A federal judge on Wednesday admonished a defense attorney for a man accused of planting pipe bombs in Washington the night before the 2021 attack on the Capitol, telling the attorney he did not follow a protective order and warning him to be “more careful.”
At issue in the back and forth were accusations from the Justice Department that the suspect’s defense counsel sought to harass and intimidate potential witnesses through a public court filing, which identified several individuals by name.
The filing, federal prosecutors argue, also accused one of the potential witnesses of being the true perpetrator who placed pipe bombs near the offices of the Democratic and Republican national committees the night before the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.
The government ruled out that potential witness as the perpetrator, federal prosecutors wrote in the filing.
Judge Amir Ali of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia instructed both sides to work together on the issue.
But he expressed annoyance with the defendant’s attorney, Alex Little, as the lawyer further argued his case before the court, at one point telling the attorney to “stop talking.”
“There’s a procedure you agreed to,” the judge said.
Ali told the attorney he did not follow what was required under the protective order governing discovery material in the case.
“You ought to be more careful” on this, the judge warned from the bench.
The defendant in the case, Brian Cole Jr., faces four criminal counts in a superseding indictment in the case.
He was originally charged with only two counts, but the Justice Department recently filed an updated indictment with two additional charges.
In a filing earlier this month, federal prosecutors accused Cole’s defense counsel of violating a protective order with a filing on the public docket, and said defense counsel “made no mention of a public filing containing sensitive information.”
“Government counsel has rarely encountered as brazen a violation of a protective order as occurred today, nor one so clearly intended to publicly harass and intimidate a witness,” prosecutors wrote in the April 1 filing.
The filing from Cole’s defense counsel also included the potential witness’s name and current and former employer, along with the name and employment of the witness’s significant other, according to the Justice Department.
That potential witness, a former Capitol Police officer, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Blaze Media, which had published a story that incorrectly suggested the individual was the one to place the bombs.
The lawsuit said the former Capitol Police officer was bringing the lawsuit to “correct the record, hold Defendants accountable, and reclaim her life.”
