The phone call on that Thursday afternoon brought an emphatic demand: Report to the C.I.A. office immediately.
Shauni Kerkhoff had been with the agency for four years and would have normally been at work then. But her schedule had been altered during the government shutdown, so she was enjoying a day off, curled up in her living room, the dogs nearby.
It did not cross Ms. Kerkhoff’s mind to decline or demand more information from her supervisor. She had made it a habit to be professional and upbeat, having chosen law enforcement because she believed she could be helpful to the community.
At 31 years old, her enthusiasm for her career had already been tested, and in an unimaginable way. Her first job in the D.C. area was as a Capitol Police officer, and she had faced off against the mob of rioters on Jan. 6, 2021.
She relived the insurrection while working with federal prosecutors and testifying in two criminal trials — and then watched those convictions unravel when President Trump pardoned hundreds of the day’s participants.
She had gone on to join the C.I.A. where she received multiple promotions and performance awards. But when she arrived at the federal building in Virginia on Nov. 6, 2025, she was told to join two F.B.I. agents in a windowless conference room.
The agents had come, they said, because of what had taken place the night before the storming of the Capitol. On Jan. 5, 2021, surveillance cameras captured someone placing pipe bombs near the headquarters of the Democratic and Republican national committees. The bombs did not detonate but their discovery the next day diverted law enforcement resources away from the Capitol as the riots broke out.
The case had famously remained unsolved. However, Ms. Kerkhoff said the two agents informed her that they had recently come across some “online chatter” concerning a new suspect.
Then the questions began.
Where had Ms. Kerkhoff been the night of Jan. 5, 2021? Who was she with? What sort of training did she have in building bombs? Did she own a certain type of sneakers?
And would she hand over her phone? Because she was now under investigation.
The Jan. 6 attack inspired conspiracy theories almost from the moment President Trump’s supporters overcame the police and charged into the Capitol. The one that gained the most traction held that the riot was a “fedsurrection,” an inside job orchestrated by a network of law enforcement officers intending to sabotage Mr. Trump.
The false narrative has been promoted by extremist groups, right-wing pundits and members of Congress. Even Kash Patel, the current director of the F.B.I., and his former deputy, Dan Bongino, seemed to support the claim at one time.
A particularly tantalizing subject to “fedsurrection” believers was the identity of the Capitol Hill pipe bomber. The suspect was wearing a mask, a gray hooded sweatshirt and Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes while planting the bombs between 7:30 p.m. and 8:30 p.m.
Over the years, the F.B.I., working with other agencies, said it had a team devoted to the case, while encouraging the public to study footage of the individual.
“You may recognize their gait, body language or mannerisms,” the F.B.I. said in a statement. A reward for information eventually grew to $500,000.
In January 2025, a congressional committee issued a report scrutinizing what it saw as a stalled investigation. That same day, the F.B.I. released a new detail: the suspect stood approximately 5 feet 7 inches.
Last fall, Blaze Media, an outlet with a news site, podcasts and streaming app that bills itself as “the home of dissent from woke capital,” was putting together its own purported investigation. It promised to deliver a “bombshell revelation.”
The Blaze piece published on Nov. 8, two days after Ms. Kerkhoff was first interrogated by the F.B.I. The headline read: “Former Capitol Police officer a forensic match for Jan. 6 pipe bomber, sources say.” The officer was Shauni Kerkhoff.
The piece was written by Steve Baker and Joseph M. Hanneman.
Mr. Baker was a musician from North Carolina who had performed as David Bowie in a tribute act before focusing full-time on his personal blog. He has said that he was at the Capitol on Jan. 6 as a journalist for his blog, although he was charged with trespassing and disorderly conduct. (“Look out your windows bitches, look what’s coming,” Mr. Baker said in footage he took that day, according to court records.) His case was dismissed as part of President Trump’s sweeping grant of clemency to all of the Jan. 6 rioters.
Mr. Hanneman lived in Wisconsin and had previously written for The Wisconsin State Journal as well as The Epoch Times, a publication that is tied to the Falun Gong religious movement and that has published right-wing misinformation.
In their story, Mr. Baker and Mr. Hanneman wrote that they had arranged a forensic study of Ms. Kerkhoff’s gait by an unnamed analyst. A “software algorithm,” the story said, showed she was a 94 percent match to the pipe bomber. The analyst determined that the match was closer to 98 percent based on “visual observations.” The story also said the findings had been confirmed by several anonymous intelligence sources.
The writers said this “gait analysis” had been done by using security video of Ms. Kerkhoff as well as footage of her playing soccer eight years earlier, and comparing them with the Jan. 5 video of the pipe-bomb suspect.
