Did the man charged with planting pipe bombs found near the Republican and Democratic headquarters in Washington, D.C., on January 6, 2021, sue the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security over illegal immigration? No, that's not true: Legal disputes referenced in a Daily Wire article making that claim confused suspect Brian Cole Jr. with his father Brian Cole Sr. It also misrepresented the nature of the legal disputes, which did not involve illegal immigration policies and were separated by several years from the pipe bomb discovery.
The claim originated in an article published by the Daily Wire on December 4, 2025, titled "Alleged D.C. Pipe Bomber Sued Trump DHS Over Illegal Immigration, Asked Biden DOJ To Address Racism" (archived here) which opened:
Brian Cole, Jr. ran a bail bonds company that worked to free illegal immigrants from ICE facilities and sued the Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security.Weeks before Cole allegedly planted pipe bombs found at the headquarters of the Democrat and Republican parties on January 6, 2021, a court ruled against his lawsuit suing the Trump administration on immigration issues, The Daily Wire has learned.Later that year, Cole held a press conference bemoaning anti-black racism with a left-wing attorney.Cole and Benjamin Crump, who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, attempted to sic the Biden Department of Justice on a Tennessee prosecutor who had raised questions about a bail bond company operated by Cole Jr. and his father.
This is what the article looked like at the time of writing:
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of DailyWire.com)
While the headline claimed Cole had sued the DHS over "illegal immigration," the claim is not repeated in the body of the story. The only reference to immigration in the story beyond the headline was a one-sentence quote from one of Cole's business website that said "An Immigration Bond will secure the release of an undocumented alien from an immigration facility with the guarantee the conditions of the Immigration Bond requirements are met."
The article falsely claimed that Brian Cole Jr., age 30, ran the family's bail bonds company. It is his father, Brian Cole Sr., who manages the business. Cole Sr. is listed in corporate records as an officer in Statewide Bonding, Inc., which was one of three companies listed as plaintiffs in three cases filed against DHS in late 2018. These cases were combined for an appeal that was decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals in the District of Columbia in November 2020. The case was an administrative law dispute about whether DHS followed proper procedures when collecting on breached bonds and whether the bond companies received constitutionally adequate due process to challenge those breach determinations. It was not about "illegal immigration" or immigration enforcement policy. The appeals court ruled entirely on the side of DHS.
Statewide Bonding, Inc., et al. v. United States Department of Homeland Security, et al. by Alan Duke
The article continued:
Cole and Benjamin Crump, who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, attempted to sic the Biden Department of Justice on a Tennessee prosecutor who had raised questions about a bail bond company operated by Cole Jr. and his father.
"A high-profile civil rights attorney is calling for a federal investigation into a Rutherford County prosecutor accused of discrimination," Nashville news outlet WPLN reported on November 16, 2021.
The reference to President Biden's Justice Department and Tennessee is also muddled and misleading. Cole Sr., not his son, did participate in a news conference with civil rights lawyer Benjamin Crump in November 2021. Cole Sr. was one of several Black business owners in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, who spoke out about their belief that a prosecutor in that area targeted minority-owned businesses. Crump, well known for representing the families of Trayvon Martin, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, was calling on the Justice Department to investigate their suspicions. It had nothing to do with immigration and it came 10 months after the pipe bombs were found in Washington.
This is a video of the full news conference:
The Daily Wire revised its article before this story was published to remove the claim that it was Cole Jr. who sued DHS. But it kept the false claim that the lawsuit was about illegal immigration.
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of DailyWire.com)
Despite that correction, the Daily Wire's initial false claims were echoed on social media, including with a post (archived here) that claims the "Daily Wire reveals that accused pipe bomber Brian Cole was deeply involved in anti-ICE activism long before January 6, including work to help illegal immigrants avoid detention and a lawsuit he launched against President Trump's DHS."
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
And this post (archived here) that called Cole Jr. an "anti-Trump activist" who "sued ICE/DHS."
(Image source: Lead Stories screenshot of X.com)
