Fired 'investigative reporter' behind 'made up' Jan. 6 bombshell is posting through it despite lawsuit — and it will 'absolutely' be used against him

A former police officer who defended the Capitol on Jan. 6 and testified in court is suing an "investigative reporter" and pardon recipient who allegedly "made up" a story that she was the long-elusive Washington, D.C., pipe bomb suspect, and her defamation case may be getting stronger by the day.

On Dec. 4, the FBI made a simple but significant announcement: The person who placed pipe bombs outside Republican National Committee and Democratic National Committee headquarters is a man.

As soon as that detail flashed across cable news chyrons and social media feeds, it meant that Shauni Kerkhoff — a woman serving as a Capitol Police officer at the time of the attack — had apparently been falsely accused based on Steve Baker's "gait analysis" conclusions as published on the conservative Blaze website in November.

After Brian Cole was identified as the suspect, allegedly confessed and expressed that he thought the 2020 election had been "tampered with," the Blaze — when faced with new facts amid potential legal exposure — fired Baker, and issued a retraction:

Blaze News considers fairness and accuracy to be the defining goals of any news organization. Our report posted on Nov. 8, 2025, about the Jan. 6 pipe bombs was based on sourcing from individuals in a position to know this type of sensitive law enforcement information who have a demonstrated record of reliability and accuracy. Of note, the sources continue to stand by the information they provided to Blaze News. At all times, the reporting adhered to professional journalistic standards and was published with a good-faith belief in its truth. Even so, in light of Thursday's developments and the FBI's arrest of another individual, Virginia resident Brian Cole Jr., in connection with the Capitol pipe-bomb incident, we consider the values of fairness and accuracy to require retraction of this article.

When the Blaze published an article this week about the lawsuit it faces, it provided a peek behind the curtain as to its defense strategy in pushing back on claims of reckless disregard for the truth.

The story included a quote from Blaze Media attorney Michael Grygiel, emphasizing that Kerkhoff was considered a "person of interest" before the article was published and stating she failed a polygraph exam.

Noting the article was retracted, Grygiel called the suit "meritless" and the story "valid news reporting on a matter of legitimate public concern, which is protected under the First Amendment and Virginia's anti-SLAPP law."

But while the Blaze is taking regular steps to cover itself, its former reporter and his co-defendant colleague Joe Hanneman are sticking to their guns in a highly visible manner.

Baker told the New York Times, for instance, that he "had no bias whatsoever" but "was just looking at two people that I had seen on video with a similar gait."

On Thursday, Baker posted at length on X, suggesting that the "timing" of a different Times story about Kerkhoff was "coordinated" by the nonexistent law firm of "Clare Locke Patel Ratcliffe & The Gray Lady."

Clare Locke was one of the firms that represented Dominion Voting Systems in a defamation lawsuit against Fox News over the network's 2020 election coverage. That case settled for north of three-quarters of a billion dollars in 2023, shortly before the trial was set to start.

That firm is representing Kerkhoff; Patel and Ratcliffe are FBI Director Kash Patel and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, respectively.

The civil complaint filed in the Eastern District of Virginia referenced Baker's arrest and eventual pardon by President Donald Trump for his role on Jan. 6, explaining why he refers to himself as a "Former Misdemeanor Terrorist." He claimed that he was acting as a journalist that day, but his words showed otherwise, the complaint went on.

"Once the riot had dispersed, Baker gave an interview on the Washington, D.C., news station WUSA. He expressed pride in breaching the Capitol. 'The only thing I regret is that I didn't like steal their computers because God knows what I could've found,'" the lawsuit recounted. "He continued: 'They got Pelosi's office and you know, it couldn't happen to a better deserving b—.'"

Asserting that Baker's project has been to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, as the administration has, the suit mockingly referred to him as an "investigative reporter" and said the defendants "twisted the facts to fit their preconceived narrative rather than correcting their narrative to reflect the truth."

"Ms. Kerkhoff defended the Capitol on January 6 at great personal cost, directly contradicting the theory that she planted the bombs to help rioters overwhelm it," the filing said. "But Defendants would not let that contradiction interfere with their predetermined narrative. They simply made up a new false claim: that Ms. Kerkhoff had used 'lethal force' on rioters to deliberately provoke a more violent response, thus recasting her defense of the Capitol itself as evidence of the conspiracy."

Still, the non-Blaze named defendants are currently fundraising off of the notion that Glenn Beck's media company censored them for exposing Jan. 6 "corruption."

"A federal agent lending us assistance is DEAD, just days after he told colleagues of his plans to begin an investigation into the Jan. 6 pipe bomber on his own time. What was he about to discover? We've been warned our own lives are in danger," said one line of the campaign's description. "Since September 2025, we've written extensively about the FBI's failure to find a pipe-bomb suspect across nearly five years. We released a three-part series showing how the 30-year-old autistic Virginia man arrested in the case, Brian Cole Jr., is NOT the pipe bomber. The effort to pin the crime on Cole began DAYS after our November 8 expose. Cause and effect."

While Baker may see this connect-the-dots and "DO THE MATH!" approach as a way of making his doubts about the true identity of the pipe bomb suspect seem more reasonable, one attorney experienced in handling high-profile defamation cases told Law&Crime the decision to post through it will almost certainly backfire.

"I would never allow a client of mine to publicly say anything, whether verbal or in writing, about the circumstances of their case without my express authorization. A client that desires to become a wild card is not a client of mine for long," said Mark Zaid, a national security lawyer known for representing whistleblowers, and the occasional former Trump administration member sued by current loyalists.

Zaid, who has represented plaintiffs and defendants in such lawsuits, described the potential damage Baker's decision to post through it could cause his defense.

"These postings by Mr. Baker will be front and center during the course of the litigation, particularly when he is deposed," Zaid predicted. "Any substantive comments he makes are at his own peril and will absolutely be used as evidence against him, especially in an effort to demonstrate malice and/or reckless disregard for the truth."

Law&Crime reached out to Kerkhoff attorney Tom Clare for comment, but did not receive a response prior to publication.

The court docket shows that U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston, a Trump appointee, has been assigned the case.