(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) A recent video from cybersecurity expert and social-media influencer Mike Benz floated the theory that accused Jan. 6 pipe-bomber Brian Cole Jr. may be a patsy in a seditious conspiracy plotted during the months before the 2020 presidential election.
Benz pointed out that Hillary Clinton adviser and spirit-cooking aficionado John Podesta was the mastermind behind the Orwellian-named Transition Integrity Project, an alliance of NeverTrumpers who wargamed a series of four scenarios to overthrow the government if President Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden in the 2020 race.
Among the scenarios they floated were having several deep blue states — including California — secede from the union and presenting alternate slates of electors in highly contested swing states — the very thing for which lawfare activists subsequently attempted to prosecute Trump’s allies).
“John Podesta personally role-played that move — alternate electors — which sure played into a broader narrative of Democrats attempting to orchestrate an illegal coup,” Benz said on his podcast. “They knew — they wargamed — an illegal coup, and they wargamed what the perceived — the public perception that it was an illegal coup.”
The seditious scheme proved moot after Biden edged out Trump in November 2020, in an election chock full of allegations about illegal ballots and rigged voting machines.
🔥🔥WOWWWWWW.. Brian Cole Jr. was buying his first parts in June 2020 at the same time a secret multi-day WAR GAME meeting was occurring to PREVENT TRUMP FROM COMING INTO OFFICE.
“I want you to etch these words into your memory forever.. Provoke a breakdown on J6 as one of… pic.twitter.com/VJfBNdL4HI— Johnny St.Pete (@JohnMcCloy) December 8, 2025
But one threat remained: that Republicans might stage a revolt during the Joint Session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, to certify the election results.
Benz, looking at TIP’s original 22-page report, noted that the planning for a riot at the U.S. Capitol may have begun in June 2020, when Podesta — along with RINO ex-Republican National Committee chair Michael Steele and around 70 high-level military, intelligence and political power players — began anticipating the certification process.
Fearing their lawfare resources might be insufficient to overturn the outcome, TIP wrote that the coup “may well be a street fight, not a legal battle.”
Around the same time, Cole began purchasing the bomb-making material needed for the two explosive devices he planted at the RNC and DNC headquarters.
Benz suggested that Cole, whose family-run bail-bond business supported illegal immigration, may have been affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, which was being bankrolled by the powerful ESG arms of major corporations, as well as dark-money foreign investors.
“Almost every strategy to get rid of Trump is dependent on mass mobilization and, in particular, in large numbers of people taking to the streets,” the TIP report said. “… Their success will likely depend on supporting and resourcing new and emerging racial justice leaders.”
If Trump had won, the TIP plan would’ve had Democrats taking to the streets of D.C.
Instead, it was Trump supporters who joined what many argue was a “fed-surrection” psy-op to breach the Capitol, giving radical leftists both the distraction and scapegoat they needed to railroad a Biden presidency across the finish line.
“This is one of the most consequential moves in the whole game in order to make sure Trump could not take office, even if they even acknowledged that he clearly won the election,” Benz said.
Ben Sellers is a freelance writer and former editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
