had created fusion centers in response to the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Sena couldn’t remember a moment like this. For the first time, from coast to coast, the centers were blinking red. The hour, date and location of concern was the same: 1 p.m., the U.S. Capitol, Jan. 6.
But this does not exhaust the preternatural predictive powers of Donell Harvin’s Intelligence Fusion Center. The great Julie Kelly, in a must read report on the pipe bomb in American Greatness, brought to our attention quite a whopper from the same Washington Post report. Here it is in all it’s glory:
D.C.’s fusion center is one of only a handful in the country housed in a civilian agency and not a police department, making law enforcement reluctant at times to distribute sensitive intel about ongoing investigations.
Still, D.C. officials relied on it for intelligence, and Harvin assigned an analyst to each new permitted protest that might turn violent and tasked them with gaming out whether the city would be able to handle it.
The Jan. 6 assignment went to the office’s most junior analyst, who quickly became spooked about what he saw. Almost daily, he brought Harvin disturbing new posts found online.
…
By the time Harvin called a major planning meeting on Dec. 30, the young analyst was ready to present a worst-case scenario: Someone could plant an improvised explosive device near the Capitol, he said. With law enforcement distracted, extremists might then band together and attack government buildings, maybe even the Capitol.
Let’s get this straight. Donell Harvin’s D.C. Fusion Center had the foresight to predict the exact diversion scenario—namely, an explosive device planted near the Capitol, which would distract (divert) law enforcement from an attack on the Capitol, and predict the exact time that this would occur. Reviewing the quote above we see Donell Harvin’s Fusion Center was concerned specifically with January 6, U.S. Capitol, 1:00 p.m. And it just so happens that a pedestrian discovered a “diversionary” pipe bomb near the Capitol at the RNC building, and discovered this bomb at 12:40 with the timer of the bomb stuck at 20 minutes until detonation, which not only synchronized with the initial attack on the Capitol at 12:50 p.m., but lines up precisely with the 1:00 p.m. time that Donell’s Fusion center noted as a time of concern!
It appears that Donell Harvin’s fusion center was as prescient in its predictions as the pipe bomber was lucky that no one, including the Secret Service, prematurely discovered the out-in-the-open DNC pipe bomb in such a manner as to upset the perfect diversionary effect of the RNC pipe bomb’s discovery just minutes before the initial breach on the Capitol and the beginning of the certification proceedings at the Capitol.
But wait, there’s more!
Donell Harvin’s D.C. Field Office is not alone in its predictive powers in relation to January 6th. A recent report from the Epoch Times revealed the following, based on transcripts of interviews Ray Epps did with the FBI that Epoch Times claims to have in its possession:
When James Ray Epps Sr. first called the FBI regarding his January 2021 activities in Washington D.C., he didn’t mention how he implored protesters in several locations to go inside the Capitol, but he later told an agent that he expected a bomb would detonate on a side street near the Capitol.
Those are just two of the revelations in a collection of Epps-related material obtained by The Epoch Times, including FBI interview summaries, FBI audio recordings, transcripts, videos, and photographs.
In two interviews with the FBI in 2021, Epps explained his actions on Jan. 5 and Jan. 6. He admitted he was guilty of trespassing on restricted Capitol grounds and confessed to urging protesters to go to—and into—the Capitol on Jan. 6.
…
In an interview with FBI agents on March 3, 2021, Epps said he brought a first-aid kit in his backpack to Washington because he expected a terror attack.
“Yeah, I thought there might be a problem. That’s why I was there,” Epps told an FBI agent and an FBI Joint Terrorism Task Force officer in a meeting at the Phoenix office of Epps’s attorney, John Blischak.
Blischak told The Epoch Times he would comment after reviewing the FBI interview summary, but had not done so by press time.
“I was afraid they were going to set off an explosion on one of the side streets,” Epps said, according to a recording of the interview obtained by The Epoch Times. “So we tried to stay in the middle, tried to get there early, tried to stay away from the sides. And if something like that happened, I had a first-aid kit. I could help out.”
Epps told the agents the possibility of violence weighed heavily on his mind and he originally did not plan to travel to Washington. It was only when learning that his son, James Epps Jr., was going to the Trump rally that the senior Epps decided to go and keep an eye on his son, he said.
This means that Ray Epps was not just the only person on camera caught repeatedly urging people to go into the Capitol as early as January 5th, he also according to this interview claims to have some sort of advance knowledge or “intuition” that bombs would be planted near the Capitol. And sure enough, pipe bombs were found on January 6th only blocks away from the Capitol, and their discovery was timed perfectly to coincide with the initial 12:53 breach of the West side of the Capitol of which Ray Epps appears to have been a key orchestrator.
You would think this would be enough for the FBI to at least detain Epps for further questioning. Remarkably, however, the Epoch Times piece indicatesthat the Federal agents didn’t even think to ask Epps about the pipe bombs:
The agents did not press Epps on what led him to believe there would be an explosion, nor did they ask about the two alleged pipe bombs found outside the Republican and Democrat party headquarters, each just blocks from the Capitol. The RNC pipe bomb was placed near the corner of the Capitol Hill Club facing a side street, similar to the description Epps offered.
The devices did not detonate and the FBI has not arrested anyone in those cases.
But of course! Believe it or not, we’ve only begun to scratch the surface of the FBI’s mendacity regarding Epps, the pipe bomb, and the Fedsurrection.
Stay tuned for more unfinished business…