GOP lawmakers are demanding answers from the FBI after a former head of the bureau’s DC office claimed a person who laid pipe bombs before the Jan. 6 riots has not been ID’d in part because of “corrupted” cellular data — a fact disputed by major US carriers.
Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and Rep. Barry Loudermilk of Georgia fired off a letter Monday to the bureau’s acting director, Brian Driscoll, about the troubling discrepancy.
The congressmen wrote that the cell carriers “indicated that they neither provided corrupted data to the FBI nor received any notification from the FBI of any issues accessing the data.”
The pols’ inquiry comes after FBI Washington Field Office Assistant Director in Charge Steven D’Antuono — who led the probe of pipe bombs placed outside Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee headquarters before the riots four years ago — testified before Congress in June 2023 that “some data” had been “corrupted by one of the providers, not purposely.
“It wasn’t purposely corrupted. I don’t want any conspiracy theories. But that could have been good information that we don’t have, right? So that is painful for us to not to have that,” D’Antuono told members and staff of the House Judiciary Committee at the time.
The discrepancy highlighted by the Republican lawmakers raises questions about whether the FBI abandoned their probe too early, thinking the wannabe bomber’s identity was not as important as rounding up other Jan. 6 criminals and thus putting their resources elsewhere.
A report issued by House Republicans earlier this month noted that the agency’s probe into the bombs ended after about a month — leaving the would-be violent suspect still roaming free.
“By the end of February 2021, the FBI began diverting resources away from the pipe bomb investigation,” the report said.
“One possible explanation for the reduction in resources is that the number of credible leads began to decline, no longer requiring as many special agents to cover the workload.”
A backpack-carrying person wearing a gray hooded sweatshirt, mask, gloves, glasses and Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers had planted both explosives Jan. 5, 2021, according to security footage released by the bureau.
The perp had also used a cell phone when skulking around the major political parties’ HQs — and bureau agents used geofencing technology that initially “yielded a promising array of data and revealed numerous persons of interest,” according to a report last month from the House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight.
One of those people was someone who searched the term “pipe bomb DC” before the devices were found, a person who drove a vehicle that passed the RNC with a passenger matching the description of the suspect minutes after the bombs were planted, and a person who owned the same Nike sneakers worn by the suspect and who worked near the crime scene.
The “viable explosive devices,” as the House GOP report characterized the bombs, were discovered on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, as President Trump headlined a “Stop the Steal” rally to delay congressional certification of the results of the 2020 election.
D’Antuono testified that the FBI’s lab division confirmed the bombs were “viable” but added that they were “rudimentary, at best,” having been equipped with a 60-minute kitchen timer for detonation.
If detonated, their blasts could have shot shrapnel through the air into passing cars or trains, causing “serious bodily injury and or death,” the Republican report found.
Vice President Kamala Harris and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi were at the time “within feet” of the devices as they traveled to and from DNC headquarters that day.
Loudermilk, who has been investigating the Capitol riot, quizzed the bureau in October about what happened to the data — but never heard back by the issuance of his panel’s report Jan. 2.
Johnson, who chairs a permanent subcommittee on investigations in the Senate, Jordan, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, and Loudermilk also sent letters Tuesday to AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon demanding records about the feds’ request for cell data on the eve of the Capitol riot.
They asked the FBI for “communications between or among employees of the FBI” and “between the FBI and any cellular carrier, third-party contractor, other law enforcement agency” about the incident — as well as copies of the data received by the bureau and “all memoranda, reports, assessments, evaluations, or other records” on the analysis of it.
There’s still a $500,000 reward on the table from the bureau for any information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the person responsible for planting the pipe bombs.
The FBI, asked by The Post about the congressmen’s letter, replied Tuesday, “The FBI received the letter. We don’t have any additional comment.”
