Judge rejects Trump pardon bid in DNC and RNC pipe bomb case

U.S. District Judge Amir H. Ali rejected Brian Cole Jr.’s bid to use Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 pardon proclamation to end the federal case accusing him of planting two improvised explosive devices outside the Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C. The ruling said Trump’s clemency was expressly limited to people convicted of Jan. 6-related offenses, drawing a hard line between crimes tied to the Capitol attack and a separate act that prosecutors say happened the night before.

Cole, 30, of Woodbridge, Virginia, had asked the court to dismiss the case by arguing that Trump’s Jan. 20, 2025 proclamation covered him. The Justice Department opposed the motion, saying Cole’s alleged conduct was not covered because it was not directly related to the Capitol attack.

Trump’s proclamation granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to people convicted of offenses related to events at or near the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. It also commuted the sentences of 14 named extremist leaders, a sign of how far the clemency sweep reached for defendants tied to the riot itself. Ali’s ruling drew the boundary more narrowly, limiting the pardon’s reach to convictions arising from Jan. 6 conduct.

Cole was arrested on Dec. 4, 2025, after federal investigators said a fresh review of evidence solved a case that had remained unsolved for years. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia said Cole was charged with transporting and planting the two IEDs on Jan. 5, 2021, outside the RNC and DNC headquarters. He has pleaded not guilty.

The pipe bombs were found outside the two major party headquarters on the eve of the Capitol riot, and the case long stood apart because no one had previously been arrested in connection with them. That separation now sits at the center of the pardon fight: whether a crime that was geographically and temporally linked to Jan. 6 can be folded into a pardon aimed at offenses committed at or near the Capitol, or whether it remains outside that legal shield. Ali’s ruling points to the latter, and gives other defendants little room to stretch Trump’s Jan. 6 clemency beyond the riot itself.