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THE Capitol riot’s biggest mystery remains unsolved four years on – with the January 6 pipe bomber still on the run.
The shadowy figure is yet to be tracked down and the FBI will be on lookout for him and other nefarious criminals ahead of Donald Trump’s second inauguration on Monday.
The security service is still hunting down the pipe bomber after he planted a device at the Republican HQ and Democrat HQ each in Washington DC.
The hooded villain struck the night before the 2020 election certification and the riot that stormed the Capitol building to try and stop it.
The FBI has released CCTV footage and appealed to the public for help in its search as it attempts to stop him from ever doing another attack.
Former FBI special agent James R. Fitzgerald said without catching the person “nothing can be ruled out” amid fears he could strike again.
The profiling expert, who caught the Unabomber, said the person could even be an agent of a foreign government, a woman, or a political extremist outside the traditional two parties.
Fitzgerald, also a forensic linguist, believes the bomber not striking again for four years shows he had “probably made his message”.
“Again, it can’t be ruled out [that the bomber would strike], but it looks like he’s had his time in the spotlight. It looks like he knows he did his job that day, whatever purpose it was to serve.
“He loves being this mystery man that no one can identify or they won’t identify,” Fitzgerald said.
The former FBI agent described bombers as a “different breed of criminal”.
He thinks the Capitol bomber is in “control of their senses, of their needs, of their motivations, of their wants” and isn’t beholden to an uncontrolled bombing compulsion.
Fitzgerald said the bomber was an “outlier” to him and far different from previous bombing cases he had worked on.
Bombers are typically highly organised detail-orientated but the January 6 bomber appeared to be an “amateur”.
Fitzgerald said: “This person seemed to be ambivalent, sort of rudderless, purposeless, not even sure what he was doing or where he was going.”
“A lot of them almost have a OCD type of disorder in terms of the meticulousness and the attention they pay to very little details.
“And that’s for a very utilitarian reason. If you mess up building your device you blow fingers off, hands, arms, or you’re killed.”
The bombs appeared to not work properly, the FBI said, showing Fitzgerald the bomber didn’t have the same attention to detail as other bombers.
He said: “So there’s a lot of this outlier activity, an outlier suspect which from every other case I’ve ever worked in this realm just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.”
He likened the bomber to the assassin of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy – Lee Harvey Oswald.
Fitzgerald said the bomber could have radicalised themselves with no clear motivation and not been part of a wider political conspiracy or alliance.
He said: “This person could have been following different websites in the dark web and and picking up clues of what to do, how to do it.
“And that’s where he formed his idea to do this.”
He thinks it is unlikely the person was a diversion for other rioters on January 6 and said the bombers mission was “unclear”.
“The way he’s snaking around the neighborhood, of course, of an hour, doubling back time and again sitting down on a bench, getting up, looking at his phone, just stopping and staring for a while.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if he was probably working with someone
or someone else, or others, and it would be the profile of that entity which would be more appropriate to build to identify just who this person was.”
Details of the bombing – with $500,000 reward
In a statement, the FBI has released detailed information about what the bomber did on the night of January 5.
They said: “Between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. Eastern Standard Time (EST) on January 5, 2021, an unknown individual placed two pipe bombs in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C.
“One pipe bomb was placed in an alley behind the headquarters of the Republican National Committee (RNC), located at 310 First Street Southeast, and the other was placed next to a park bench near the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (DNC), located at 430 South Capitol Street Southeast #3.
“The unknown individual wore a face mask, glasses, gloves, a grey hooded sweatshirt, and black and light grey Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes with a yellow logo.
“The individual carried a backpack.
“Some of the components of the devices include: 1×8-inch threaded galvanized pipes, end caps, kitchen timers, wires, metal clips and homemade black powder.”
FItzgerald said the hoodie, aviator sunglasses, and masked reminded him of the Unabomber sketch and the heavy clothing could hide other body modifications underneath.
“The Unabomber used to, he would shave or grow a mustache before he would plant some of his devices.
“He would put like wads of gum in his cheeks to make him look more heavyset, at least in his face.”
Fitzgerald said he believed the case hadn’t been solved yet was because the DoJ had prioritised going after rioters who made it inside the Capitol.
With a new FBI director under Trump, Fitzgerald said he hoped the case would finally be a priority and get solved.
“I’m thinking, in about 2 weeks there’s going to be a whole new task force put together, looking at specifically this case, looking to a lot of investigative files that were kept very secret and very tight.
“And that’ll be our best chance of finally resolving this thing.”
One of the key challenges for the FBI will be trying to prove any suspect is the bomber to win a criminal trial.
President-elect Trump claims the FBI knows who the bomber is and has asked publicly why the agency hasn’t arrested them.
