(Ken Silva, Headline USA) Ex-Capitol Police officer and current CIA security guard Shauni Kerkhoff has sued Blaze Media for implicating her as the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Hill pipe bomber in an article last November that has since been retracted.
Kerkhoff also sued the two reporters who wrote the story, Steve Baker and Joe Hanneman, as well as their new media venture, Veritas Regnat, which they started after the Blaze fired them over their coverage.
The lawsuit stems from a Blaze article last November that said Kerkhoff’s “gait”—the way she walks—matches the suspect seen on camera placing pipe bombs near the RNC and DNC headquarters on the night of Jan. 5, 2021.
Before the article was published, Baker reportedly took his findings to the Office of the National Director of Intelligence (ODNI), which drafted a memo and passed it to the FBI. According to Kerkhoff’s lawsuit, Baker’s tip to the ODNI caused the FBI to conduct an armed raid on her home.
Ex-Capitol Police officer Shauni Kerkhoff says that the Blaze's error-ridden story about her being the J6 pipe bomber caused the FBI to conduct an armed raid on her house, with helicopter overhead.
She was then subjected to a 3-hr interrogation.
— Ken Silva (@JD_Cashless) April 21, 2026
“The FBI brought a bomb-disposal truck and a helicopter, which hovered loudly overhead. Agents exited their vehicles with their guns drawn in full tactical gear. An agent called Mr. Dickert [Kerkhoff’s boyfriend] and commanded him to ‘come out of the house unarmed with your dogs.’ Mr. Dickert and Ms. Kerkhoff complied and stepped outside,” the lawsuit says.
“Agents swept through the house, then reentered with bomb-sniffing dogs. They opened cabinets, rifled through drawers, and scattered Ms. Kerkhoff’s and Mr. Dickert’s belongings—all without obtaining Ms. Kerkhoff or Mr. Dickert’s consent.”
Kerkhoff said she was then interrogated by the FBI for three hours. She was made a suspect the next day, according to court records, and cleared after she produced an alibi of her filming her dog, which was taken around the time the pipe bombs were placed.
The lawsuit specifically blames Baker’s tip to the ODNI for the FBI raid.
“Had Baker never taken his ‘tip’ to ODNI, ODNI never would have drafted the memorandum; had ODNI never drafted the memorandum, the memorandum never would have landed at the FBI; had the memorandum never landed at the FBI, the FBI never would have investigated Ms. Kerkhoff,” the lawsuit says.
The Blaze retracted its story after the FBI arrested another suspect, Brian Cole Jr., in early December. The outlet fired Baker and Hanneman earlier this month. However, the lawsuit notes that neither the Blaze nor its former reporters have apologized to Kerkhoff.
The lawsuit, which was filed in Virginia federal court, asks for “punitive damages in amounts to be specifically determined at trial.”
Meanwhile, lawyers for Cole have also implicated Kerkhoff as possibly the true pipe bomber.
Cole’s lawyers want to investigate Kerkhoff further. In a court filing earlier this month, 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.
A judge has yet to rule on the request from Cole’s lawyers. Cole has a hearing scheduled for Wednesday.
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.