They concluded that Ms. Kerkhoff’s height — 5 feet 7 inches, a figure written on her online athlete bio — and the fact that she had broken her leg in a college soccer game was more proof. The broken leg, they surmised, had given Ms. Kerkhoff a distinct limp, which they said matched that of the pipe bomber. (Ms. Kerkhoff, in fact, made a full recovery and does not present a limp.)
“The prospect of a Capitol Police officer being the perpetrator, if confirmed, could recast the entire story of Jan. 6,” Mr. Baker and Mr. Hanneman wrote.
The Blaze story reinforced its findings by adding that an editor who stopped by Ms. Kerkhoff’s home said that it appeared to be under the watch of law enforcement officers.
At the time, Ms. Kerkhoff was in fact being investigated by the F.B.I.
But Mr. Baker said he may have helped trigger that investigation. In an interview with The New York Times, Mr. Baker said that shortly before his story published, he had taken his theory to sources at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
A spokesperson for the office said that a “whistle-blower” had come forward last year with an allegation about a security concern, which the agency documented and lawfully reported to the employing agency of the person, who was a member of the intelligence community.
The evidence against Ms. Kerkhoff was questionable, and aspects of the Blaze piece raised questions about whether its writers had followed ethical standards.
The piece accused someone of being a suspect in a federal crime based primarily on her gait — a characteristic that can be affected by myriad factors. Researchers have cautioned that a gait study is meant to provide only supplemental information.
The story also hinged its claim on anonymous sources and a methodology that was vaguely described. And the authors attempted to validate their story by referring to the presence of law enforcement at Ms. Kerkhoff’s home, which Mr. Baker himself believes stemmed from his meeting with national intelligence sources.
Mr. Baker and Mr. Hanneman also did not reach out to Ms. Kerkhoff before publication to give her an opportunity to respond to the accusations or present information that might contradict their story.
For most of her life, Ms. Kerkhoff had led, by her account, an untroubled existence.
“I would say I was sheltered, like I had never experienced adversity,” Ms. Kerkhoff said in a recent interview at a family member’s home in Virginia. Sitting in a chair in her usual ensemble on off days — button-down shirt, jeans, Allbirds shoes — she spoke wistfully about a time when she held a more optimistic view of the world.
She was a star goalkeeper in high school in Ohio and was on the track and cross-country teams before receiving a full scholarship to Temple University. There, she played soccer, worked as a tutor in the student center and maintained a 4.0 G.P.A. “I’m the type of person if, like, no one answers a question, I answer it to save the class,” she said.
Playfully teased for being a straight arrow who did not drink or even jaywalk, Ms. Kerkhoff had a way of connecting with a wide range of people. “Normally a team splits into little groups, but Shauni got on with the quiet girls, the outgoing girls,” recalled her coach at the time, Seamus O’Connor. “She just had this bright personality.”
After college she returned to Ohio for a short time, working in corporate security and playing in a semipro soccer league. Encouraged by a professor to look at federal law enforcement jobs that paid well and were stable, she applied to the uniformed division of the Secret Service and the Capitol Police. The latter offered her a job, and she moved to Virginia and started at the academy in June 2017.
She was assigned to be an officer on the Senate division and, like many, was also placed with the civil disturbance unit, a team specializing in crowd control. She later became an instructor with that unit.
Ryan Schauf, a former Capitol Police lieutenant, oversaw Ms. Kerkhoff during her entire tenure with the civil disturbance unit. “She was and still is a really straight-up, direct and honest person,” Mr. Schauf said.
Ms. Kerkhoff began dating Daniel Dickert, a fellow officer, in 2018. They were both self-effacing homebodies who liked to spend their weekends with family or going on long runs. They moved in together and planned to marry.
“My life was great, and then it just … ,” Ms. Kerkhoff said, her voice trailing off.
In 2020, burned out from the overtime hours, Ms. Kerkhoff applied to the C.I.A., hoping it might offer better work-life balance. Her application was moving through the system when Jan. 6 arrived.
In the meeting with the F.B.I. agents, Ms. Kerkhoff said she felt an odd relief when she learned why she had been called in. It was such an absurd notion that she thought, “Oh, this can be cleared up easily.”
But the nature and seriousness of the questions became increasingly bewildering as they dragged on for about three hours. Because she was at her place of work, a government agency, she felt compelled to engage. As an officer, she also held the F.B.I. in high regard. She never requested to speak to a lawyer.
Afterward she and Mr. Dickert, who had driven her to the meeting, headed home, alarmed. Agents had said they were going to meet them there. What happened next, as the couple recalled it, was a surreal scene.
Shortly after entering their house in Alexandria, the couple said, they saw a caravan of vehicles descend upon their street, one blocking their driveway. A bomb truck arrived, as did a canine trained in detecting explosives. They heard a helicopter thrumming above. Officers in tactical gear emerged, their guns drawn.
Mr. Dickert’s cellphone rang. He said that an agent on the other end gave a chilling command: Come out of the house unarmed with your dogs.
