‘They simply made it up’: Blaze Media faces defamation suit over Jan. 5 pipe bomb claim

Shauni Kerkhoff, a former Capitol Police officer who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, filed a defamation lawsuit Tuesday over what she alleges is the false accusation that she planted pipe bombs on Jan. 5 outside the Democratic and Republican national committees’ respective headquarters in Washington, D.C.

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Another individual, Brian Cole, has been charged with doing so and has pleaded not guilty.

Kerkhoff filed the civil suit against Blaze Media, which published the allegedly defamatory accusation; against Stephen Baker and Joseph Hanneman, who worked as reporters for Blaze Media; and against Veritas Regnat LLC, a new venture founded by Baker and Hanneman “purely to continue to defame Ms. Kerkhoff,” she argues.

Blaze Media, which Kerkhoff called an “aspiring rival to Fox News,” terminated Baker earlier this month and Hanneman resigned earlier this month, per Kerkhoff’s complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. It said Baker himself was a Jan. 6 rioter while Hanneman had a traditional journalism career and more recently worked for the right-leaning newspaper Epoch Times, where he wrote almost exclusively about Jan. 6.

In the complaint, she argues the defendants knew their claims were false when they published them but didn’t care. “They used their contrived, sensational narrative to elevate their brand because they knew it would attract the attention of their target audiences. And they manufactured or distorted facts to fit that narrative,” her lawyers wrote in the filing that spans more than 100 pages.

“Ms. Kerkhoff brings this lawsuit to correct the record, hold Defendants accountable, and reclaim her life,” they wrote.

When Kerkhoff, who currently works for the CIA, was a Capitol Police officer, she was detailed as a “less-lethal grenadier” for protests, including Jan. 6. The night before, she said, she was at home with her boyfriend, whom she said took a cell phone video of their dog twitching in her sleep that also captured Kerkhoff’s voice.

“She had no way of knowing that this video would one day exonerate her of planting the bombs,” her complaint said, adding that the “US Attorney’s Office concluded that Ms. Kerkhoff had nothing to do with planting the pipe bombs” and “advised Ms. Kerkhoff’s counsel and the CIA of its conclusion.”