On the evening of January 5th, 2021, a lone figure in a gray Nike hoodie, black pants, and surgical mask walked briskly through Capitol Hill’s side streets. In less than fifteen minutes, the stranger tucked one pipe bomb under a bench outside the Democratic National Committee and another behind the Republican National Committee’s Capitol Hill Club. Each device was a simple steel pipe stuffed with black powder from fireworks, a kitchen timer set for sixty minutes, and shrapnel. Neither exploded. But their discovery the next morning, hours after the timers expired, drew Capitol Police away from the building at the exact moment thousands stormed the west front.
Five years, 40,000 video files, and a $500,000 reward later, the FBI has no arrests. Former Director Christopher Wray called it a top priority; congressional hearings exposed only silence. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) pressed ATF chief Steven Dettelbach on why the bombs were duds. Former FBI assistant director Steven D’Antuono admitted the person who “found” the DNC device was never interviewed, “Investigation 101,” he said.
Sources told The Blaze that the bomber has been forensically identified as former US Capitol Police Officer Shauni Rae Kerkhoff, who served from 2018 until mid-2021, and now works for the CIA.
Kerkhoff, 31, grew up in Hamilton, Ohio, starred in high-school soccer, and earned All-State honors before a gruesome leg break at Temple University in 2015. The shattered tibia left a permanent limp. She joined the Capitol Police, rose to the Civil Disturbance Unit, and on January 6th fired less-lethal rounds into the Lower West Terrace crowd. Body-cam footage shows her hitting at least sixteen people in the torso and head. After resigning, she took a security post at the CIA’s Langley campus; the agency confirms the job but denies any link to senior leadership.
The forensic match is bio-mechanical. Blaze News commissioned two independent gait analyses. Analysts compared the bomber’s CCTV, captured at 8:16 pm near the RNC, with Kerkhoff’s archived footage: a 2017 Columbus Eagles FC game, her 3:34 Boston Marathon finish, and Capitol Police body cams. Algorithms returned a 94% similarity; human experts refined it to 96–98%. Variables included stride length, hip flexion, cadence, and the right-leg limp visible even under baggy pants. The FBI’s public sketch of the suspect included the limp, but the reward poster omitted it.
The bomber paid with a SmarTrip card registered to an Air Force civilian in Falls Church, Virginia, just blocks from a house staked out by FBI agents days later. That team, led by former agent Kyle Seraphin, was ordered to stand down mid-surveillance. “They were in on it”, according to Seraphin. “The FBI put us one door away from the pipe bomber within days of January 6, and we were deliberately pulled away for no logical or logically investigative reason,” Seraphin said. “And everything about that tells me that they were involved in a cover-up and have been since day one.”
Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund says no authorized operation explains the bombs. A Department of Homeland Security watchdog report blasted Secret Service agents who treated the DNC discovery like a lunch-break curiosity. Alexandria Police have since tailed reporters after the leak.
If Kerkhoff is indeed the bomber, then January 6th was not merely breached; it was clearly baited. A sworn officer allegedly planted inert devices to siphon police resources at the critical hour. The question is no longer who walked those streets the night before it’s who sent Kerkhoff.