(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) CNN anchor Jake Tapper was accused of racial profiling and mocked for his shoddy reporting after claiming Thursday that the accused Jan. 6 pipe-bomber was white.
Following the announcement by the FBI that Brian Cole Jr. had been arrested in connection with the nearly five-year-old investigation, Tapper identified the suspect as a “30-year-old white man from the D.C. suburbs.”
Evidence, however, clearly showed that Cole was black, leaving some to wonder what motivated Tapper to inject race into the report.
Journalist and social-media influencer Nick Sortor observed that “CNN can’t help themselves but push anti-white rhetoric.”
Several other influential accounts weighed in, including the account @AutismCapital, which said Tapper was “instinctually programmed to lie” and was “Literally an NPC.” An NPC, or non-player character, is a gaming term used in online multiplayer games to refer to a computer-controlled character that cannot deviate from its script.
Others mocked the ongoing incompetence of Tapper, who coyly rebuked himself and fellow media hacks in his recent book, Original Sin, for failing to report on the infirmities of former President Joe Biden.
“Jake is sharp as a tack,” said X user John Putney in response to a post from influencer Benny Johnson. “Nothing gets past him. Dude’s elite!”
Jake is sharp as a tack. Nothing gets past him. Dude’s elite!
— One Man Mutiny Shooting Spitballs at the Moon (@putneyjk) December 5, 2025
Reports indicated that the bail-bond company run by Cole’s father had previously worked to release illegal immigrants and had actively clashed with the Department of Homeland Security.
Crump Sr. also was represented in a case by notorious social-justice attorney Benjamin Crump, who rose to fame for representing the family of George Floyd.
Brian Cole, the J6 pipe bomber, is from a family that runs a bail bond service for illegal immigrants.
They were represented by Ben Crump.
I'm gonna go on a limb and say he is not MAGA. pic.twitter.com/kvbojCeiwl
— Carmine Sabia (@CarmineSabia) December 4, 2025
“Ben Crump Law represented Brian Cole Sr. in late 2021 in a racial discrimination matter involving his Tennessee-based company, Free At Last Bail Bonding,” Crump’s office told the New York Post. “The engagement lasted less than a month.”
Crump Sr. also donated $3,000 earlier this year to a far-left state legislator in Tennessee, Vincent Dixie, according to records from the Federal Election Commission.
Despite strong indications that his family was anything but “MAGA,” media outlets on Friday continued to push the narrative that Cole was a rabid Trump supporter pushed to the brink by the belief that the 2020 election was stolen.
“During interviews with the FBI, the suspect arrested in the pipe bomb probe told investigators that he believed the 2020 election was stolen, providing perhaps the first indication of a possible motive,” CNN claimed.
Leftist media has often been slammed over its double standard in refusing to report the race of criminal suspects when the crimes don’t fit a particular political narrative.
After Shane Tamura, a black mass shooter, killed four people, including an off-duty New York Police Department officer, in a Manhattan office building, conservative activist Charlie Kirk—less than two months before his own assassination—noted that some media reports claimed Tamura might have been white.
When a criminal suspect is black or brown, why does the mainstream media either refuse to report their ethnicity or wrongly report they’re “possibly white?”
🤔@CNN
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) July 29, 2025
Blue cities also have been called out recently for doctoring police reports to claim black and Hispanic criminals were white.
In one timely example, a Somalia-born city official indicted for stealing guns was listed as “white” in court documents.
Cannot make this up… The Somalian city councilor elect and school board member in Maine who was just indicted for allegedly stealing guns is listed as “white”
.@TheMaineWire asked the police about it and police said it was a “typo”
These “mistakes” always go one way… https://t.co/OWqS7HtN7h pic.twitter.com/IqGT41lOi8
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) December 3, 2025
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
