OAN Staff Blake Wolf
8:28 AM – Thursday, December 4, 2025
The FBI has arrested a suspect connected to the pipe bombs placed outside the Republican and Democratic National Committee offices on January 5, 2021.
The arrest marks a breakthrough in the nearly five-year-old investigation into the incident, after police had previously been unable to identify the suspect due to the mask, glasses, and gloves concealing the individual’s identity.
According to a Fox News report, the individual arrested is a male living in Virginia, and the arrest was made early Thursday morning.
Although none of the planted bombs exploded, investigators concluded that the explosives were viable and could have resulted in “serious injury or death” should they have detonated.
The devices were found roughly 17 hours after they were initially planted, approximately the same time as Congress gathered to count the 2020 electoral votes.
“This is a testament to the painstaking efforts of the career agents and prosecutors who have worked on this case for years,” said former U.S. attorney Gregory Rosen. “While we don’t know all the facts yet, we should be proud that the F.B.I. has continued to investigate thoroughly.”
Before the arrest, the FBI stated that its investigation into the matter included over 1,000 interviews, a review of over 39,000 video files, and the examination of over 600 public tips.
The lack of an arrest led to widespread conspiracy theories, including those by Dan Bongino, the now-FBI Deputy Director.
“There is a massive cover-up, because the person who planted those pipe bombs — they don’t want you to know who it was, because it’s either a connected anti-Trump insider, or this was an inside job,” Bongino stated on The Dan Bongino Show in November 2024. “Those bombs were planted there. This was a setup. I have zero doubt.”
On November 8, 2025, The Blaze released an article claiming that a former U.S. Capitol Police officer’s gate is a “94%-98% match to the unique stride” of the pipe bomber suspect seen on security camera footage, noting the claim was confirmed by “intelligence sources.”
The report went on to state that a source close to a congressional investigation on the matter told the outlet that emerging evidence pointed towards law enforcement’s involvement in the planting of the pipe bombs, naming 31-year-old Shauni Rae Kerkhoff of Alexandria, Virginia, a former Capitol Police officer who went on to work at the Central Intelligence Agency, as a suspect in the case.
The report claimed that a software algorithm analyzed the “walking parameters including flexion (knee bend), hip extension, speed, step length, cadence, and variance,” to ultimately rate Kerkhoff as a “94% match to the bomb suspect shown on video from Jan. 5, 2021.” However, a veteran analyst told the outlet that he believes the match is closer to 98%.
In response to the report, Bongino released an X post, announcing that a “week of near 24-hour work on RECENT open source leads in the case has yet to produce a break through, and some of the media reporting regarding prior persons of interest is grossly inaccurate and serves only to mislead the public.”
The breakthrough information leading to the recent arrest has yet to be disclosed by the Bureau.
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