The Myth of the '20 minute timer' on the RNC Pipe Bomb

The only consistency in Karlin Younger's account of finding the RNC pipe bomb is her insistence that a timer on the device was set at a 20-minute mark. Turns out, no such timer existed.

Earlier this week, we detailed numerous inconsistencies and troubling statements made by Karlin Younger, the individual who “discovered” a pipe bomb near the Republican National Committee headquarters at around 12:40 p.m. on January 6, 2021.

Among the concerning aspects in her account of what happened that afternoon, Younger changed her stated reason for making that fateful second trip to the laundry room during which she says she spotted the device; revised her initial description of a “suspicious” woman she encountered before finding the device (although surveillance video shows no woman matching either description in the immediate area); and claimed the device had to have been planted between noon and 12:40 p.m., the span of time between her two visits to the obscure location where the explosive was found.

There is, however, one consistency in Younger’s story: her description of a timer attached to the device.

Both in her sit-down with FBI agents and in subsequent interviews with the news media, Younger unequivocally claimed that the timer was set on the 20-minute mark of a 60-minute kitchen timer:

• January 11, 2021 — FBI Interview: “The dial of the clock was set on the number 20.”

• January 12, 2021 — Madison Magazine: “Then I saw a timer that was stuck on the number 20. It was a radial dial … it was 20 minutes showing on the dial.”

• January 13, 2021 — Fox 47: “... that’s when I see this dial. It has a hand on :20”

• January 14, 2021 — WISN: “Younger noticed the piping, wires and a timer pointed to the number 20.”

Of all the details Younger shared with authorities and reporters, the “20-minute” timer arguably fed the most important part of narrative related to the pipe bombs, or at least the one at the RNC—the bomb was set to detonate at 1:00 p.m., the exact time Congress convened to debate the outcome of the 2020 election and certify Joe Biden as the winner.

In at least one interview, Younger acknowledged that the timer was in perfect sync with the start of the historic proceedings about to begin just a few blocks away at the U.S. Capitol. “I couldn’t think that there might be some connection here,” Younger said days after the incident. “There has to be. The timing was too coincidental.”

In fact, her timely discovery set off a chain of events on Jan. 6.

How the RNC Pipe Bomb Initiated the ‘Attack’ on the Capitol

At 12:42 p.m., Younger re-emerged from the alley alongside the security guard. She continued toward her residence and went inside, while the guard approached a nearby Capitol Police officer. Additional units arrived by 12:44 p.m. and began cordoning off the area shortly thereafter.

One minute later, at 12:45 p.m., a “wall of people suddenly” approached the Capitol complex.

By 12:52 p.m., law enforcement resources were deployed to begin clearing residences and businesses near the RNC.

And just one minute later, at 12:53 p.m., chaos erupted as individuals at the front of the large group amassing near the Capitol began dismantling the metal barriers. Former Capitol Police Chief Steven Sund later wrote in Courage Under Fire that only a handful of officers were manning that barricade, and those assigned to the West Front of the Capitol were “nowhere to be found.”

At 1:05 p.m., a second device was located near the DNC by a plainclothes officer, following a sweep prompted by Younger’s earlier discovery.

But now, nearly five years later, Younger’s story is collapsing under the weight of newly released evidence. FBI laboratory documents, recently made public by the Select Subcommittee on January 6th, completely disprove her claim about a 20-minute timer—and appear to represent the most significant and consequential flaw in her entire account: There was nothing on the RNC device capable of pointing to any number, let alone the number 20.

The Nonexistent ‘Hand’ on the Bomb

During its investigation, the FBI determined that only the dial face of the kitchen timers—and the underlying components—were attached to both the RNC and DNC devices.

In the timer’s original condition —not the modified version used in the devices—the dial face and internal mechanisms are secured inside a main unit that holds the system together. The only feature capable of indicating a number—the “hand” Younger claimed she saw pointing to 20 on the dial—is the fixed red arrow molded into that main unit.

Although the dial face displays hash marks numbered 0 through 59, the small raised knob in the center—positioned between “0” and “30”—is fixed in place. It does not move or indicate time; it serves only as the grip used to twist the dial.

According to the FBI Device Examiner, the timers recovered in both devices appeared to have been “removed from their housing units and modified to produce a timed improvised switch.” Those main housing units that once enclosed the system—and the fixed arrow attached to them—were not included in either assembly.

Photos taken at the scene confirm that only the dial faces and internal mechanisms of the timers were attached to the device:.

Yet the “20-minute timer” assertion was the key dramatic element in her story. It was this that was said to tie her discovery to the events at the Capitol—and it now is collapsing under physical evidence, perhaps taking with it any remaining credibility in the rest of her account.

Her claims about the 20-minute timer raise a larger question: Why did the FBI, for years, refuse to challenge Younger’s assertion since investigators knew as early as Jan. 13, 2021—the date of the Quantico lab report—that there was no way for either device to indicate time?

The FBI let Younger’s story slide for years and it further appears the feds had little to no interest in asking her additional questions despite acknowledging she should have been at the top of a suspect list. In a June 2023 congressional interview, Steven D’Antuono—the former head of the FBI’s Washington Field Office, who oversaw the pipe-bomb investigation—admitted that “whoever discovers the device is somebody you need to talk to because they could be the one that planted the device in the first place. You know, so that’s just investigation 101.”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) asked D’Antuono if Younger “was ruled out as a suspect or an unwitting accomplice to somebody?” to which D’Antuono answered, “I don’t know.”

Is There More to Learn From Younger?

Those questions, and many more, now belong to the FBI and congressional investigators.

But according to a new public plea for help in finding the pipe bomber, the FBI remains focused on a hoodie-wearing individual captured on surveillance footage walking near Capitol Hill on the evening of Jan. 5, 2021 who authorities believe planted the devices between 7:30 and 8:30 p.m. that night. While the video does appear to show the suspect setting down a device outside the DNC, no video of the location where the RNC device was planted, or found, exists.

This does not mean the hoodie-wearing suspect was not somehow involved. And the discrepancies and now flat-out falsehood in Younger’s account does not definitively make her the pipe bomber. But her problematic representations are worth another look if law enforcement is serious about solving this mysterious whodunit.

And incredibly, there are even more questionable factors related to the RNC device than what we have already presented. What comes next explains how the original 40-minute window that once centered the bomb’s placement around Younger’s own movements in the alley is now shielded by the one digital record that could prove which timeline was real. In an amazing “coincidence,” it turns out that the cell phone data that might have identified the alleged suspect from the evening of Jan 5 vanished inside the very federally backed communications program that employed Younger when she discovered the bomb while teleworking on Jan 6.