History Notes Special: The Jan 6 Pipe Bombs

On January 6th 2021, the FBI’s Washington Field Office described a discovery of a “viable” explosive device, a situation “that could have seriously injured or killed” the incoming vice president. Julie Kelly expands on Harris’s close encounter in an earlier report.

That afternoon, two alleged improvised explosive devices were found near the Capitol: the first outside the Republican National Committee headquarters (RNC) and the second beside a bench just outside the Democratic National Committee headquarters (DNC). 

Karlin Younger, a FirstNet employee with a counterterrorism background, accidentally discovered the first device near the RNC at 12:40 p.m. The U.S. Capitol Police command center was alerted two minutes later, at 12:42 p.m., according to Steven Sund, former Chief of U.S. Capitol Police, in his book Courage Under Fire. Officers were dispatched around 12:45 p.m. to investigate. Sund notes that additional officers were sent to canvas that area as a precaution. “There are two protective details at the DNC,” he said, “one for Vice President-elect Harris and the other for a member of the House leadership—and we can’t take any chances.”

Darren Beattie of Revolver News highlighted the response of Harris’s security detail regarding the explosive device. This response followed an alert from a plainclothes USCP officer who discovered the device around 1:05 p.m. Additionally, footage does not appear to show Harris’s security detail being aware of or perceiving any threat prior to this alert. 

Nearly two hours before Harris arrived at the DNC that morning, footage captured a bomb-sniffing dog conducting a sweep outside the DNC at 9:29 a.m., near where the explosive would later be discovered. Despite the FBI Washington Field Office’s assertion that both the RNC and DNC devices had been planted the previous evening between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m., the explosive went undetected. Not only did the bomb-sniffing dog miss the device, but Harris’s security detail also failed to detect it during their sweep of the premises prior to her arrival. The device was placed next to a bench, sitting there in broad daylight.

Harris left the Capitol that morning at approximately 11:25 a.m. and was escorted by her security detail to the DNC, where she remained for nearly two hours until being evacuated at around 1:17 p.m.—12 minutes after her detail was alerted about the explosive device.

More than three and a half years later, the FBI has yet to identify the suspect who planted the devices.

Missing Secret Service Text Messages

Deleted text messages from January 5 and 6, 2021, involving two dozen Secret Service agents involved in January 6 operations. CBS News reported that in July 2022, following subpoenas from both the DHS inspector general and the January 6 Committee, the Secret Service handed over the cellphones of these agents. 

Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi claimed that same month that all the messages were erased as part of the agency “reset[ting] its mobile phones to factory settings as part of a pre-planned, three-month system migration. In that process, data resident on some phones was lost.”

Gugliemi confirmed a few days later all of the texts but one were not recoverable.

The agency asserted the one message was the only text relevant to the subpoena and indicated that while a forensic search for additional texts or phone records would be undertaken, such records were likely irrecoverable.

In August 2022, a month after being subpoenaed for the missing cell phone records, it was announced that Kimberly Cheatle was selected to be the next Director of the United States Secret Service.

Following the attempted assassination of President Trump, the number of lawmakers calling for Cheatle’s resignation continues to mount after she held a telephone briefing for senators on the security failures. Susan Crabtree of RealClearPolitics reported that during the call, senators learned that law enforcement had flagged Crooks for suspicious behavior more than an hour before he fired shots at Trump and that counter-snipers had spotted Crooks 20 minutes before the shots rang out. Senators also discovered that the Secret Service was aware of a “potential threat” 10 minutes before Trump took the stage in Pennsylvania but allowed him to go out anyway.

On the day of the attack, the House Oversight Committee sent a written request to Director Cheatle for her voluntary attendance at a public hearing to discuss the July 13 assassination attempt. The committee followed up on July 15, requesting additional information in anticipation of her testimony. Cheatle has since been subpoenaed due to concerns about her willingness to testify under oath. In their July 17 letter, the committee noted that although the Secret Service had previously assured Cheatle’s attendance, DHS officials seem to have intervened, despite allowing her to speak with the media.

House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) revealed on Thursday new insights from whistleblowers indicating that the Secret Service faced resource shortages for President Trump’s event. These shortages were attributed to the NATO summit in Washington, D.C., which had concluded days earlier, and to First Lady Jill Biden’s visit to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the same day as Trump’s rally. 

Following this disclosure, Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) provided additional insights in a letter to Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas, alleging that the July 13 rally was considered a “loose” event. It was also suggested that the majority of DHS officials assigned to security operations were not traditional USSS agents but were instead drawn from the department’s Homeland Security Investigations (HSI). Whistleblowers further allege that these HSI agents were unfamiliar with the standard protocols typically used at such events.

Trump’s rally, which was scheduled to begin at 5:00 p.m. on July 13 in Butler, PA, was announced on July 3. Subsequently, it seems, Jill Biden’s team arranged for her to also make an appearance in Pennsylvania that same day, marking her third visit to Pittsburgh in just six weeks, despite having just been there on June 24.

On July 10—one week after Trump’s rally was announced—the White House announced that the First Lady would speak at an Italian Sons and Daughters of America dinner in Pittsburgh at 5 p.m., which coincided with the start time of Trump’s rally, where she ultimately delivered “about five minutes” of remarks to an audience of roughly 300 people.