Cole ran a bail bonds company along with his father, Brian Cole Sr., that worked to free illegal immigrants from ICE facilities.
A new report has revealed that Brian Cole Jr, the man charged with placing pipe bombs at the RNC and DNC’s DC headquarters on January 5, 2021, had work for his father's company which sued the first Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security and called on the Biden administration’s Department of Justice to investigate a Tennessee prosecutor over claims of discrimination.
Cole Jr worked at a bail bonds company run by his father, Brian Cole Sr., that worked to free illegal immigrants from ICE facilities. Just weeks before Cole Jr allegedly planted the pipe bombs, a court ruled against his lawsuit lodged against the Trump administration, the Daily Wire reported.
StateWide, one of the company names Cole Jr and his father worked as bail bondsmen for, sued the DHS over the treatment of illegal immigrants. On November 10, 2020, the US Court of Appeals in DC ruled that a lower court had been right in throwing out all of StateWide’s claims.
Around a year later, Cole Sr and attorney Benjamin Crump, who also represented the family of Trayvon Martin, called for a federal investigation into a Tennessee prosecutor who had raised questions about a bail bond company run by the Coles.
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View on XA 2021 report from WPLN stated at the time, "A minority-owned business says Assistant District Attorney John Zimmerman has discriminated against it because of one owner’s race. Now, they want the federal government to find out if there’s a larger pattern."
Cole Sr, who was introduced at a press conference as the president of Free At Last Bail Bonding Company, said of Zimmerman, "He’s defamed me, he’s called my insurance company. We hope that the Department of Justice can come in and do a brief investigation, because what we see and what we’ve seen is a lot of questionable acts that Mr. Zimmerman has demonstrated towards minority-owned companies." Cole claimed that Zimmerman had spread rumors about him to hurt his business. Per the Daily Wire, Zimmerman noted that the company had been suspended from operating in a nearby district and had raised concerns about the bail bond company’s ethics.
A Tennessee appeals court ruled in April 2025 that, due to the misconduct of Cole Sr and others, sanctions placed against the company were called for. Cole Sr had lied about never filing for bankruptcy or other financial troubles, despite having tax liens against him and two bankruptcy filings.
Editor's note: This story has been clarified to reflect that the suspect's father ran the bail bonds company and the suspect worked at it.
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