Before Cole was arrested, the FBI questioned Shauni Kerkhoff, a former Capitol Police officer who was suggested as a possible suspect by reporters for The Blaze, a right-wing website founded by Glenn Beck, based upon a “gait analysis.”

The story was co-written by former Jan. 6 defendant Steve Baker, who pleaded guilty in November 2024 to four misdemeanors but was never sentenced.

Kerkhoff, who had testified in the first Jan. 6 trial, against an armed pro-Trump rioter named Guy Reffitt, was also named in a Blaze story that accused the Capitol Police of using excessive force.

Her lawyers say the FBI told her they were investigating “online chatter” — a reference to The Blaze’s reporting — and subjected her to “a search of her home by caravan of armed agents, a bomb-disposal truck, and a helicopter, followed by a three-hour polygraph interrogation,” before she was eventually cleared.

Kerkhoff, who now works campus security for the CIA, is not a suspect and has not been charged with a crime.

The Justice Department has said the former Capitol Police officer has “become the target of a malicious online conspiracy,” and that while the FBI investigated her, it found the claims to be “baseless” and its investigation “yielded zero evidence connecting Kerkhoff in any way to the construction, transportation, or planting of the pipe bombs.”

Among the “extensive evidence of Kerkhoff’s innocence,” it says, is her alibi backed by evidence that she was at her home in Falls Church, Virginia, when the pipe bombs were placed on Jan. 5.

The Blaze retracted its story on Dec. 4, the day of the news conference announcing the charges against Cole. The site wrote that while it stood by the sources, in light of the arrest, “we consider the values of fairness and accuracy to require retraction of this article.”

In April, Kerkhoff sued Blaze Media alleging defamation, saying it “manufactured” the story to fit a “theory they had already decided to report.” The reporters, Kerkhoff’s attorneys wrote, “built their reporting careers on a single, unshakeable premise: that January 6, 2021 was a ‘deep state’ ‘inside job.’” Instead of investigating with an open mind, the attorneys wrote, the reporters “tried to confirm what they had already decided was true.”

Her life “remains irrevocably altered: she was placed under FBI scrutiny that will follow her for the rest of her career, has lost friendships and professional opportunities, lives in fear for her physical safety, and has postponed her wedding — all because Blaze Media chose to manufacture a story rather than report the truth,” her attorneys wrote in court papers this week in the lawsuit, which is ongoing.

The Blaze’s legal team has said that its stories didn’t directly identify Kerkhoff as the pipe bomber and that the story “went through multiple rounds of editorial review, including legal review and even review by Blaze Media executives.”

Lawyers noted that Blaze Media terminated Baker and that his co-author resigned shortly thereafter, and that the publication is not responsible for any additional statements they’ve made. A message sent to The Blaze’s attorneys wasn’t immediately returned.

Baker said in an interview with NBC News that he first noticed Kerkhoff when he was reviewing video from the Capitol attack. Baker had accused the government of riling up the crowd on Jan. 6, and he had been looking through publicly available video to find people carrying backpacks that might contain an “agitation weapon,” he said in an interview with NBC News.

“It’s essentially a directed energy weapon that can either make you extremely agitated and behave in untoward ways, or it can debilitate you,” Baker said, referring to unusual crowd control tactics law enforcement has used in the past.

He said he remains convinced that Cole is not the suspect. He believes the charges against Cole are part of a government cover-up, and that the government itself played some role with the pipe bombs.

Kyle Seraphin, one of the special agents who performed surveillance in the case, has since left the FBI after a falling-out with Patel and now hosts a podcast. He said in an interview that he doesn’t believe the FBI’s accusations that Cole placed the bombs and that he expects a jury to acquit him.

“There’s no way that a D.C. jury convicts this guy,” Seraphin said.

Some of the attorneys representing Cole are also representing Baker and his co-author in the defamation lawsuit Kerkhoff filed. The government suggested during a hearing this month that it could pose a conflict.

Meanwhile, Cole’s parents have given interviews saying the government is framing their son, including to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson — who downplayed Jan. 6 and fed a false narrative about the attack before his departure from the network — as well as Cara Castronuova, a former trainer on “The Biggest Loser” who is now a White House correspondent for a conservative outlet run by MyPillow founder Mike Lindell, a 2020 election denier.

Enrique Tarrio, the head of the far-right Proud Boys, who was convicted of seditious conspiracy and serving a sentence of 22 years in federal prison until it was commuted by Trump, recently came out to support Cole, returning to the federal courthouse where he was tried.

Tarrio said in an interview after the hearing that he considers Cole a part of the Jan. 6 community.

“I think they should drop the case,” Tarrio said. “He’s a J6er.”

Tarrio, who wore a “Brian Cole Did Nothing Wrong” T-shirt to the courthouse, said the Cole case undermines the judicial branch.

“If you don’t have confidence in the system,” he said, “you get events like Jan. 6.”