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The J6 pipe bomb story was one of the most suspicious and consequential parts of the entire “fedsurrection” saga. Hence why Revolver’s investigative team treated it with the seriousness it deserved. We dug, questioned, raised red flags, and understood from the jump that a story like this demanded care, discipline, and real investigative work.
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That’s why this latest lawsuit against the Blaze is such a big story. It doesn’t give the corporate media some moral victory, and it certainly doesn’t mean the pipe bomb story was never strange. It was strange, and it still is. But if a conservative outlet pushed a high-stakes accusation against the wrong person, based on reporting or a theory that didn’t hold up, that is a serious problem too.
And that’s where the Blaze now finds itself: facing a major lawsuit from a former Capitol Police officer who was publicly accused by one of its reporters of being the elusive pipe bomber.
On a story this explosive, getting it right matters more than getting it out first.
A former Capitol Police officer who helped fend off the Jan. 6, 2021 attack is suing a right-wing media outlet for accusing her of planting pipe bombs that became a key inflection point in that day’s chaos.
Shauni Kerkhoff, 31, accused Blaze Media and two of its former reporters of relying on a faulty “gait analysis” of surveillance footage to wrongly suggest she was the person who planted pipe bombs outside the RNC and DNC the night before the Jan. 6 riot. The false accusations triggered conspiracy theories, threats and an FBI investigation.
“They simply made it up,” lawyers for Kerkhoff argue in the 127-page lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal district court in Alexandria, Virginia. “Ms. Kerkhoff was not the January 6 pipe bomber. She was a normal, private person — with a family, career, and hobbies — who was at home with her boyfriend and their dog at the exact time a hooded suspect was captured on CCTV placing pipe bombs in Washington, D.C. Defendants disregarded these facts — and Ms. Kerkhoff’s humanity — when they plucked her from obscurity to satisfy the whims of their conspiracy theory.”
When the subject is one of the most sensitive unresolved questions from January 6, rushed reporting can do real damage.
Politico:
Kerkhoff, who now works at the CIA, says the Blaze and its reporters — Steve Baker and Joseph Hanneman — used the flimsy allegations against her to generate a dangerous furor that fit their conspiratorial narratives about the attack on the Capitol. She is seeking an unspecified financial award.
Baker and a spokesperson for Blaze Media did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Hanneman could not immediately be reached for comment.
The Justice Department ultimately rejected the theory that Kerkhoff was the pipe bomber. Instead, last December, prosecutors charged Brian Cole, Jr., with planting the devices, which failed to explode. Cole has pleaded not guilty and has cited the reporting about Kerkhoff in his bid to raise doubts about the government’s case.
Sadly, throwing the wrong person into the middle of a huge, complicated story only makes the truth harder to sort out later.
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The female officer who was accused was actually there that day. She later left and went to work for the CIA. She now claims she was dragged through the mud over something she says she didn’t do.
Politico:
The allegation, which has remained salient in some far right circles, has turned Kerkhoff’s Jan. 6 reality on its head.
Kerkhoff was one of the outnumbered Capitol Police officers who mounted initial resistance as a mob of President Donald Trump’s supporters barreled across police lines and threatened to breach the Capitol. She fired non-lethal munitions at a crowd that swelled on the Capitol steps, led by Guy Reffitt, a Texas man who carried holstered firearms as they helped lead the charge. Kerkhoff testified against Reffitt at his 2022 trial, the first Jan. 6 case to reach a jury, which resulted in a seven-year prison sentence cut short last year by Trump’s mass pardon.
Kerkhoff later left the Capitol Police and went to work for the CIA. The agency, she indicated in the lawsuit, placed her on leave during the FBI’s probe but recalled her after the bureau cleared Kerkhoff as a suspect. She noted in her lawsuit that she provided the FBI evidence that she was at home with her new puppy the evening of Jan. 5, when the pipe bombs were planted.
Whatever anyone thinks about January 6, the convoluted pipe bomb mystery, or the government’s handling of it, one thing is true: if you’re going to publicly identify a person as the bomber, the reporting needs to be rock solid. Because once a name gets attached to a story like this, the consequences are real, and they don’t just go away.
And finally, the Politico piece shows just how serious this lawsuit may become. She’s got heavyweight counsel, and the case is being framed as a major defamation fight.
Politico:
Kerkhoff noted that Baker himself was charged for his part in the breach of the Capitol, pleading guilty to misdemeanor crimes before the case was shut down by Trump’s pardon. In addition to Blaze, Baker and Hanneman, the lawsuit also names a new media firm, Veritas Regnat LLC. That company was founded in March and lists Hanneman as its agent, according to Wisconsin corporate records.
Kerkhoff is represented by an Alexandria-based law firm, Clare Locke, which is renowned for pursuing defamation claims. It was among the firms representing voting equipment maker Dominion Voting Systems in its defamation case against Fox News, which the network settled in 2023 for almost $800 million.
If conservative media wants to be trusted, it has to let the facts lead the way, especially on stories this sensitive.
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The January 6 pipe bomb story always deserved careful and responsible reporting. We understood that from the jump, which is why we approached it with caution and raised the many obvious questions surrounding the case without drawing bold conclusions. However this lawsuit plays out, the lesson should be that when the stakes are this high, credibility matters most.
You can read the lawsuit here.
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