The man charged with planting pipe bombs in Washington, DC, the night before the 6 January 2021 riot on Capitol Hill has confessed that he assembled and placed the two improvised explosive devices (IEDs), according to a new court filing.
Brian Cole Jr, 30, told federal agents that he planted the bombs outside the national headquarters for the Republican and Democratic parties, prosecutors said in the filing released on Sunday.
Mr Cole, who has not entered a plea, supposedly told agents that "something just snapped" in him after "watching everything, just everything getting worse".
He denied his actions were connected to Congress certifying the 2020 election results, which inspired the riot.
Mr Cole told agents, according to the filing, that someone needed to "speak up" for the people who "feel that, you know, something as important as voting in the federal election is being tampered with".
