This story has been making the rounds again in the wake of the third anniversary of the Capitol Hill riot, so we may as well take a look at it. It’s either one of the craziest conspiracy theories of the modern era or a scandalous indictment of our federal law enforcement system. As almost everyone surely knows by now, some person or persons planted pipe bombs outside of both the RNC and DNC headquarters in Washington the night before the riot. Yet three years later, no arrests have been made and no suspects have been identified. The story attracted renewed interest after Tucker Carlson featured an interview with someone suggesting that the entire thing was an inside job, perhaps pulled off by the FBI or other government officials. That sounds like something ripped from the pages of a cut-rate conspiracy fantasy novel, or at least it would in a more normal world. But as Matt Margolis points out at PJ Media, other, more plausible explanations for the government’s failure to identify a suspect are few and far between.

If you were anywhere near the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, the federal government has been able to figure that out. In fact, the Biden Administration recently announced it wasn’t just going to limit its aggressive prosecution and denial of due process rights to those who entered the Capitol Building peacefully, but even those who stayed outside…

Yet, with all the technology they have to identify any random person who was anywhere near the Capitol that day, one big mystery remains: who planted pipe bombs at RNC and DNC headquarters the day before?

They have surveillance footage of a suspect. And yet, three years later, the FBI has managed to track down every nonviolent observer and elderly grandmother who was in town that day, but not this suspect. The FBI’s handling of this particular aspect of their J6 investigation has been suspicious, to say the least, and the agency has failed to comply with requests from Congress for more information about it.

To be clear, the FBI hasn’t been entirely silent about the case. They claim that it remains a top priority for them and they have been working diligently on solving it. They even put up a half-million dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of the bomber. Yet nothing has come of these alleged efforts. CBS published a retrospective of what is and isn’t known about the incident on the anniversary of the riot. (It’s definitely worth a look if you want to catch up on the details.) But Tucker Carlson raised some valid questions and there is so much about the attempted attack that simply makes no sense whether you believe it was an inside job or some random maniac seeking to cause mayhem and death.

If you haven’t watched the Tucker Carlson interview I linked above, you really should. An originally unidentified man wearing a backpack approaches two vehicles parked adjacent to the DNC headquarters shortly after 1 pm on January 6. One vehicle belongs to the Capitol Hill Police (CHP) and the other contains Secret Service agents. The man (who we later learned was a CHP officer who was either off-duty or undercover) informs both the CHP and the Secret Service that there is a bomb planted a very short distance from them under the bench outside of the DNC. Their response seems to be complete apathy. It takes a few minutes for them to get out of their cars. They allow a group of children to cross at the intersection and walk within feet of the bomb. Another officer shows up and comes within feet of the bomb to take a picture of it. Only later is a robot summoned to remove and/or defuse the bomb. And all of this was happening when VP-elect Kamala Harris was scheduled to arrive.

If you were the CHP or the Secret Service and a law enforcement official informed you that there was a bomb only feet away from you, wouldn’t you immediately cordon off the entire area and call for more backup? Would you allow schoolchildren to stroll past the bomb? Shouldn’t there have been some sense of urgency?

Then there is the question of the bombs themselves. The FBI claims that they were “viable” and not fake, posing a “danger to the public.” But the only detonating mechanism they discovered was a 60-minute kitchen timer. There was no remote detonation mechanism installed allowing for a cellphone or other device to set them off at a distance. To be fair, perhaps that means that the design was flawed. But the bombs were planted the night before. We know the time because they have a suspect on video who is believed to have planted them. And what did they hope to accomplish by blowing up a park bench near the street? Wouldn’t they at least have attached them to the building somehow?

What was the motive of the bomber? If it was some crazed Trump supporter who was angry over a stolen election, we might understand wanting to blow up the DNC. Buy why bomb the RNC as well? You might be tempted to think that a second bomber aligned with the Democrats was involved, but would two people create virtually identical bombs with the same flaws making them nonfunctional, and place them in two locations within minutes of each other? That’s simply nonsensical.

None of this adds up. The newly released video is damning, at least in my opinion. If that was a real attempt at a bombing, the response from the CHP and the Secret Service should have been immediate and overwhelming. If law enforcement has a better explanation, they aren’t telling the public what it is. Something stinks to high heaven here and the House GOP has one more huge item on their plate to investigate now.