Episode 145 LIVE： Who Is The J6 Pipe Bomber？ (feat. Rep. Thomas Massie) – Firebrand with Matt Gaetz
Summary
Director of the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosive, Thomas Massey joins us on Firebrand to discuss the discovery of two pipe bombs at the District of Columbia National Decorative Arts and Cultural Center (DNC) on January 6th, 2001.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
matt gates the biggest firebrand inside of the house of representatives you're not taking matt
00:00:08.400
gates off the board okay because matt gates is an american patriot and matt gates is an american
00:00:13.720
hero we will not continue to allow the uniparty to run this town without a fight i want to thank
00:00:20.880
you matt gates for holding the line matt gates is a courageous man if we had hundreds of matt gates
00:00:28.300
in dc the country turns around it's that simple he's so tough he's so strong he's smart and he
00:00:35.060
loves this country matt gates it is the honor of my life to fight alongside each and every one of you
00:00:42.860
we will save america it's choose your fighter time send in the fire brains
00:00:48.520
can you tell us how the second pipe bomb was found at the dnc again i'm not going to get into
00:01:00.180
that here 900 days ago is when this happened and you said you had total confidence we'd apprehend
00:01:06.100
the subject we've found video that looks like somebody a passerby miraculously found this pipe
00:01:12.360
bomb at the dnc and then notified the police miraculously i say because it was it specifically
00:01:18.980
the same the precise time to cause the maximum distraction from the events going on at the
00:01:24.200
capitol can you show this video that we have please i'd like to know if the director has seen this
00:01:29.680
this is somebody with a with a mask on wearing a hat they're walking in front of the dnc which is
00:01:35.480
out of the view on the right hand side you'll see him come into view he goes to one police car
00:01:40.840
he goes to another police car he's holding a backpack he's got a mask on he's talking to the
00:01:45.120
police and within a minute they start scrambling you'll see the camera turn to the pipe bomb the
00:01:52.060
location of the pipe bomb by the way that's i believe the metro police are now getting out of
00:01:56.020
their car and that's uh vice president elect detail in the black suv i believe parked about 30 feet from
00:02:04.560
the pipe bomb eating lunch okay now we go over to the location of the pipe bomb the cameras are
00:02:10.120
scrambling it it appears to me that that's not a coincidence that the person with the backpack who
00:02:17.480
walked by that bench and then went up to the police uh and the detail didn't it didn't do that
00:02:25.600
accidentally they had a purpose in mind and then what transpired after that was the result of
00:02:30.800
information that person gave to them if that person found the pipe bomb would they be a suspect
00:02:36.820
well again i don't want to speculate about specific individuals i will tell you that we have done
00:02:43.280
thousands of interviews uh reviewed something like 40 000 video files of which this is uh one
00:02:51.180
assessed 500 something tips have you interviewed the devices we we have conducted all logical investigative
00:02:59.280
steps and interviewed all logical individuals at this point then you need it's 900 days you need to
00:03:05.040
tell us what you found because we're finding stuff you haven't released into the public
00:03:09.240
we are live that was kentucky's thomas massey he joins us now on firebrand you asked director ray
00:03:18.560
these questions about the person who found the pipe bomb because you believe that that could tell us more
00:03:24.700
about this really exquisite event on january 6th that was unlike anything else that happened on january
00:03:30.400
6th there were no weapons that were found on people that were around the capital but before we get into
00:03:36.620
this person who found the pipe bomb the work of your staff above and beyond to go and ascertain
00:03:42.860
these video movements just for a moment talk about the significance of the pipe bomb in the overall
00:03:50.780
january 6th narrative and how it's been used against people well i mean the narrative they're trying to
00:03:55.460
push is this was an insurrection the problem is there were no weapons you know you would think to
00:04:00.140
bring a weapon to an insurrection but the only weapons there were were weapons of mass destruction
00:04:05.340
these two pipe bombs right uh it heightens basically the chances that you're going to get indicted
00:04:11.640
these are these pipe bombs are mentioned in the statements to indict people it brings up the overall
