Brian Cole, Jr. ran a bail bonds company that worked to free illegal immigrants from ICE facilities and sued the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security.
Weeks before Cole allegedly planted pipe bombs found at the headquarters of the Democrat and Republican parties on January 6, 2021, a court ruled against his lawsuit suing the Trump administration on immigration issues, The Daily Wire has learned.
Later that year, Cole held a press conference bemoaning anti-black racism with a left-wing attorney.
Cole and Benjamin Crump, who represented the family of Trayvon Martin, attempted to sic the Biden Department of Justice on a Tennessee prosecutor who had raised questions about a bail bond company operated by Cole Jr. and his father.
“A high-profile civil rights attorney is calling for a federal investigation into a Rutherford County prosecutor accused of discrimination,” Nashville news outlet WPLN reported on November 16, 2021.
Federal prosecutors said Thursday that Cole planted pipe bombs at the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee on January 5, 2021. An FBI affidavit in the case notes that Cole runs a bail bond company.
That same year, Cole, who is black, claimed racial persecution by Rutherford County Assistant District Attorney John Zimmerman, video shows. Zimmerman had raised concerns about the bail bond company’s ethics, noting that it had been suspended from operating in a nearby district.
Standing alongside Crump, Cole said to the media: “I’ve never met the opposition that I’ve met with Zimmerman coming after our company the way he has. 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 … we’ve seen a lot of questionable acts that Mr. Zimmerman has demonstrated towards minority-owned companies.”
Crump said, “It is appalling, and we want these allegations to be investigated to the highest level of government. … They called him a punk and a thug, and why? What is it about him? A lot of people believe they know the answer.”
In April 2025, a Tennessee appeals court found that sanctions against the Coles’ company were called for due to repeated misconduct by Cole Sr. and others. The elder Cole lied about having never filed for bankruptcy or having other financial problems, when he in fact had filed for bankruptcy twice and had tax liens against him, a Tennessee court of appeals affirmed.
Cole Jr. and his father worked as bail bondsmen under various company names, initially in Fairfax County, Virginia. Public records suggest that the father moved to Knoxville, Tennessee, around 2017.
One of those corporate names was StateWide Bonding, Inc. Immigration Bonds, which helps illegal immigrants avoid jail.
“An Immigration Bond will secure the release of an undocumented alien from an immigration facility with the guarantee the conditions of the Immigration Bond requirements are met,” its webpage says.
StateWide’s website lists the same address as Free U Bonds, which Cole lists as his company on LinkedIn, and Cole is listed as StateWide Bonding’s owner in a dispute over bonds for illegal immigrants in the state of Colorado.
StateWide sued the Trump administration’s Department of Homeland Security over its treatment of illegal immigrants. Weeks before Cole allegedly planted the pipe bombs, on November 10, 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals in D.C. sided with the administration on the case, ruling that the lower court had properly thrown out all of StateWide’s claims.
The January 6 pipe bombs were used by Democrats and the media to portray Trump supporters as violent, though during the Biden administration, the FBI claimed it was unable to locate a suspect, and Kamala Harris — who was 20 feet from the bomb at the DNC — never mentioned it.
Charging papers say Cole began purchasing bomb-making parts by May 2019, during the Trump administration and long before any dispute about election results.
