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FBI has made an arrest in its nearly 5-year-old investigation into who planted the pipe bombs Washington On the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, a law enforcement official told The Associated Press on Thursday.
The arrest is the first time investigators have zeroed in on a suspect in an act that has long puzzled law enforcement, spawned numerous conspiracy theories and remains an enduring mystery in the shadow of the dark chapter. American The history that is the violent Capitol siege.
The official who described the arrest was not authorized to publicly discuss the case that has not yet been made public and spoke on condition of anonymity. The arrest took place Thursday morning and the suspect is a man, the officer said. No other details were immediately available, including what charges the man may face.
Pipe bombs were placed on the evening of January 5, 2021, near the offices of Democratic and republican National Committees in the District of Columbia. No one was hurt before the bombs were made safe, but the FBI has said both devices could have been lethal.
In the years since, investigators have sought the public’s help in identifying an unexplained subject seen on surveillance cameras, though they have struggled to determine answers to basic questions, including the person’s gender and motive and whether the act had a clear connection to the riot at the Capitol a day later when supporters of President donald trump Republicans stormed the building to stop the certification of their 2020 election loss to Democrat Joe Biden.
Searching for a breakthrough, the FBI publicized additional information about the investigation last January, including an estimate that the suspect was approximately 5 feet 7 inches tall, as well as previously unreleased video of the suspect placing the bomb.
The bureau struggled for years to locate a suspect despite receiving hundreds of tips, reviewing thousands of video files, and conducting large numbers of interviews.
In the absence of solid evidence, Republican lawmakers and right-wing media outlets promoted conspiracy theories about pipe bombs. House Republicans also criticized the security lapse, questioning how law enforcement failed to detect the bombs for 17 hours. Current FBI Deputy Director Dan Bongino raised the possibility last year, before being selected for his job, that the act was an “inside job” and involved a “massive cover-up”.
But since arriving at the FBI in March, he has sought to crack down on the far-right’s troubled base by promising that pipe bomb investigations would be a top priority and defending the bureau’s work.
“We brought in new personnel to look at the case, we sent police officers and detectives who served as TFOs (task force officers) to review the FBI’s work, we conducted multiple internal reviews, held countless in-person and SVTC meetings with investigative team members, we dramatically increased investigative resources, and we increased the public reward for information in the case to use crowd-sourcing leads. Of,” he wrote in a lengthy post on X last month.