Note: the critical minute and ten seconds is in the podcast above.
Steve Baker didn’t like it when I confronted him with several misstatements he made when he joined Richard Luthmann and me on The Unknown in May 2026.
At the time, he was being sued by Shauni Kerkhoff and her high-priced lawyers at Claire Locke LLP.
In November 2025, Baker, along with writing partner Joseph Hanneman, published an explosive story in The Blaze entitled Capitol Police officer a forensic match for Jan. 6 pipe bomber, sources say.
In it, they claimed that GAIT analysis identified former Capitol Police Officer Shauni Kerkhoff as the J6 pipe bomber.
His story fell apart about a month after his article was published when Brian Cole Jr. was arrested for the crime.
The Blaze retracted the story; months later they fired Baker and Hanneman.
The two started Veritas Regnat.
On The Unknown, Baker provided little evidence besides the GAIT analysis, and his analysis was done by anonymous parties he wouldn’t reveal.
Unlike Kerkhoff, Cole Jr. was arrested after his phone pinged in the area where the bombs were placed; police found receipts for bombmaking equipment, and he confessed.
Baker was undaunted even after being fired by The Blaze. He continued on his jihad against Kerkhoff, including an appearance on The Unknown, which provided the only platform where he was challenged. The full interview is below.
At the time, Baker was facing default in the lawsuit after failing to respond.
“I wasn’t served. I wasn’t served.” He said when I asked him about this.
“Our lawyers are responding to the is.” He continued. “We don’t know who David Fincher is.”
Fincher was the person who Claire Locke said accepted the lawsuit and was identified as Baker’s roommate in the affidavit of service.
In his declaration, he stated, “I was served with the summons and complaint in this action on April 22, 2026.”
He said he failed to respond because he was looking for lawyers until early June.
As such, all three of the statements Baker made to Richard and me were contradicted by his declaration signed under oath.
Baker sent this email when I asked him about the contradiction.
You’re a real asshole. I still haven’t been legally served. They served someone named “David Fincher” … while I was in Florida.
Now … I obviously KNOW about the service attempt, and I received the email version. And we have finally secured our attorneys.
BOTH can be true at the same time. I was never served, AND we were battling with the Blaze over who was paying for this shit.
His lawyers aren’t challenging service. Instead, they are asking for the default to be set aside because they have a “meritorious claims” and Baker “didn’t ignore this lawsuit.”
The response from his lawyers continued, “They have diligently sought representation through their former employer and moved to cure the default the moment counsel was in place.”
The arguments from his lawyers are solid, in my opinion, and I expect the default to be set aside. I expect Shauni to demolish him in court on the merits.
That said, he lied when he told us that he wasn’t served, didn’t know Fincher, or even that his lawyers were preparing a response. According to his declaration, he didn’t get lawyers for another month.
These contradictions are important since his allegations against Shauni rely entirely on anonymous sources and his word.
Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson hosted Baker for another friendly interview.
Since coming on The Unknown, Baker and Hanneman have spun at least one new wrinkle into the story. They now claim that the J6 pipe bomber was wearing a smart watch, and since Cole Jr. doesn’t own one, he could not be the pipe bomber.
The hoodie-clad pipe bomb suspect appeared to be talking into an illuminated smart watch while walking the Capitol Hill route to place two destructive devices on Jan. 5, 2021, a new video analysis shows.
Brian Cole Jr., the Virginia man being prosecuted for allegedly planting the devices on Capitol Hill, has never worn a watch or owned an Apple Watch or similar smart device, his mother, Delicia Cole, exclusively told Veritas Regnat.
“Absolutely not,” said Cole, 51, of Woodbridge, Va., in an interview. “He has never worn a watch. In fact, he wears no jewelry of any kind.”
This analysis comes from an individual who calls themselves Armitas and claims to be an investigator. They are another anonymous source.
On the broadcast, Baker claimed that Cole was a few blocks from where the pipe bombs were placed, per his mysterious analysis. Below is that portion of the interview.
Here is what Baker said on the broadcast.
Well, have you read what we’ve written about Brian Cole? We’ve done an entire series on all of this. Number one, yes, his phone pinged in the area. Let me tell you where it did not ping. It did not ping where the bomber was. We’ve mapped this, we’ve vectored it out, and in addition,
because of our access to Capitol Police CCTV, we have found and identified Brian Cole’s car a mile away Exiting, getting onto I-395 back towards Virginia at exactly the time that the hooded bomber was on foot. This is not Brian Cole Jr. Did you see the report that we released yesterday?
That conclusion also came from the mysterious Armitas.
All of Baker’s evidence comes from anonymous sources. That means he needs to be trustworthy. Yet, he lied about being served.
Unfortunately, many conservatives have bought into his story. They believe the J6 pipe bomber was an inside job, and Cole is a patsy.
It’s part of a larger narrative spun by conservatives that January 6, 2021, was an inside job.
Conservatives are trying to revise history much like southern historians revised history after the Civil War and created the Lost Cause of the Confederacy.
Baker is useful in this. He’s gained fame he hasn’t earned.
Meanwhile, an innocent woman is viewed by millions as the perpetrator of a serious crime.
