FBI agents raided the home and business of an Alaska woman they apparently wrongly identified as having stolen House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s laptop.
The moment: Early in the morning of April 28, about a dozen armed agents burst into the Homer Inn & Spa and knocked down the door of Marilyn Hueper’s adjoining home, Pedro Gonzalez reported Saturday in the Washington Examiner.
- “We’re looking for Nancy Pelosi’s laptop,” the agents told Hueper after handcuffing her, per The Associated Press.
- “That still doesn’t explain why you’re in my home. Or in Homer, Alaska,” she replied.
Marilyn Hueper owns the inn with her husband, Paul Hueper.
At one point, Marilyn Hueper grabbed a photo the FBI agents brought of a woman seen interacting with a laptop taken from Pelosi’s desk on Jan. 6, and she held it up next to her face.
- “Me. Her. Me. Her,” she said.
“We had six or seven loaded guns pointed at us,” Hueper recounted on a local radio host earlier this month. “They chained us up in handcuffs and held us captive for multiple hours.”
The mix-up: The FBI identified Hueper as the suspected laptop thief, whose real identity is unknown, by comparing surveillance footage from the Jan. 6 Capitol infiltration to the couple’s social media posts.
- While the Huepers visited Washington, D.C., and listened to President Donald Trump’s speech on Jan. 6, they never came within a hundred yards of the violence at the Capitol’s entrance.
- Hueper and the suspect both wore black coats to the rally, but they otherwise dressed differently, and they have distinctly different earlobes.
According to Gonzalez, citing court documents, the Huepers “first came to officials’ attention this year when Alaska Airlines in February banned the couple for refusing to wear masks on a flight” and were apparently misidentified based on a tip from someone who knows them.
- Gonzalez, like others on the right, raised concerns that federal authorities are profiling Trump supporters as part of a sweeping nationwide crackdown tied to Jan. 6.
The Huepers have yet to be charged with any crimes, and the FBI has returned their cellphones, which it confiscated during the raid, but they are still holding Hueper’s laptop.