00:04:17.300
tenor of what was going on that day and um so it's significant if these were real or not
00:04:23.420
and um you know their theories on why they were there were they diversions who wanted a diversion
00:04:29.680
who wanted to make it easier to get into the capital that day and when the government wanted to have
00:04:35.820
higher criminal acuity and charging documents the pipe bombs were referenced even probably factoring
00:04:41.740
into the sentencing decisions of some judges for people that were blocks away and had nothing to do
00:04:46.580
with these pipe bombs so you have been like a dog on a bone you've been uh questioning the director
00:04:51.840
of the fbi and others about this pipe bomb and one of the things that i learned yesterday in one of
00:04:56.820
our discussions with house judiciary colleagues is that this pipe bomb is substantially similar to the
00:05:02.700
pipe bombs that are used for certain types of training is that right yeah it looks identical to
00:05:07.760
the training pipe bombs they build um or train with that the fbi uses so it so i just want to draw a fine
00:05:15.980
point on it the very type style function that the fbi trains on is substantially similar to what was
00:05:22.560
found right down to the 60 minute kitchen timer now here's the problem with the 60 minute kitchen
00:05:27.020
timer on these bombs both of them had identical 60 minute kitchen timers the fbi claims that these
00:05:34.080
bombs were placed 17 hours before they were discovered and so the you know that begs the question that i
00:05:40.180
asked the assistant director in charge of washington dc field office how because he he still claims they
00:05:46.460
all still claim these were viable pipe bombs i said how does a 60 minute kitchen timer set off a bomb
00:05:53.580
17 hours later and he said it can't it won't it doesn't right so so they they had to they essentially set a
00:06:01.940
17 hour fuse with a timer that was only an hour right because i guess the training manual only shows
00:06:09.440
you how to build one with a kitchen timer on it so your staff then goes to look at the video and you
00:06:16.800
send your team to look at the different angles and you come up with what we're showing on the screen now
00:06:21.940
and you see a very specific person who ends up finding this pipe bomb and ends up reporting it uh was there
00:06:31.060
anything about these behaviors you're seeing that immediately piqued your curiosity well first of
00:06:36.740
all the lackadaisical response to the um to the notification that there's a bomb nearby in in that
00:06:44.420
video that i showed christopher ray we had to speed it up and take out parts of it to get that all that
00:06:51.340
done in a testimony because they mill about they finish their lunch in their cars after the guy with the
00:06:57.720
backpack comes up and says hey there's a bomb over here they sit in their cars eating lunch for a
00:07:03.100
while the secret service looks it looks like the secret service had got in the the mpd car and was
00:07:10.940
having lunch with them and it takes it about four minutes for them to get out by the way in the
00:07:16.420
meantime their school children walking past what they've been told is a bomb sitting there man so so
00:07:22.660
you're you're immediately taking note of the lack of sense of urgency around this you know belief that
00:07:29.360
uh an explodable bomb has been discovered right and then one other thing matt you know when i first saw
00:07:35.960
the video we didn't have as much information as we have now we've we've got more information my first
00:07:41.900
thought is who is that person who found the bomb like because and i asked antoono in in a transcribed
00:07:48.800
interview wouldn't that be a suspect and he said that's investigation 101 dan tuano is the assistant
00:07:54.040
director in charge of washington dc field office the guy in charge of this investigation for two years
00:07:59.140
okay and so and so you recently met with capitol police correct today today and what did you learn
00:08:06.500
in that meeting i learned that uh backpack guy january 6 backpack guy not to be confused with
00:08:12.460
january 5th backpack person uh the backpack guy was a uh non-uniform you know plainclothes
00:08:22.200
police officer in you know in the employ of the capitol hill police
00:08:27.440
the the person who found the pipe bomb the person who di antoono who was leading the investigation say
00:08:36.560
oh yeah the person who found it it'd be investigation 101 that they would be a suspect initially until ruled
00:08:42.060
out you're saying that person was an undercover plainclothes capitol police officer and the capitol police