A key way they will be looking to put their identity beyond doubt is through digital evidence – like CCTV footage.
Stacy Elridge spent a decade in the FBI as a digital forensic examiner.
Elridge said the FBI would be using highly powerful digital search tools that aren’t available to the normal public to analyse the footage.
She said: “If we have a known picture, we can tell our tool ‘Can you find the other pictures that are very similar to this?’
“And we can also take those videos and break them down frame by frame.”
But Elridge said what might be hampering the FBI’s search is that the CCTV footage they have access to is too grainy and there are no easily identifying features on the bomber.
“He’s wearing a gray hoodie. The hoodie is up around [his head] and it was the beginning of 2021, he’s got a mask covering his face, so there’s not even a lot of facial recognition to go off of,” she said.
Elridge said the lack of identifying information could mean two things, that the bomber is just lucky or they planned it well.
She said: “He maybe perhaps spent some time doing some reconnaissance and research and looking around and maybe paying attention to where are the cameras on this route?
“[He’s thinking] ‘How can I get here without exposing myself to all these different cameras and places?’
January 6, 2021: A timeline of events
On January 6, 2021, a group of rioters stormed the Capitol building in Washington DC, to protest the 2020 presidential election results. Here’s a timeline of events of what occurred that day:
6:00am: A group of supporters for former President Donald Trump show up in Washington DC to attend a rally for him. Trump had tweeted about the rally a month prior.
11:00am: Trump’s rally, “Save American Rally,” kicks off. Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr. both speak.
11:50am: Trump begins speaking at the rally. He tells his supporters that “we will never give up. We will never concede.” He tells his supporters to go to the Capitol building.
1:00pm: Lawmakers gather at the Capitol to count Electoral College votes while protesters gather outside.
1:10pm: Rioters are on the steps of the Capitol building.
1:26pm: The Capitol police evacuate the Library of Congress, Madison Building and Cannon House Office Building. These buildings are across the street from the Capitol.
1:40pm: Washington DC Mayor Muriel Bowser orders a curfew in the city.
2:11pm: Rioters breach the perimeter of the Capitol building and scale the walls.
2:20pm: The Senate and House are called into recess and the building goes into lockdown.
2:38pm: Trump tweets, “Please support our Capitol Police and Law Enforcement. They are truly on the side of our Country. Stay peaceful!”
3:00pm: Rioters officially break into the Senate chamber. Other rioters break into the offices of members of Congress and the Senate. Property is destroyed along the way. Rioters take photos of themselves on the Senate floor.
3:13pm: Trump tweets again about the situation. “I am asking for everyone at the U.S. Capitol to remain peaceful. No violence! Remember WE are the Party of Law & Order – respect the Law and our great men and women in Blue. Thank you!”
3:34pm: Rioter Ashli Babbitt is shot by a Capitol police officer as she attempts to climb through the Lobby’s doors. She later died from her injuries. Meanwhile, the National Guard is ordered to the Capitol by Trump.
4:00pm: President-elect Joe Biden addresses the nation and calls on Trump to “go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution and demand an end to this siege.”
4:17pm: Trump tweets out a video message to his supporters. “I know your pain, I know you’re hurt,” he said. He said the election “was stolen from us” but asked the rioters to “go home now.”
6:00pm: Washington DC goes under a 12-hour lockdown.
7:00pm: Trump is banned from Facebook and his Twitter account is suspended.
8:00pm: Former Vice President Mike Pence calls the Senate back into session.
9:00pm: House Speaker Nancy Pelosi calls the House back into session.
11:00pm: The House and Senate resume their joint session.
January 7, 3:42am: Joe Biden is officially declared as the next president of the United States.
Aftermath: As of September, the Justice Department has convicted over 1,000 people for the January 6 riots, and some 350 cases are still pending trial, per CBS News.
“Because, as we all watch the news, we know just how much we are on camera these days and you know he’s got something very generic on that could be very easy to blend in with many other people wearing similar things too.”
The lack of information captured about the bomber and released publicly also could have prevented the bomber from releasing a manifesto if there was a political motivation.
“Perhaps it didn’t go as well [as it was intended]… and perhaps this person thought ‘you know what? I’m not gonna release my video, saying I did it, and why I did it’,” Elridge said.
Once the FBI have an identifying information they could then try and match it with other CCTV footage they find from around the area.
One of the key things that investigators look for is buildings that the suspect might go into that could lead them to their identity.
Elridge said that the bombs clearly showed foresight and planning in compared to the chaos of the January 6 riots.
She believes they’ll be looking through known links of all involved in the riot as they try to nail down the bomber.
Elridge said: “The FBI has reported that they’ve spent thousands of hours working on this case, and it’s probably much, much more than thousands of hours.”
