(Ken Silva, Headline USA) The House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight held a hearing Tuesday to examine law enforcement’s response to the pipe bombs placed outside the RNC and DNC headquarters ahead of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill uprising.
At the hearing, subcommittee Chair Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., played surveillance footage of Secret Service agents and their bomb-sniffing bombs searching the DNC around 9:30 a.m. on Jan. 6—but failing to detect the pipe bomb. The DNC pipe bomb wasn’t discovered until a plainclothes Capitol Police officer found it around 1:05 p.m.—shortly before the protest was turning into a riot at Capitol Hill.
After the Capitol Police discovered the pipe bomb at 1:05 p.m., at least 30 vehicles and countless pedestrians passed nearby. Those passersby included Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, who was evacuated from the DNC after the discovery.
At Tuesday’s hearing, Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., explained how those series of events may make it impossible to successfully prosecute the pipe bomber, who also placed a device outside the RNC.
Griffith contended that a good defense lawyer would argue that because the Secret Service didn’t detect the bomb at 9:30 a.m., someone might have planted the bomb between that time and when it was discovered at 1:05 p.m. Therefore, even if the person seen on camera planting devices on Jan. 5 is identified, prosecutors will have a difficult time proving that the devices planted on Jan. 5 were the same as those discovered on Jan. 6.
NEW: US House Rep. Morgan Griffith highlights a glaring inaccuracy in the official story about explosives found on J6 in today's Committee Hearing on Pipe Bombs: The dog did not alert at the time stated by the police or FBI in sworn testimony. pic.twitter.com/lLziTJJj7I
— Craig R. Brittain (@RealBrittain) March 12, 2024
“Here’s what a good criminal defense attorney’s going to say: If you identified the individual who’s believed to place the bomb, then hours go by, and you had a search by the Secret Service at the DNC and the dog didn’t find the explosive—so clearly, the device [the defense attorney’s] client might have left there wasn’t the device that was determined to be the pipe bomb, because it wasn’t picked up by the bomb-sniffing dog,” Griffith argued.
Tuesday’s hearing builds on evidence released by Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Ky., last July, when he played video in Congress of the passerby—who now reportedly turns out to be undercover Capitol Police— “miraculously” finding a pipe bomb outside of the DNC headquarters.
Massie suggested at the time that the pipe bombs placed outside the DNC and RNC were distractions to divert law enforcement away from the Capitol, right around the time as the election protests were about to become violent.
“It was specifically at the same precise time to cause maximum distraction from the events going on at the Capitol,” he said last July. “It appears to me that that wasn’t a coincidence.”
Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.
