FBI Tied January 6 Pipe Bomber To Metro Card Of Ex-Gov Official, But Blocked Interview Of Him, Former Agent Says
Luke RosiakJan 29, 2024
A former FBI agent said that the Bureau quickly believed that it tied the person who planted pipe bombs at the Democrat National Committee and the Republican National Committee to a particular Metro fare card and license plate, but did not allow him to interview the person of interest and pulled his team off of the lead.

The allegation raises more questions about the pipe bombs, which were by far the most violent aspect of the January 6 protests, but which Democrats and authorities have seldom mentioned since.

Kyle Seraphin, who led FBI surveillance teams, told The Daily Wire that shortly after January 6, a counterintelligence team met him at a firehouse in Falls Church, Virginia to brief him on his next surveillance target: They had used security footage to follow the person into a Metro station after he planted the bombs, and identified the fare card that was used.

That fare card then allowed them to determine that the person got off at a Metro stop in Northern Virginia, where surveillance footage showed the person entering a car. Both the car and the fare card were in the name of the same person — a retired Air Force chief master sergeant who was now working as a contractor with a security clearance, they said.

Seraphin and his team were assigned to stake out the person’s row house for days, but the FBI blocked his request to interview the person, he said. Then they were called off the target completely and told to pore through low-priority leads about minor January 6 participants, he said.

“Allegedly someone threw bombs around the Capitol which could have killed congressmen or a busload of nuns or anything, and the answer is you can’t follow this guy around — you have to go to headquarters and read ‘leads’ where someone said ‘I might’ve went to high school with some guy that was standing around the Capitol?’� Seraphin told The Daily Wire.

Seraphin said the bomber wasn’t necessarily the same person of interest to whom the car and card were registered to, but that it was a highly specific lead that, if pursued, had a good chance of leading investigators to the suspect. “They found people based on their earlobes that were hanging out by a flagpole,� he said of the Bureau’s persistence in pursuing more minor January 6 wrongdoings.

He said the case was being run by the counter-intelligence division, which are not “manhunters� used to apprehend people and build prosecutable cases. He said that team called in his surveillance team, only to go ahead and quickly cut it off.

He said it was not surprising that the FBI would have traced the bomber, and, in fact, it would be more surprising if it hadn’t. “They can do telephonic capture and triangulate your phone in real-time… The bureau is far too competent to fail this,� he said. “When they had the World Trade Center bombing in ‘93 they went under four stories of rubble and were able to find a partial VIN number that they used to track it down to the people responsible. And you’re telling me you had a pristine, non-detonated bomb and they couldn’t find anything on it?�

The FBI has released only a couple of grainy pictures of the bomber, despite massive security camera coverage on Capitol Hill. Though the bomber was seen talking on a phone, it has said it may not have been able to identify him with cell phone records because a database was corrupted.

The Washington Times first reported the allegation in May 2023. The article, which was paywalled, did not get widespread attention, yet when the House Judiciary Committee interviewed Steve D’Antuono, the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, it seemed to be on his mind.

“People like Kyle Seraphin and others that are not a case agent, have no knowledge of the case, have no knowledge of what happened in the case, he also made another accusation too that there was an individual with a Metro card. My understanding is all that was chased down. There was a lead that was chased down, but he says that we didn’t chase it down,� D’Antuono said.

His comment seemed to confirm that the Metro card lead did exist, and he did not explain how or why it ultimately resulted in nothing.

The FBI’s Washington Field Office did not return The Daily Wire’s request for an explanation of why the lead was believed to be a dead end.

Immediately after claiming that Seraphin would not know details because he was not a “case agent,� D’Antuono acknowledged that he himself did not know even basic details about the investigation because he was far removed from case agents as a top leader.

D’Antuono went on ABC to hype up the apparent MAGA terrorist threat in 2022 to say that, “They would have exploded. They could have exploded,� calling the pipe bombs “viable� devices, as The Washington Times recounted.

But in the transcribed interview with Congress, he acknowledged that the bombs had 60-minute kitchen timers attached to them, and that they had not exploded 17 hours later. “I saw the same kitchen timer as you. I agree. I don’t know when they were supposed to go off. Maybe they weren’t supposed to go off,� he said.

Seraphin said that when he was assigned to the case, he asked about the bombs, and his team was briefed by the FBI that they were not at risk of detonating. “It was an officer safety question. You’re gonna work a case differently if they’re not real, you can get closer,� he said.

Rep. Thomas Massie, a member of the Judiciary Committee, asked D’Antuono about the pipe bombs after uncovering video that showed a person pointing out the pipe bomb to officers outside the DNC, only to have the officers react with no urgency, even letting children cross the street afterward.

Massie told The Daily Wire that the officers’ reaction was not congruent with someone who believes they have just learned of what might be a real bomb feet away from a party headquarters, and raises the question of whether they knew it was planted there.

Some of those personnel were Secret Service guarding Kamala Harris, who was in the building at the time. The Department of Justice initially falsely stated that Harris was in the Capitol, not the DNC, which allowed them to avoid the question of why the Secret Service didn’t find the bomb. Seraphin said there’s “zero chance� that the Secret Service would have missed a pipe bomb sitting in almost plain sight when preparing a site for the Vice President-elect. “They’re far too good for that,� he said.

Seraphin said of the video, “That’s not how you react to a bomb, I don’t care who you are,� unless they had reason in advance to “believe it wasn’t real.�

Both bombs were purportedly planted around 8 p.m. the night of January 5, and remained unreported until both were discovered within minutes of each other at the exact time that the Capitol was being breached. Capitol Police have said that January 6 got out of hand because they were forced to divert resources to the bombs instead of crowd control.

Harris has gone out of her way not to mention the bomb, even implying that she was safe from January 6 because “I had left� — when, in fact, she had left for a location roughly 30 feet away from a purported bomb.

Darren Beattie, a reporter for Revolver News who has uncovered numerous discrepancies around the pipe bombs, joined Massie for an online chat on Thursday. He said that in addition to the details that don’t add up, there is the glaring fact that Democrats have omitted all mention of the most dramatic part of January 6, even as they seek to cast it as a violent insurrection.

“How dark, how dirty, how damning, how embarrassing does the truth have to be for these salivating political opportunists have to be to forgo the obvious political advantages of this talking point?� he asked.

http://www.dailywire.com/news/fbi-tied-january-6-pipe-bomber-to-metro-card-of-ex-gov-official-but-blocked-interview-of-him-former-agent-says