(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Defense attorneys for the man accused of planting pipe bombs outside the RNC and DNC headquarters on the eve of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill protest have raised the possibility that someone else is the true culprit.
In a Wednesday court filing, lawyers for pipe bomb suspect Brian Cole Jr. mentioned ex-Capitol Police officer and current CIA security guard Shauni Kerkhoff as possibly being involved. Kerkhoff is the same person who was accused of being the pipe bomber in a Blaze Media article published last November. Kerkhoff’s lawyer has denied the accusations and threatened legal action. The FBI also reportedly cleared her as a suspect. Meanwhile, the Blaze has retracted the story and fired the reporters who wrote it.
However, Cole’s lawyers want to investigate Kerkhoff further. In their court filing, they requested three subpoenas: One for a video of Kerkhoff’s dog on the night of Jan. 5, 2021, which was reportedly taken while the pipe bomber was in DC—giving her an alibi; another for her phone and CIA employment records; and a third for documents she provided during the FBI’s pipe bombs investigation.
“Without this evidence, Mr. Cole would be unable to evaluate and prepare a defense that Ms. Kerkhoff, not Mr. Cole, placed the pipe bombs,” Cole’s filing says.
According to Cole’s lawyers, there’s good reason to subpoena those records: On Nov. 6, Kerkhoff purportedly failed a polygraph test when asked whether she planted the pipe bombs the night of Jan. 5.
“The FBI polygraph examiner noted Kerkhoff’s ‘very controlled reaction to the news of her failing the polygraph and seemingly rehearsed responses to examiner’s questions,’” Cole’s filing says.
Two days later, which was the same day the Blaze published its article about Kerkhoff, the FBI made her a person of interest in its investigation. After another five days, the FBI then opened an investigation into Cole.
“The same day the government officially opened its investigation into Mr. Cole, FBI agents attempted to question Ms. Kerkhoff and Mr. Dickert at her residence. The next day, the FBI interviewed Ms. Kerkhoff’s dog walker. The following day, Ms. Kerkhoff and her boyfriend, Daniel Dickert, also a Capitol Police Officer, were interviewed together by the FBI and AUSA Ballantine,” Cole’s filing says.
“Throughout November 2025, the FBI interviewed Ms. Kerkhoff’s co-workers at the Capitol Police, her neighbors, surveilled her without her knowledge, requested her employment records from the CIA, and sent surveillance footage of her walking to a podiatrist, likely for a gait analysis.”
Cole was arrested on Dec. 5, and the FBI closed its surveillance lead on Kerkhoff on Jan. 7.
Nothing filed by Cole’s attorneys proves that Kerkhoff was the true pipe bomber, and her willingness to participate in a polygraph test is arguably an indication of her innocence.
Cole’s court filing prompted a scathing response from the Justice Department, which now seeks sanctions against his lawyers for publicly naming Kerkhoff in court records. According to the DOJ, she has already received death threats as a result. Someone reportedly emailed her lawyer, threatening to shoot her in her face.
🚨MORE ON PIPE BOMBS🚨 DOJ claims public filing by Brian Cole Jr. defense resulted in an epithet-laced threat against former USCP officer Shauni Kerkhoff. pic.twitter.com/M9Cvm5ISoo
— Joe Hanneman 🇺🇸 (@HanneReports) April 2, 2026
Cole’s lawyers, however, said on Friday that they have not violated any protective order.
A judge ordered both parties to file briefs over the dispute. The DOJ is supposed to file a brief by this Friday about whether the Kerkhoff records should be unsealed, while Cole’s attorneys are supposed to respond by April 17 about why they shouldn’t be held in contempt of court.
Pipe Bomb Case History
As Headline USA revealed in March 2024, the FBI had a suspect identified by Jan. 10, 2021 in the pipe bomb case, but never made any arrests.
FBI records released in September revealed that agents didn’t interview the woman who discovered a pipe bomb near the RNC around 12:40 p.m. on Jan. 6 until days later. That woman, former counterterrorism analyst and then-Commerce Department worker Karlin Younger, said she found the bomb while doing laundry.
Meanwhile, former Vice President Kamala Harris continues to be tight-lipped on the subject, despite the fact that her motorcade drove past the DNC pipe bomb on Jan. 6. Harris left the Capitol at 11:21 a.m. arrived to the DNC at 11:25 a.m., but the nearby pipe bomb wasn’t discovered until 1:07 p.m. by a plainclothes Capitol Police officer.
The lack of answers have driven many to suspect that it may have been a false-flag attempt overseen by the feds themselves to divert law enforcement from the Capitol right as the Jan. 6 protest was turning violent.
Rep. Morgan Griffith, R-Va., has said that it may be impossible to successfully prosecute the pipe bomber, even if he or she is ever arrested.
“Here’s what a good criminal defense attorney’s going to say: If you identified the individual who’s believed to place the bomb, then hours go by, and you had a search by the Secret Service at the DNC and the dog didn’t find the explosive—so clearly, the device [the defense attorney’s] client might have left there wasn’t the device that was determined to be the pipe bomb, because it wasn’t picked up by the bomb-sniffing dog,” Griffith argued in March 2024.
Ken Silva is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/jd_cashless.
