Defendants' False Claims Subject Ms. Kerkhoff to a Grueling—and Unwarranted—Federal Investigation


129. Ms. Kerkhoff’s life irrevocably changed on the morning of November 6, 2025, when her management called and asked that she come into work. Ms. Kerkhoff suspected the call stemmed from Defendants’ November 4 Article, which falsely claimed that she had used excessive force on January 6.

130. Upon her arrival, Ms. Kerkhoff was asked to wait in an office. Then, at about 2:00 p.m., two FBI agents arrived. They told her that they were investigating “online chatter” that she was the pipe bomber.

131. The agents questioned Ms. Kerkhoff about her location and activities of the night of January 5, 2021. More than four years had passed, and she did not immediately recall. They requested Ms. Kerkhoff’s consent to search her phone, car, and house. She consented to the phone and car searches. Ms. Kerkhoff did not, however, immediately consent to a house search. She told them it was her boyfriend’s, Mr. Dickert’s, house, and they would need his consent; he subsequently told them he would need to discuss it with Ms. Kerkhoff first. The agents told Ms. Kerkhoff to go home, and that they would meet her there. After this interview with the FBI, Ms. Kerkhoff learned she was being placed on administrative leave.

132. As Ms. Kerkhoff and Mr. Dickert were driving home, the agents called again, claiming they were stuck in traffic and would be late. They told Ms. Kerkhoff and Mr. Dickert that, when they got home, a few people would want to walk through their home. The agents claimed that they were primarily looking for shoes. (The bombing suspect had worn distinctive Nike Air Max Speed Turf sneakers.)

133. About a half-hour after Ms. Kerkhoff and Mr. Dickert arrived at home, a caravan of FBI vehicles descended on their street and parked outside their house. The FBI brought a bomb disposal truck and a helicopter, which hovered loudly overhead. Agents exited their vehicles with their guns drawn in full tactical gear. An agent called Mr. Dickert and commanded him to “come out of the house unarmed with your dogs.” Mr. Dickert and Ms. Kerkhoff complied and stepped outside. Agents swept through the house, then reentered with bomb-sniffing dogs. They opened cabinets, rifled through drawers, and scattered Ms. Kerkhoff’s and Mr. Dickert’s belongings—all without obtaining Ms. Kerkhoff or Mr. Dickert’s consent. It suddenly occurred to Ms. Kerkhoff that they were not simply looking for a pair of shoes.

134. The search at Ms. Kerkhoff and Mr. Dickert’s home ended around 8:00 p.m. One of the agents introduced himself as a senior FBI official of the FBI’s Washington, D.C. field office: a role that does not typically involve executing search warrants. Ms. Kerkhoff knew that his presence indicated that the FBI believed this was an extraordinarily sensitive case. She asked him why he would do all this to investigate “online chatter.” The senior official responded that his orders came from “higher up,” but that Ms. Kerkhoff could “clear everything up” that night if she would accompany agents to the FBI office for a polygraph interview. Ms. Kerkhoff agreed. Agents assured Ms. Kerkhoff that the drive out to their office would take longer than the interview itself.

135. That was not true. This interview, unlike the FBI’s earlier questioning, was a grueling interrogation. Ms. Kerkhoff was linked to a polygraph machine. For approximately three hours, an interrogator treated Ms. Kerkhoff as if her guilt was presumed. Again and again, she directly accused Ms. Kerkhoff of planting the bombs, and again and again, Ms. Kerkhoff denied it. At one point, the interrogator changed out the breathing tubes used in the polygraph because she “did not like how they were reading”—indicating a flaw in the polygraph test or the interrogation method. She demanded that Ms. Kerkhoff describe in detail what she was doing the night of January 5, 2021, and Ms. Kerkhoff repeatedly explained that she did not remember. She threatened Ms. Kerkhoff that her security clearance hung in the balance if she did not answer truthfully. Ms. Kerkhoff responded repeatedly and truthfully: She did not plant pipe bombs in Washington, D.C. on January 5, 2021. 

136. At one point, the interrogator represented to Ms. Kerkhoff that she had “failed” the polygraph test. Ms. Kerkhoff assumed this was an interrogation technique, because she knew she was telling the truth. Ms. Kerkhoff also knew that a person cannot “fail” a polygraph test, which merely measures physiological responses, and she was not surprised that she might have shown signs of stress given the exhausting day and intense interrogation she faced. But the interrogator put Ms. Kerkhoff in a catch-22, insisting Ms. Kerkhoff was, on one hand, showing signs of physiological stress, and on the other, appeared “very controlled.” Ms. Kerkhoff continued the interrogation truthfully, just as she had before.

137. The American Psychological Association has confirmed what Ms. Kerkhoff understood to be the case: Polygraph tests do not test and cannot determine “deception.”³⁸ In fact, they have a “weak scientific basis” for testing deception; the polygraph method used by Ms. Kerkhoff’s interrogator “rest[s] on a weak scientific foundation with indeterminate accuracy.” At best, a polygraph may measure physiological responses, but those responses are not reliably indicative of whether a person is telling the truth or lying. 

138. Eventually, Ms. Kerkhoff told the interrogator that she needed to call Mr. Dickert; he had expected her home within an hour. The interrogator demanded that she answer more questions first. Finally, after midnight, Ms. Kerkhoff told the interrogator that she was exhausted, and she asked whether she was free to leave. The interrogator said yes. Ms. Kerkhoff asked for her phone back, but agents told her they needed to keep it overnight. She drove home without it. Ms. Kerkhoff arrived home in the early-morning hours of November 7, 2025. 

139. Later that morning, after repeated requests from Ms. Kerkhoff, the FBI finally returned her phone around 11:00 am. It was flooded with notifications—messages, emails, missed calls, and voicemails—from friends, family, and coworkers who had seen Ms. Kerkhoff’s name and photo posted all over X following Defendants’ November 5 Article, Podcasts, and posts discussing them. Ms. Kerkhoff realized this was the same “online chatter” FBI agents had told her they were investigating.

³⁸ William Iacono & Gershon Ben-Shakhar, Current Status of Forensic Lie Detection with the Comparison Question Technique: An Update of the 2003 National Academy of Sciences Report on Polygraph Testing, 43 Law & Hum. Behav. 86 (2019), https://psycnet.apa.org/fulltext/2018-49407-001.html.