'They simply made it up': Right-wing outlet hit with defamation suit over pipe bomb report

A former Capitol Police officer who responded to the Jan. 6 insurrection sued a MAGA media outlet on Tuesday, alleging that she was defamed during one of their "nonsense" investigations.Shauni Kerkhoff, who now works in the CIA, sued Blaze Media over a theory the outlet concocted about her being the Jan. 6 pipe bomber and for refusing to retract the report after Brian Cole Jr. confessed, according to the lawsuit. The 127-page document does not list a specific amount of damages claimed because damage "continues to accrue," it reads. "They simply made it up," Kerkhoff's lawyers argued in the lawsuit. "Ms. Kerkhoff was not the January 6 pipe bomber. She was a normal, private person—with a family, career, and hobbies—who was at home with her boyfriend and their dog at the exact time a hooded suspect was captured on CCTV placing pipe bombs in Washington, D.C. Defendants disregarded these facts—and Ms. Kerkhoff’s humanity—when they plucked her from obscurity to satisfy the whims of their conspiracy theory." Politico was first to report on the lawsuit. According to the document, two Blaze Media reporters accused Kerkhoff of being the suspected pipe bomber after conducting a "gait analysis" of security footage from that day. Kerkhoff's lawyers called the methodology "nonsense."