Wednesday, February 28, 2024

RNC Security Officer Who First Responded to J6 Pipe Bomb Claims Official Story 'Makes No Sense'

RNC Security Officer Who First Responded to J6 Pipe Bomb Claims Official Story 'Makes No Sense'

AP Photo/John Minchillo

The director of security for the Republican National Committee recently called into question the official explanation of the pipe bomb that was discovered on Jan. 6, 2021, saying that it "makes no sense whatsoever." Let's be real: not much that happened that day makes sense. The official narrative of events has proven to be less than accurate. 

And if everything was as cut and dried as the narrative the Democratic Party and many talking heads make it out to be, with Trump supporters twisted into caricatures of "right-wing extremism," then why on earth has so much video evidence emerged since the incident to show that police officers on the scene allowed individuals into the Capitol building and even escorted some of them around? 

Something smells fishy about the whole situation, but if you dare question the narrative, you get slapped with the "conspiracy theorist" label. That particular phrase was created to shame and silence anyone who questioned an official story coming from the government. Keep that in mind.

According to the Daily Wire:

Kenneth Capolino, a former Capitol Police officer who went on to work as the RNC’s director of security, was the man who personally alerted Capitol Police to the bomb near the RNC and managed the emergency response.

Capolino told The Daily Wire, in his first public remarks on the incident, that it looked like a stereotypical IED, or improvised explosive device, that is used by law enforcement in training sessions. “Any of the IED awareness training I’ve been to with law enforcement, that’s like the quintessential training device,” he told The Daily Wire. “That’s exactly what it looks like.”

His firsthand account adds to questions about the purported pipe bombs, which went undetected for a long period of time outside both the RNC and its Democrat counterpart, the Democratic National Committee. The bomb plot is by far the most dramatic part of January 6, but the FBI has made no progress in determining who planted them — and Democrats investigating the plot appear to have gone out of their way to avoid mentioning their existence since.

Capolino states that any law enforcement official who came across the device would immediately be able to identify it. 

“They set up scenarios like that so you know what to look for, so they have to make training devices,” he said. “There was so much about January 6, but nothing about the pipe bombs, which I thought was so, so strange.”

That is strange. Pipe bombs are serious explosives that can do a whole lot of damage to both people and property. Given that a pipe bomb could be seen as an act of terrorism, why wasn't anyone talking about it? Why does it seem as if Democrats were attempting to bury the lede, as we say in journalism?

Capolino found the pipe bomb in question just a few moments before protestors started entering the Capitol building. The device was hooked up to a 60-minute egg timer, but it had been in its location since the previous night. Almost like it was part of a setup of some kind, right?

“I was two feet from it. Why would someone construct a device with a one-hour kitchen timer, place it [at] 8:30 p.m. the night before, if they intended for it to detonate 16 hours later?” Capolino then asked.

Though referred to in the media as the RNC bomb, it was actually at the neighboring Capitol Hill Club, a Republican hangout. Capolino said his guards would have found it during their hourly sweeps if it was on RNC property.

A similar bomb was found minutes after the RNC bomb was detected, directly in front of the DNC beside a bench, raising questions about how the DNC would not have located it for seventeen hours, despite a bomb-sniffing dog that walked by it. Kamala Harris, at the time a U.S. Senator and the vice-president elect, was at the DNC, meaning there would likely be extra security in place, Capolino explained.

Capolino then revealed that there was no way the Secret Service would have allowed the area of the DNC premises to go unswept before the vice president entered and that if "anyone was patrolling the DNC that should have been found at like 9 p.m.”

But Capolino said that whether or not it was a real bomb, the FBI’s story that it was placed at 8:30 p.m. on January 5 is true, at least for the Capitol Hill Club. He personally retrieved, reviewed, and handed over to the FBI, RNC footage showing the suspect. “We have the guy walking through the back alleyway at that time,” he said.

As Capolino has already pointed out, there are a lot of weird things about this whole situation. For example, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) identified some surveillance footage that clearly shows police officers, after a passerby notified them about the DNC bomb, meandered around and didn't do anything to clear the area or seal it off from the general public. They even allowed children to walk in front of it, which is a huge no-no if the bomb is live. When the Daily Wire asked the DNC if they evacuated staff from the building after finding the explosive device, they refused to answer. 

Why the silence on something of that nature? Seems like such a small thing to be secretive about. Unless, of course, they didn't evacuate the premises because they somehow knew in advance that the bomb wasn't real. Gee, I wonder how they would be made privy to such information? 

And even worse, it took the FBI two whole years to finally investigate to see if anyone in the area had information about the bombs. Why the long wait? By that time, folks aren't going to remember if they noticed anything or not, and that's probably the point. 

