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Welcome back to False Flag! January 6th pipe-bombing suspect Brian J. Cole may have confessed to planting the bombs soon after being apprehended. But now his lawyers are taking an unusual tactic to try to keep him out of prison: adopting the Blaze’s crazed reporting on “gait analysis” to argue that their client couldn’t possibly have done it.
In court files Wednesday, Cole’s lawyers asked to subpoena records related to the Blaze’s theory that then–Capitol Police officer Shauni Kerkhoff was the real bomber, including files connected to the conservative website’s gait-analysis expert. They also mentioned in court that Kerkhoff failed a polygraph test about planting the bombs, infuriating Justice Department lawyers, who said the information should have been redacted from public view.
Supporters of the theory that the pipe bombs were a government false flag have taken in these developments with rapturous glee. In terms of keeping Cole out of prison, though, the gait gambit may be less successful, given that the Blaze itself has retracted its initial story and Kerkhoff reportedly has a solid alibi.
Speaking of unsavory characters, today’s story has plenty of them. But first: Subscribe to Bulwark+! For 20 percent off the normal price!
–Will
Inside the Meltdown of a Right-Wing Publisher
And how readers of its men’s mag reacted when it published a trans model.
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THE READERS OF FAR-RIGHT men’s magazine Man’s World want content that is strong, virile, and politically incorrect—like they are, you might say. The magazine’s founder, an esoteric fitness guru named Charles Cornish-Dale who goes by the alias “Raw Egg Nationalist,” encourages his followers to guzzle more than a dozen uncooked eggs a day.
This cover from one issue of Man’s World should give you a sense of what we’re dealing with:
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So it came as a bit of a shock to Man’s World readers back in May 2024 when they discovered that included among the glossy photos of hot ladies that had just run in an issue of the magazine was a shot featuring a transgender woman.
The offending issue was published soon after the magazine was acquired by “New Right” publishing house Passage Press. The transgender woman in question, who goes by the name “Pariah the Doll,” is a fixture of New York’s reactionary Dimes Square scene. In the photo, Pariah is smeared in mud and what appears to be white paint as another person rubs their nose on her face.
Readers were angry to have been titillated by this without knowing the context of Pariah’s identity. But as angry comments flooded in, Cornish-Dale defended the choice, saying he had just been given a stack of pictures to choose from.
“I don’t actually know who this person is. It’s a picture from a fashion show,” he said—adding that “it just looked like another ugly model to me.”
His fans weren’t mollified.
“In seriousness though you should probably issue some kind of a retraction or statement of disavowal or something, even an honest mistake like this is likely to be used against you for a while and lots of people feel betrayed,” wrote one irate reader on X.
Running a photo of a transgender model by accident may not seem like the biggest transgression in conservative journalism. But in an age where anti-trans politics is ascendant on the right—and manosphere vibes are dominant in certain quarters—this was a major debacle for Passage and Man’s World. And yet, it was far from the only serious problem then facing the publication and causing frustration for its founder.
In a June 2025 letter to Passage executives that I obtained, Cornish-Dale complained that the publisher had botched his magazine’s rollout, run months behind schedule, and allowed its social media accounts to go dormant. He claimed he had been promised Man’s World would be distributed in “fraternities, gyms and gentlemen’s clubs,” but that such distribution never came to fruition.
“A magazine formerly read by hundreds of thousands has, in your hands, withered and died,” Cornish-Dale wrote.
One month after that letter, Passage announced that it was handing Man’s World back to Cornish-Dale, and would no longer be involved in its publication.