Staff Reports
A wave of conservative outlets is reporting a potentially explosive development in the long-unsolved Jan. 5, 2021 pipe-bomb case: Blaze Media and other investigators say forensic gait analysis now points to a former U.S. Capitol Police officer, Shauni Rae Kerkhoff, as a 94–98 percent match to the hooded figure who planted devices outside the DNC and RNC the night before the Capitol breach. These revelations landed on November 8, 2025, and they instantly reopened questions about who knew what and why authorities failed to make an arrest after years of promises.
For context, the pipe bombs were placed on the night of January 5, 2021 and were later described by investigators as viable explosive devices that could have caused deaths if they had detonated; their discovery on January 6 diverted law enforcement resources away from the Capitol at a critical moment. The FBI has historically described the suspect only as a hooded individual wearing Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers and has offered rewards for information while declining to name a suspect publicly.
Blaze’s reporting centers on a forensic gait comparison that measured knee flexion, hip extension, cadence and a slight limp tied to an old injury, producing the high-match figure and prompting the outlet to say sources inside intelligence circles have confirmed what the software found. The report also alleges Kerkhoff left Capitol Police in mid-2021 for a security detail with a three-letter agency, a career move that, if verified, would raise immediate national-security and accountability questions.
Republican lawmakers and conservative investigators wasted no time demanding answers, with figures like Representative Thomas Massie pressing the FBI and the Department of Justice to explain why the bureau never publicly identified or charged a suspect despite years of probing and a high-profile reward. The political reaction is predictable: when a long-running mystery suddenly points back at a government insider, elected officials on the right view it as confirmation of the worst suspicion — that agencies prioritized secrecy over justice.
Even so, mainstream federal agencies have not confirmed the Blaze findings, and DOJ spokespeople say the investigation remains active; independent confirmations from major national outlets are not yet in hand. That caveat matters — we should demand full transparency and proof rather than propaganda — but the pattern of evasions, downsampled footage concerns, and the bureau’s historically labored explanations for key investigative gaps all deserve scrutiny.
Conservatives smelling a cover-up have reason to be furious. If a law-enforcement insider or someone attached to an intelligence detail planted devices that distracted security on the morning the Capitol was breached, the implications are monumental: it would mean core institutions tasked with protecting Americans were weaponized to shape a political moment. That allegation demands an independent, outside-the-beltway review — not more slow-rolling from the same agencies whose missteps have already cost public trust.
The next steps should be straightforward and unapologetic: Congress must demand unedited footage, full chain-of-custody records, and sworn testimony from every official who touched evidence in those early January 2021 hours. Americans deserve the truth about whether the pipe bombs were a diversion, who planted them, and whether any agency covered for one of their own; anything less is betrayal.
This story is far from settled, but conservatives should use this moment to press for accountability relentlessly. The proper response from those who care about liberty and the rule of law is not conspiracy-mongering but vigorous insistence on facts, transparency, and justice — even when the facts point toward the institutions most Americans are told to trust.