00:08:49.420
confirmed that to you today they confirmed that to me today yes uh uh which so by the way
00:08:55.540
it what does that mean to you well it it heightens some of my concerns and and uh reduces some of the
00:09:02.620
other concerns okay one of the concerns that's heightened was you know trying to give the the
00:09:09.300
secret service and the metro police department the benefit of the doubt when they took four minutes
00:09:14.780
you know they finished their lunch before they went and dealt with this pipe bomb i wanted to give
00:09:19.040
them the benefit of the doubt and think that well if it's just some random passerby and he said hey
00:09:23.020
there's something shiny over there could be a lawn sprinkler you know not sure maybe want to check it
00:09:28.640
out but that's not what it was it was it was a person who was you know they say again when i relate
00:09:36.500
this to you i'm relating what the capitol police have told me they say it was a capitol police officer
00:09:41.860
who found this bomb and that he told them it was a bomb and he radioed it in said we've we've got the
00:09:50.100
device we found another device remember here's the other just amazing timing is that the first pipe
00:09:58.960
bomb the one at the capitol hill club now they call it the rnc pipe bomb but they really should be
00:10:03.960
calling it the capitol hill pipe bomb i mean the the two buildings are next to each other
00:10:08.240
but it was like the capitol hill club which is an entity where republican members of congress
00:10:13.920
socialize and fundraise right um the reason i'm making that distinction is darren beady who's done
00:10:21.080
amazing work on this okay he's the guy who's said hey you should be asking some of these questions and
00:10:26.880
i said you know what you're right i will be asking those questions he points out that the rnc dnc
00:10:32.540
narrative was was made up after the fact you know it was really the capitol hill club dnc narrative
00:10:39.180
that they should be talking about but it if it just sounds a lot better that oh we knew to go look
00:10:43.820
at the dnc once we found one at the rnc interesting well if you thought somebody was going to blow up the
00:10:48.820
rnc and they don't they hate republicans why would they also want to blow anyways so um you know they
00:10:56.640
come down this this plainclothes police officer who had been in the vicinity of that one they had
00:11:02.600
just found that the timing is remarkable because it found oh it was found five minutes before the
00:11:08.460
breach of the bicycle racks uh near at the perimeter of the capitol just a miraculous timing that you
00:11:15.680
know would have provided exactly the right timing to distract after sitting in an alley for 17 hours
00:11:22.240
you know by found by somebody who says she was going to go do her laundry okay then within they
00:11:30.560
respond to that uh they secure the area and 15 minutes later they find this other bomb like what
00:11:36.880
miraculous timing well i i definitely don't believe that the capitol police would purposefully go
00:11:44.100
and set a bomb anywhere that could potentially blow up and do anyone harm i i i am not there that they
00:11:50.260
would do something like that however you seem to point out in questioning with the atf director
00:11:54.960
that this wasn't an operational bomb that was going to blow up and hurt anybody remember that
00:11:59.600
right the the um assistant director in charge he went on tv and and said these were operable bombs and
00:12:07.020
you know offered a reward put out a message that they played on tv and so in the beginning of my
00:12:12.840
transcribed interview with him he still maintained that they were operable well hold on we're going to
00:12:17.240
get the atf director's take on that questioning from congressman massey take a listen also i see
00:12:24.300
that you're cooperating with the fbi the atf is on the january 6 pipe bomb investigation what can you
00:12:30.620
tell us about how that's going um obviously that's a significant matter it is an ongoing criminal
00:12:37.820
investigation and so i'm not going to comment on an ongoing criminal investigation were those pipe
00:12:42.340
bombs operable again the atf is the expert again it's an ongoing and criminal investigation and
00:12:50.200
under long-standing policy i cannot comment and we've just had a whole committee for two years that
00:12:54.600
investigated ongoing investigation so i'm not accepting that answer from you uh we need to know
00:13:00.500
these things do you know how the pipe bomb was discovered at the dnc we've been told how it was
00:13:06.340
