@accabbat This 👇is a good analysis of the transcript of Brian Cole’s confession - which Mr. Cole’s legal team have moved to suppress on the grounds of coercion, considering Cole’s disability of autism. The analysis essentially begins at the point in the interview when Cole loses it when he was confronted with the proposition (we KNOW you planted the bombs) that he was the pipe bomber. There was between one to two hours of the interview that preceded that confrontation that likewise deserve analysis.
During the first part of the interview, Cole said he was scared and asked several times why he was there. He’d been arrested not long before the interview began by an FBI team of agents in body armor. None of them wore body cameras, so there would be no recording of Cole being given his Miranda rights nor his response. Nor is there any recording of what Cole was told as to why he was being arrested. I say that because it became an issue during the interview. Cole said more than once he didn’t know why he was there. At the start of the interview, Cole says he was scared and “I hope whatever is going on is a misunderstanding.” An agent replied they were just after the truth. They then explained they want to talk to him about his rights and planned to bring him before a judge that afternoon. Cole replied, “What’s going on? Please tell me what’s going on. Please tell me what’s going on.”
The agent responded, “We’re here to answer any questions you may have, but we want to make sure you understand your rights, before we do this…We’re going to review your rights in a minute, but we want to give you some background.”
The agents then explained they had been looking “at this” for five years. “[W]e really want to get to the bottom of it, ok?” Cole says “Ok.” The agent goes on, “ You’re talking to us today completely voluntary, ok, and you need to understand that. We’re interested in learning your side of the story… And you should know … being up front with us, you know, will really benefit you in the long run. Just so we can get this situation resolved. Does all that make sense?”
Notice the words pipe and bomb aren’t mentioned, nor has Cole been explained his Miranda rights yet. He’s told he’s talking to the agents “completely voluntary”(sic) and he’s asked to confirm that. The banter by the agents is plainly manipulative, and as I understand it, autistic people tend to be far more gullible than the average person. Autistic persons also tend to be overly suggestible.
Lest their point was lost, the agents doubled down: “Me and [redacted] want to reassure you our ultimate got here is to just understand the facts, get to the truth, hear your side of the story. If there’s anything we got wrong, we want to know it. We’re not here to, you know, accuse you of anything.”
Let all that sink in. A person on the autism spectrum, inherently trusting and gullible, is told by an arresting law enforcement officer that he’s about to give a voluntary statement giving his side of the story - and he’s not being accused OF ANYTHING. All the agents want are the facts. That dialogue occurs before he’s told about his Miranda rights. At page 9 they finally read the Miranda rights to Cole. They ask him whether he’s interested in talking to them without a lawyer, and he says yes, having already been deceptively manipulated into why he was there.
A couple of pages later Cole says he’s “out of his depth” and “don’t know what’s going on.” The agents respond that they just want to understand his life and family background. Then Cole says, “ I don’t know why I’m here for… I’ve been waiting for someone to tell me.” He explained that he hadn’t talked before because no one would tell him why he was there.
The agents then deliberately gave a vague, deceptive answer: “So you’re here because of the evidence we found regarding your activities in Washington,D.C., on January 5, 2021…. You remember January 6, 2021, You know what happened?”