FBI agents kept the man accused of planting the D.C. pipe bombs away from a judge until he broke down and confessed, his lawyers say.
Attorneys for Brian Cole Jr. made the claim in a motion filed Tuesday in federal court that asked a judge to throw out everything Cole told the FBI during his Dec. 4, 2025, interrogation. The lawyers say agents kept him from a judge "sitting minutes away" so they could keep questioning him.
They also argue the agents used coercive tactics on Cole, who is autistic.
Cole was charged with two counts of transporting and placing explosive devices tied to pipe bombs left outside the Democratic and Republican national committee offices the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, USA Today columnist Chris Brennan wrote after the arrest. Neither bomb went off.
Cole had no criminal record before his arrest, the motion says. A neuropsychologist hired by the defense diagnosed him with autism later that month.
The lawyers say the FBI's own recording of the interrogation shows "the methodical dismantling of a man whose autism spectrum disorder left him unable to withstand the psychologically coercive tactics deployed against him."
"I wake up one minute, I'm going to 7-Eleven to get myself some food, and all of a sudden I have a bunch of FBI agents just pointing, pointing guns at me," Cole told the two agents questioning him at the FBI's Washington Field Office, according to the motion.
After reading Cole his rights, the agents told him he was accused of placing the bombs, the filing says.
"Woah, wait a minute. Wait a minute. . . . This, this is a misunderstanding. Please tell me. Please tell me. Please, please, please tell me," Cole replied. "I'm doing my best to keep myself together."
Cole developed chills, and the agents wrapped him in a blanket, the lawyers wrote. When he gagged in the middle of a sentence, the agents joked about fetching a wastebasket "just in case."
"You can't convince us that you didn't do it. We have video," one agent told him.
"I didn't, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't. . . . [E]ven a small chance . . . . Even a small, tiny chance. Smallest, tiniest chances," Cole repeated.
His lawyers describe this as "stimming," a repetitive behavior that autistic people use to calm themselves under stress. Cole had told the agents early on that his greatest fear was how his family would learn of his arrest, the filing says.
"So every one of those family members are going to have to come into DC to be interviewed, every one of them, because that one night you went off script," an agent told him after the break.
Soon after, the agents asked Cole whether he wanted the interrogation to end, the motion says.
"I don't know what to do anymore. I just—everything is just, everything is just blank," Cole answered.
"Do you recognize that person?" an agent then asked after playing a surveillance video, according to the filing.
"No," Cole said. He also told the agents he had not watched the video before.
"[T]he agents turned 'No' into 'Yes' by telling him that 'No' was itself a crime," his lawyers wrote.
At 9 a.m., the agents told Cole he would likely go before a judge that afternoon, the motion says. Instead, they handed him a form giving up his right to see a judge that day.
"[Y]ou're waiving that right and you're going to stay here and talk to us," an agent explained.
"These are my rights, even if I signed it, right?" Cole asked. An agent answered, "Yep."
Federal rules require that anyone arrested be brought before a judge without unnecessary delay, the lawyers wrote. A confession given more than six hours after an arrest can be thrown out if the wait was unreasonable or unnecessary.
Agents arrested Cole shortly before 7 a.m., and he signed the form about 45 minutes before the six-hour mark, according to the filing. The questioning went on for hours afterward, and he did not see a judge until the next day.
"[S]omething snapped in me, I guess. . . . [E]verything after that was just blank. Genuinely," Cole said of the night the bombs were placed.
The lawyers say the agents themselves then supplied many details of that night, such as where Cole parked and what he carried.
Richard Leo, a University of San Francisco professor hired by the defense, concluded that "the interrogation was psychologically coercive," the motion says.
At a news conference announcing the charges on the day of Cole's arrest, Attorney General Pam Bondi blamed former President Joe Biden's administration for a "total lack of movement on this case," Brennan wrote.
"That pipe bomber is not a person of the right. It's a person on the left," President Donald Trump said in an April 2025 Fox News interview, months before the arrest, according to Brennan.
Cole's lawyers asked for a hearing where they plan to call Leo and the agents who questioned him, the filing says.