discovered at the rnc and in according to a press release from the fbi you're working with them on this
00:13:11.080
investigation respectfully um i understand your disagreement but i cannot comment because it is
00:13:16.580
an ongoing criminal investigation it's an ongoing cover-up so so helpful it's their policy not to
00:13:23.780
comment on ongoing cover-ups yeah it seems like it so here's what i've come to know since that
00:13:30.340
kind of interview too um you know you chase some leads i believe based on um discussions with police
00:13:38.320
with fbi and with former atf who now works for capital police that it the bombs went to quantico
00:13:46.880
for inspection not to the atf now he could have just told me that in the hearing oh interesting he
00:13:53.600
could have said well we didn't we didn't look at the fragments after we blew these things up it was
00:13:57.900
actually fbi quantico looked at them but he didn't he wouldn't even tell me that so either doesn't
00:14:03.440
know it or just is so stuck on it like a broken record on it's our long-standing policy not to
00:14:09.060
comment so we're in this meeting last night and one of our republican colleagues turns to you as
00:14:13.340
you're explaining how long it's been that this has been an open investigation these videos that show
00:14:19.340
the strange behavior of a person we now know was a plainclothes capital police officer and one of our
00:14:25.180
republican colleagues kept pressing you and saying but thomas why would they do this why would anyone
00:14:29.860
try to um plant these phony fake devices in order to create confusion that day and you know we we
00:14:39.740
don't know the answer to that question in all honesty do you have a working theory yeah well um again i don't
00:14:46.680
know who did it but i can tell you a consequence of this because this is buried in the back of the
00:14:51.660
january 6th committee report that um there was a call to bring more bike racks to the capital they
00:14:59.920
had hundreds of them loaded up ready to bring to the capital to reinforce the capital and it turns out
00:15:06.840
those never made it because this dnc pipe bomb was discovered and they set up a perimeter and blocked
00:15:12.220
them from coming so if there was a booby trap intended to um have people commit a technical violation
00:15:21.200
of federal criminal law with no intent to break the law that was facilitated perhaps by the very
00:15:29.440
interestingly timed discovery of these two devices yeah whether there was intent or not the the result
00:15:35.080
of this according to the january 6th committee was that uh it made it easier to breach the capital
00:15:40.920
because the reinforcements couldn't be brought to the capital there's a report in the daily wire i don't
00:15:47.020
know quite what to make of it it says fbi tied january 6th pipe bomber to metro card of ex-government
00:15:54.140
official but blocked interview of him former agent says uh this former agent kyle seraphin very outspoken
00:16:00.300
has been someone who's facilitated uh other whistleblower testimony and and the head the lead here is a
00:16:06.840
former fbi agent says the bureau quickly believed that it tied the person who planted the pipe bombs at the
00:16:12.640
democratic national committee and the republican national committee to a particular metro fare card
00:16:17.700
and license plate but did not allow him to interview the person of interest and pulled his team off the
00:16:23.720
lead when you hear that again you know any claim that that we see has to be corroborated investigated
00:16:30.160
reviewed but you know what's your reaction to a former fbi agent saying when they had more questions
00:16:36.240
when there were leads that there was an impairment to that factual development it's all fishy i mean i'm
00:16:42.560
sure they had several leads um why they decided not to pursue that one i don't know but let's let's talk
00:16:50.520
about why they don't have this person in custody right now and why they're not sure i asked antoono
00:16:56.560
in this transcribed interview what about the cell phone data because all right dantoono and this is the
00:17:04.940
narrative that the fbi has put out there is that the night before somebody walking around past the dnc
00:17:12.400
and and the capitol hill club slash rnc alleyway they say that person planted those bombs the night
00:17:18.680
before walking around now we don't actually have video of that person placing the pipe bomb we have
00:17:25.300
video of that person walking around the neighborhood with a backpack and sitting on the bench where it was
00:17:29.780
found and reaching down but the camera angles which we believe they should have at the dnc that would