Ms. Kerkhoff’s stomach dropped. She urged Mr. Dickert to hurry. “The panic in our voices was unreal,” Ms. Kerkhoff said. “We didn’t want a shooting scenario.” The couple rushed to get outside, making sure to keep their hands visible.
They said that officers began filing into their home to rifle through closets, comb through drawers and filing cabinets, sort through their laundry — but they did not take anything. An agent requested to scan through Ms. Kerkhoff’s laptop.
Ms. Kerkhoff had signed forms to have her car and phone searched. She had also agreed to include her home — with the caveat that Mr. Dickert would have to consent because he owned the house. But Mr. Dickert said he had not signed anything, nor given verbal permission.
Ms. Kerkhoff was told that everything could be cleared up if she went to an F.B.I. field office to do a polygraph interview that night.
The polygraph took about 30 minutes, she said. Then she was interrogated for another two-and-a-half hours.
When she finally returned home early the next morning, she wept. “I had never felt more scared in my life,” she said. “I was worried I might go to prison for something I didn’t do.” She had already been placed on administrative leave. She did not sleep.
Hours later, while still in bed, Ms. Kerkhoff called her father, her voice trembling. “I was kind of looking for that parental ‘everything’s going to be all right,’” she recalled. “He tried, but he was beside himself, he didn’t know how to help.”
She and Mr. Dickert began blindly searching online for a lawyer. “I didn’t even know where to start, who to talk to, how to address this,” recalled Mr. Dickert.
The next day, the Blaze piece published. The couple’s phones lit up with texts.
“I mean, I was just flabbergasted,” Ms. Kerkhoff said after reading it. “This is why they’re investigating me? Gait analysis?”
Conspiracy theorists ran with it, reposting the story as proof of the “fedsurrection.” The report fueled podcasts and YouTube videos. Trolls swooped in with memes and slurs on social media, even adding comments to videos of Ms. Kerkhoff’s college soccer career.
Strangers posted the name of the couple’s street. More than once, they said, a vehicle appeared to follow them. They carried their handguns, just in case. Reporters reached out to Ms. Kerkhoff’s family members for comment.
Close friends were outraged. “When this whole thing went down, I was floored,” said Matthew Leahy, who worked in the emergency management division for the Capitol Police for 15 years and trained Ms. Kerkhoff. “There was absolutely no way that she was involved in this. No way whatsoever.”
But there were also acquaintances who seemed on the fence. Unsure of whom to trust, Ms. Kerkhoff and Mr. Dickert became recluses, stocking up on frozen food and hunkering down at home. Ms. Kerkhoff’s 32nd birthday arrived with little reason to celebrate.
Perhaps most painful was the desecration of her mother’s obituary that appeared on the funeral home’s website. Ms. Kerkhoff had to call multiple times to get the Trump memes removed. Her mother had died the previous year of pancreatic cancer.
“It’s been so hard that I haven’t had her to go through this with me,” Ms. Kerkhoff said. “But the good part is, she doesn’t have to see it.”
Video of her dog ultimately proved Ms. Kerkhoff’s innocence.
When she was first questioned about her whereabouts on Jan. 5, 2021, she could not recall. Nearly five years had passed.
But images from her phone revealed that she and Mr. Dickert had been in their living room, laughing at how their new greyhound, Bella, was twitching in her sleep.
In one video, according to court documents, Ms. Kerkhoff can be heard saying, “You can see her neck vein sticking out, do you see it?”
By then a mutual acquaintance had connected Ms. Kerkhoff with Steve Bunnell, a lawyer who had previously worked at the Department of Homeland Security and the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington. Mr. Bunnell told The Times he had arranged a meeting in which the video could be given to F.B.I. agents and federal prosecutors.
Metadata showed that the video had been filmed at nearly the same time the pipe bombs were planted. After reviewing additional forensic evidence and confirming Ms. Kerkhoff’s alibi, the agency eventually cleared her of any wrongdoing, Mr. Bunnell said. The F.B.I. declined to comment on their investigation to The Times.
On Nov. 21, Ms. Kerkhoff returned to her job at the C.I.A.
Less than two weeks later, on Dec. 4, she and Mr. Dickert were watching the news when it was announced that Brian Cole Jr., 30, of Woodbridge, Va., had been charged with placing the pipe bombs.
Mr. Cole, according to court records, had a purchase history of galvanized pipe, battery connectors, red and black electrical wires, steel wool and kitchen timers — components of the pipe bombs. The F.B.I. said his cellphone data placed him in the area at the time in question and that he admitted to once owning a pair of Nike Air Max Speed Turf shoes.
Mr. Cole also gave a confession that detailed how he had constructed the bombs, adding that he had snapped and wanted to do something “to the parties” because “they were in charge.”
