FBI agents raided a home in Alaska trying to find a laptop stolen from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-Calif.) office during the Jan. 6 breach of the Capitol but misidentified the home’s owner, she and her husband allege.
Paul and Marilyn Hueper, who own the Homer Inn & Spa, were shocked when agents barged into their home on April 28 with guns drawn. The agents separated the couple and began looking through the house. They disclosed that they thought Marilyn Hueper was inside the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when Pelosi’s laptop was stolen.
“I think almost right off the bat, they said, ‘Well, you probably know why we’re here,’ or something like that. It’s like, yeah, no, not really. And they said, ‘Well, we’re here for Nancy Pelosi’s laptop.’ And I said, ‘Oh,’” Marilyn Hueper told KSRM radio.
Agents showed the couple a photograph of a woman they thought was Marilyn Hueper. But almost immediately, the couple spotted key differences, such as the woman inside the Capitol having detached earlobes while Marilyn Hueper’s are attached.
“I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. Is that her? That’s clearly not me. Why did you not show me this to start with?’” Marilyn Hueper said.
The FBI has acknowledged the raid but said it couldn’t immediately confirm anything else.
“While individuals are free to speak about their interactions with the FBI, we do not, as a matter of practice, discuss or describe any contact we have or allegedly have with individuals,” a spokeswoman told The Associated Press. “At this time, and until it reaches the public realm, we can’t discuss the details.”
The Huepers were in Washington on Jan. 6, but say they were no closer than 100 yards from the entrance.
“We were at most within a hundred yards of the front of the building. I mean we were in a sea of a million people, so we’re far enough back. Then I started to kind of understand what the process of what they were looking for, you know again the case of mistaken identity,” Paul Hueper said on KSRM.
A spokesman for Pelosi confirmed in January that a computer was stolen from her office. He said that it “was only used for presentations.”
FBI agents previously focused on another suspect, Pennsylvania woman Riley June Williams, in their attempt to recover the device. An agent claimed that Williams meant to send the computer to a friend in Russia who would then sell it to Russian intelligence officials.
FBI agents searched Williams’s home and apartment and came up empty, her lawyer later told the court.