00:17:36.640
show the placement of that pipe bob have never been released but we know that camera angle exists
00:17:41.740
because they released a still frame of it but they haven't released that anyways the i'm going through
00:17:47.840
all that just to get to this point of what i asked antoono we saw that person on january 5th use
00:17:53.020
their cell phone a couple times did you use did you geo fence that area and and use that to find the
00:18:00.880
person and dantwano i want to i probably should read this right so i don't get it wrong because we've got
00:18:06.420
this right here um oh heck i just i'll just tell you he's he said that the um let me see if i can find it
00:18:15.960
it's in there somewhere i'll just tell you what he said and then people can look it up later you put
00:18:22.620
it on your site he said that he didn't want to start any conspiracy theories he used the word
00:18:28.600
conspiracy theory but that the cell phone data for one of the providers was corrupted that night in
00:18:34.440
that location oh what a coinkydink and not all cell phone data but cell phone data for one provider
00:18:42.560
and they suspect that and by the way cell phone data was used in prosecutions of january 6 defendants
00:18:49.220
quite frequently yes so in in the geo fenced area there's a whole lot of cell phone data
00:18:56.160
applicability but then it turns out just in the instance of this suspected pipe bomb planter the cell
00:19:04.360
phone data is corrupted but yep we don't want to start any conspiracy theories no he didn't want to
00:19:08.880
either yeah so so you you have been the leading investigator on this what is your next what are
00:19:15.180
you going to about today you've been you broke major news here that this person was capital police
00:19:20.680
lay it on us okay um the secret service you know now this may already be in public knowledge and you
00:19:28.340
may have already covered this but i confirmed it today that after five preservation requests the secret
00:19:37.800
service deleted all their cell phone texts for that day and destroyed the phones
00:19:44.140
yeah we had seen those reports and the january 6 committee tried to tried to act as though
00:19:52.440
that was some effort to cover up reactions to trump's behavior right it's been covered in that context
00:19:59.600
right whether the you know the secret service were wrestling or something or say somewhat of a
00:20:06.420
fantastical story right a crazy story you know it's all been in that context but regardless of that
00:20:13.380
context in this context it means we don't we don't know what they were saying to each other when they
00:20:18.800
had kamala harris by the way it took nine minutes to get kamala harris alerted and out of the building
00:20:27.200
after they knew the bomb was there like matt yeah there's there's no way that if they believed there
00:20:34.760
was actually an explosive device they would have left the the incoming vice president united states in a
00:20:40.460
building what if what if you hired somebody to to be responsible for your health and well-being
00:20:46.140
and those people found out there was a pipe bomb between you and them and but they wanted to finish
00:20:53.400
their lunch before they got out of the car and then they let some school kids walk by this pipe
00:20:59.400
bomb and then they thought to get you out of there uh you know five minutes after that like
00:21:05.540
okay there's a bomb and i'm supposed to keep the incoming vice president from from being you know hurt
00:21:11.800
but this is a really good mcdouble and uh you know they just nailed it on this mcdouble and i just can't let this
00:21:19.400
one you know sit and go cold that seems to be what what happened there what who is the witness that
00:21:26.840
you would want to interview next have before our committee next um what is the next kind of round
00:21:32.320
of document demands or video demands that you think advance this investigation well i don't want to
00:21:39.440
it's an ongoing matt i've had an ongoing investigation congressional investigation
00:21:44.700
but no seriously there are there are some obvious leads to to follow up here uh we need to ask
00:21:52.720
for instance the cell phone providers now the fbi won't give us their communication with the cell phone
00:21:58.460
providers but if your cell phone provider and you're watching matt gates's uh podcast here consider this
00:22:05.120
as a preservation uh notification that um we need to ask those cell phone providers for their
00:22:11.400
communication with the fbi like the fbi is telling us the dog ate their homework i want to go talk to
00:22:17.400
the dog that ate the homework did you eat this homework at what point did you tell the fbi their
