Here's the most 'distinctive mystery' that remains about the Capitol riots one year later: reporter

On Thursday, in a new video posted to Twitter, NBC4 Washington's Scott MacFarlane — the main correspondent covering the January 6 Capitol insurrection trials — laid out the most "distinctive mystery" that still continues about the event.

"There are a lot of questions that still have to be answered from January 6th, a lot of big questions, but let's not lose sight of the distinctively big question that remains right here," said MacFarlane, standing in front of the Republican National Committee headquarters. "There was somebody on January 5th, 2021 who left destructive pipe bombs right here, and near Democratic Party headquarters. And as of tonight, the FBI has not announced an arrest, or publicly announced a suspect."

"In a vacuum — separate it from the rest of January 6th — what a profoundly important question that is," continued MacFarlane. "Who left pipe bombs on Capitol Hill? It's a question that has yet to be publicly answered. We know they've been flooded with tips, and they keep showing those surveillance images, those surveillance videos ... to yield and generate more tips. But no announced arrest just yet."

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"Put that aside for a moment," said MacFarlane. "It is a relevant question in some of the prosecutions increasingly. In recent weeks we've seen defendants try to get one of these charges dropped, obstruction of an official proceeding charge dropped. They've made a series of arguments about that, but one of the arguments I'm seeing with increasing frequency is defendants arguing that it was partly the pipe bombs that interrupted the official proceeding, the discovery of the pipe bombs early in the afternoon of January 6th, that was disruptive to the original official proceedings."

"Now, prosecutors are gonna kick back at that and say it was the mob that stopped the electoral vote count," added MacFarlane. "But that open-ended question of who left the pipe bombs is resonating not just in the court cases, and not just with law enforcement, but in this community. This is a community. There are restaurants. There are homes. Schools. Playgrounds and families. And nearly a year later, they don't know who left pipe bombs in this community."

Watch below: