Indicted Brian Cole Jr. Never Wore or Owned a Smart Watch, His Mother Says
The hoodie-clad pipe bomb suspect appeared to be talking into an illuminated smart watch while walking the Capitol Hill route to place two destructive devices on Jan. 5, 2021, a new video analysis shows.
Brian Cole Jr., the Virginia man being prosecuted for allegedly planting the devices on Capitol Hill, has never worn a watch or owned an Apple Watch or similar smart device, his mother, Delicia Cole, exclusively told Veritas Regnat.
“Absolutely not,” said Cole, 51, of Woodbridge, Va., in an interview. “He has never worn a watch. In fact, he wears no jewelry of any kind.”
The previously undisclosed detail provides another point of separation between the hoodie suspect shown on FBI video and Cole, 30, who is charged with four felony counts in the pipe-bomb case despite a growing list of problems and conflicting evidence in the case. Cole pleaded not guilty to the charges on April 22.
The night watch is one of the breaking Jan. 6 subjects investigative journalist Steve Baker will discuss in an extended interview with Tucker Carlson. The interview is scheduled to air at 6 p.m. Eastern on July 1 on the Tucker Carlson Network and on X. The full interview with Baker will air at 8 p.m. Eastern.
The video discovery of the smartwatch by independent investigator Armitas raises the possibility that the hoodie suspect was communicating with an accomplice or someone else while walking between the Democratic National Committee building and the Capitol Hill Club, near the Republican National Committee.
The watch is seen most prominently as the suspect walks south from C Street down Rumsey Court just before 8:20 p.m. on Jan. 5. The suspect pulled back the left sleeve of the hoodie, exposing an illuminated screen. The suspect had the watch face on the underside of the wrist instead of on top, video shows. The FBI has long insisted the bomber worked alone.
“When I strung them all together, the pattern could not be unseen.”
Armitas told Veritas Regnat that he noticed the illumination on the suspect’s sleeve while scrubbing video earlier in his investigation. The idea it could be a smart watch dawned on him as he documented all the significant behaviors of the suspect as he or she walked the route between the apparent target buildings.
Armitas, who had been sharing his investigation findings with the FBI’s Washington Field Office in 2025, planned to turn over his video analysis to his FBI contact in October 2025, he said. He lost contact with the special agent about a week before the smartwatch discovery, he said.
Despite compelling evidence provided by Armitas, the FBI has never publicly acknowledged the tips or indicated whether it examined Armitas’ evidence. Nor has it indicated how Cole’s arrest on Dec. 4, 2025 squares with the independent investigator’s contrary evidence.
Illuminated object
“I immediately recalled the few frames of video from Rumsey Court showing an illuminated object and made the connection,” Armitas said.
“Last year, I was planning to meet with the FBI, so I added notes to my map showing all the unique events that happened that night and what times they occurred, in case I needed to recall them,” Armitas said. “When I strung them all together, the pattern could not be unseen.”
The discovery was made despite what Armitas has long contended was manipulated video evidence that was downsampled to 5 frames per second or less. Typical security video from Ring, Tapo, and other camera vendors is captured at roughly 30 frames per second.
“No way his feet would fit into those.”
The badly pixelated video shows the hoodie suspect walking in a jerky fashion similar to the stop-action technique used in some classic animated cartoons. The low frame rate makes it difficult to analyze a subject’s body movements with technology such as gait analysis.
If the device apparently worn by the hoodie suspect was a cellular-enabled watch, its signal should have pinged on nearby towers. It is not known if a cellular watch was among the 186 device signals captured by the FBI in 2021. Fifty-one of those devices were excluded from the FBI investigation because they belonged to law enforcement or someone else on an “exclusion list,” congressional investigators have said.
In the lead-up to 2021, Apple was the dominant market player with its Apple Watch Series 6 devices, which came in GPS-only and GPS+ Cellular versions. The cellular models operated independently of the user’s iPhone and could make/receive calls, text, stream music, podcasts and audiobooks. These models required a separate line on the same calling plan as the user’s iPhone.
Other manufacturers, including Samsung, Mobvoi, Montblanc, and Fossil, also offered smartwatches with calling capabilities, according to industry trade media.
Delicia Cole said Brian was the only family member who did not use Apple products. The FBI seized her iPad and Apple Watch during a raid of the Cole home on Dec. 4, she said, but Brian never used or wore the smartwatch, she said. He carried a Samsung Galaxy phone with a “badly cracked screen,” she said.
‘Big, fat feet’
An investigation by Veritas Regnat earlier showed that Cole’s size 12 feet would have never fit into the visibly smaller Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes the FBI said were worn by the bomb suspect.
Delicia Cole confirmed Veritas Regnat’s estimate that Cole has size 12 feet despite standing not more than 5 foot 7 inches tall. She said her son has always had “big, fat feet.”
During a recent visit to the Cole home, Veritas Regnat found that all of the shoes in Brian Cole’s closet were size 12. When shown a pair of Speed Turf sneakers similar in size to those worn by the hoodie suspect, Delicia Cole said, “No way his feet would fit into those.”
Cole, whose bid to be released from jail pending trial was slapped down by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit on April 30, will be in federal court July 8 for a status hearing.