00:22:22.740
home that you had eaten their homework you know i.e corrupt the cell phone data was corrupted like that is
00:22:28.940
anything anywhere what the fbi is doing or anybody else touches something that's outside of the fbi we need
00:22:36.560
to go cooperate that so this cell phone data that's that's something an artifact that we can go
00:22:42.320
corroborate uh talking to the capitol police like i did today that is something that we can corroborate
00:22:49.080
uh i haven't actually talked to backpack person yet i want to talk to that person uh i'm not i do believe
00:22:58.420
that that person was a a capitol hill police officer based on what these other capitol hill police told me
00:23:04.160
today isn't that the next key witness the next key now that we know that it was a plainclothes capitol
00:23:10.140
police officer who found the pipe bomb we have to get a transcribed interview of that individual right
00:23:15.060
wouldn't i mean we have to i i think that person well those those people gave statements
00:23:21.860
to the fbi we need to look at those statements there are a lot of places you can go with this some
00:23:28.100
some things um will you know some suspicions will be shut down and others will may be heightened
00:23:35.920
and we just like you say go where the facts lead you amen all right i want to get your take on just
00:23:40.960
a couple other things that are in the news right now uh senator wyden released documents confirming
00:23:45.440
that the nsa is buying americans internet browsing records he's called on the intelligence community to
00:23:50.880
stop buying data that is obtained around the fourth amendment you and i have worked on the fourth
00:23:56.660
amendment is not for sale acts to try to stop the government from doing an end run around people's
00:24:01.820
rights to buy commercially available data um i consider this a really strong piece of evidence
00:24:07.000
in support of those legislative efforts wanted wanted you have the chance to react to it well i mean
00:24:11.900
give them credit they're taking the easiest route to invade our privacy just go buy it um you know
00:24:18.240
it's i mean it's disappointing uh we we've got legend when people you know i see you're getting
00:24:27.080
chat scrolling by here on your screen uh the one thing i hear most frequently is what are you going
00:24:32.940
to do about it yeah what are you going to do about it quit tweeting about it you know quit going on matt's
00:24:37.660
podcast stop talking about it do something we've got the bill to stop this the the fourth amendment is
00:24:44.480
not for sale act um i think is warren davidson that that's right the sponsor of that and we're
00:24:49.400
co-sponsors of it great congressman yeah from ohio so um we just needed that was part of our fisa
00:24:56.120
reform package that got thrown in the trash when fisa was expiring in december that should have been
00:25:02.320
put on the floor um but it was not and so you know fisa didn't get fully reauthorized they punted it
00:25:10.320
for a while they kicked the can down the road but this needs that that legislation needs to be in
00:25:15.200
place to stop and some of our colleagues on the intelligence community are actually wanting to
00:25:19.460
expand surveillance authorities they want enhanced authorities to be able to soak up information that
00:25:24.400
they collect on public wi-fi and i think when you see the abuses that are existing in the end run
00:25:29.680
around the fourth amendment it should give us grave cause for concern this week they're hammering out
00:25:34.260
the details on this tax extender bill i've got grave concerns about that bill i would not vote for it
00:25:39.980
as i see it now what's the thomas massey take on the thomas massey take is when you give people tax
00:25:46.100
money back that they didn't pay in that's called welfare like this is a welfare expansion what they
00:25:52.560
think they call them refundable tax credits it's just a giveaway it's a it's welfare so they are
00:25:59.000
putting wealth i mean when you give people tax money back that they didn't pay in those are cash
00:26:05.720
payments okay why would we put cash payments how does that fix anything that's wrong in this country
00:26:12.480
to give people cash payments for having kids i can't imagine it's going to advance our economic
00:26:19.680
interests and probably won't help us from a debt standpoint he's the smartest member of congress
00:26:23.520
he's been the most dogged on the january 6 pipe bomb investigation and many other investigations
00:26:28.340
thank you for joining me again on firebrand thomas thank you matt roll the credits