Capolino said that although he provided video to the FBI immediately after the event, the FBI showed up at the home of the security officer who was manning the booth six months ago to reinterview him, and asked for his supervisor’s information, “but I never heard from them.”

The FBI initially released only a couple of grainy pictures of the suspect, despite the existence of many more videos and photos. The still photos made it impossible for people to identify the suspect by the way he walked, Capolino said.

“I’m the last one to speculate, but it doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t at all,” he stated.

Almost eight months later, the bureau released footage revealing that after the suspect placed the explosives, he circled back to the Capitol Hill Club, where he waved to a cop who drove by.

The FBI has arrested more than 1,200 people for charges as minor as trespassing at the Capitol on January 6, using high-tech techniques like “geofencing” cell phone records. But despite video showing the suspect using a cell phone on January 5, an FBI official told Congress that it could not find the suspect in cell phone records, perhaps because a batch of cell phone data had gone missing.

Journalist Julie Kelly reported that the Capitol Hill resident who found the bomb near the RNC, Karlin Younger, worked for an FBI contractor. The news outlet Public on Monday quoted a security analyst questioning Younger’s demeanor in the video of her discovering the bomb, saying she “never expressed any worry” and “leaned down and placed her ear near the device to listen if the timer was ticking.”

Younger then approached the guard shack at the RNC and asked to see the individual in charge. The guard in the shack called for Capolino.

“I spoke to her and she said, ‘I was taking out my garbage and I see this weird pipe thingy with wires coming out of it,’ so I ran over there and there it was next to the garbage cans,” he explained.

Capolino snapped a photograph of the bomb and walked toward the Capitol South Metro station because he knew an officer would be there. He showed the officer the photo. 

“He immediately alerted USCP command center via radio, I used the guards that I had to set up containment while Capitol Police set up their quarantine, then we went into the building to evacuate while that was going on. Shortly after that was when the FBI used their bomb robot. I saw them manipulating the robot. I’m not sure what method of disposal they used for the device, but I believe they disrupted it,” he remarked.

Capolino then stated that after police shut down the area, they noticed a red pickup truck that was packed full of various weapons. It was located in a spot in front of the RNC and close to the Capitol South Metro, which means the area is highly trafficked by police. 

The owner of the vehicle eventually identified himself to law enforcement because the pipe bomb quarantine prevented him from retrieving his vehicle.

To Capolino, the pipe bomb and the truck full of weapons and Molotov cocktails directly outside of the RNC and next to Capitol office buildings were the most dramatic and dangerous elements of the day. Yet the pipe bombs were barely ever spoken of, and few even know the red pickup truck incident occurred.

The records show that Lonnie Leroy Coffman, a 72-year-old veteran of the Vietnam war and Alabama resident, parked the pickup truck containing “loaded firearms within arms-reach of the driver’s seat, including a 9mm handgun, a rifle, and a shotgun. Also inside the pickup truck and in its covered bed were hundreds of rounds of ammunition, large-capacity ammunition feeding devices, a crossbow with bolts, machetes, camouflage smoke devices, a stun gun, cloth rags, lighters, a cooler containing eleven… Molotov cocktails” modified to operate like napalm. Coffman also had a gun on his person.

How can anyone look at any of this and not think there's something off about the whole situation? Why, with all of these bizarre occurrences, does it make one a conspiracy theorist to ask questions and attempt to get to the truth? I'm asking a lot of questions because we don't have answers and explanations for what is going on, and we deserve to know. 

If the government plotted to make Trump supporters look like domestic terrorists to destroy a movement built on the idea of restoring this country to its former glory, those responsible should be held accountable. To pull off something of that magnitude, you would have to have powerful individuals in on it. 

Prosecutors charged Coffman with a total of 17 counts, then tossed all of them out except for one related to an unregistered firearm, which is a federal offense, and carrying a pistol without a required license, which violates city law. 

Why are they being so gentle with Coffman, who was armed to the teeth, yet protesters who possessed no weapons are having the book thrown at them in court? Even more strange is the fact there was never any explanation given for why the man had the weapons on him in the first place. 

Coffman received a sentence of 46 months behind bars. 

“This whole thing just doesn’t make sense,” Capolino stated about the whole pipe bomb fiasco. “People need to have all the information to find out what was actually going on. I don’t feel like the public is getting all the information.”

Will we ever get the truth of what happened that day? I hope we get answers, but I'm not holding my breath.

https://pjmedia.com/michaelcantrell/2024/02/22/rnc-security-officer-who-was-first-responder-to-j6-pipe-bomb-claims-official-story-doesnt-make-sense-n4926682

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