That day, The Blaze removed the story identifying Ms. Kerkhoff as the suspect — 26 days after it originally published. It was replaced with a statement that read, in part, “At all times, the reporting adhered to professional journalistic standards and was published with a good-faith belief in its truth.”
Christopher Bedford, the editor in chief of The Blaze, acknowledged in a statement to The Times that the removal was in response to the arrest of Mr. Cole.
Mr. Baker was fired earlier this month for being unwilling to submit his work to “serious editorial and legal review,” according to a post on X by Mr. Bedford. Mr. Hanneman resigned around the same time.
Mr. Baker told The Times that he had been fired after refusing to be “muzzled” on his pipe-bomb theory. He said that he is convinced that Ms. Kerkhoff planted the pipe bombs unwittingly, believing she was part of a training exercise. (Several people who conducted training for the Capitol Police told The Times that such exercises are never done in an open, public area, and that Ms. Kerkhoff would have known this.)
Mr. Baker also defended the analysis of her gait and said it left only a two to six percent chance that the person seen in the video could be someone else.
“I had no bias whatsoever, I was just looking at two people that I had seen on video with a similar gait,” he said. He said he had learned of Ms. Kerkhoff last fall while preparing a story about the Capitol Police and was watching footage of her playing soccer when he had a “eureka moment.” His only regret, he said, was not reaching out to her for comment about the allegations.
Mr. Baker said that the sources in his story who analyzed Ms. Kerkhoff’s gait would have jeopardized their jobs had their names been published.
He and Mr. Hanneman have started a new site where they continue to post stories about Ms. Kerkhoff and insist that the authorities have charged the wrong person. Reached for comment by email, Mr. Hanneman deferred to Mr. Baker.
In a statement to The Times, the Capitol Police said it was clear, based on a thorough review of all available evidence, that Ms. Kerkhoff was the subject of a false and unsupported conspiracy allegation. “We wish her the best — she deserves it after what she has endured throughout this event,” it said.
On Tuesday, Ms. Kerkhoff filed a defamation lawsuit accusing Blaze Media, Mr. Baker and Mr. Hanneman of inventing a damaging theory about her.
“To Defendants, it did not matter that the claim was nonsensical,” reads the complaint. “And it did not matter that they lacked a shred of evidence. They simply made it up.”
Ms. Kerkhoff is represented by Clare Locke, a formidable Virginia-based law firm that focuses on defamation and has a history of backing wealthy clients — which Ms. Kerkhoff is not. The firm declined to disclose its financial arrangement with Ms. Kerkhoff except to say that it was not being paid by a government agency, an allegation promoted by Mr. Baker who was sent a demand letter from the firm earlier this year.
“We believe very strongly in Shauni and the strength of her case, and we are happy to invest our time and expertise in it alongside her,” said Jon Kaiman, a lawyer with the firm.
In response to the suit, Blaze Media cited the First Amendment and Virginia’s anti-SLAPP law, which aims to protect those exercising free speech from frivolous claims.
“Blaze Media will vigorously defend this meritless lawsuit challenging its valid news reporting on a matter of legitimate public concern,” Michael Grygiel, a lawyer for the outlet, said in a statement.
Mr. Hanneman did not return a request for comment. Mr. Baker said he looked forward to what might be revealed in the discovery process. “I’m thrilled, I can’t wait, bring it on,” he said.
Ms. Kerkhoff said the lawsuit is her moment to take a stand after having retreated into the shadows for months. She has been anxious in public and hesitant to make social plans — or any plans. Her wedding was postponed indefinitely.
Although she is worried about the increased attention a suit may bring, she said she knew it was what her mother would have wanted.
“Somebody needs to fight back,” she said. “If not me, who’s it going to be? Right? Because what’s to stop them from doing that again? There’s going to be a counternarrative, but my side’s the truth.”
She and Mr. Dickert have thought about moving and leaving public service. Even then, it would be difficult to escape the false narrative.
Mr. Cole, the man now charged as the pipe bomber, pleaded not guilty and awaits trial. His lawyers recently filed court documents that hinted at plans for a possible defense: that it was Ms. Kerkhoff, not Mr. Cole, who planted the bombs even though the F.B.I. had cleared her of doing so.
The filings claimed that Ms. Kerkhoff failed her polygraph test. (Mr. Bunnell, who represented Ms. Kerkhoff during the investigation, said that lie detector tests are a tool, not a truth machine, and pointed out that they are not admissible as evidence in court because their accuracy is unreliable.)
The same day Mr. Cole’s lawyers filed the court documents, Ms. Kerkhoff’s lawyers received an email from someone who threatened to shoot their client in the face.
She and Mr. Dickert had planned to visit family that weekend. Instead, they stayed home.
Corina Knoll is a Times correspondent focusing on feature stories.
The post The Capitol Police Officer Swept Up in a Jan. 6 Conspiracy Theory appeared first on New York Times.
