Nonbinary Biden admin. official charged again for luggage theft; Vegas police issue arrest warrant
The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has issued an arrest warrant for a Biden administration official who identifies as nonbinary over a stolen luggage case days after being charged with stealing designer luggage from an airport in Minnesota.
Sam Brinton, deputy assistant secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the U.S. Department of Energy's Office of Nuclear Energy, who goes by they/them pronouns, has been accused of stealing luggage at Las Vegas' Harry Reid International Airport.
According to authorities, a government official identified Brinton as the individual in surveillance footage from July who had taken off with someone else's luggage, reported Insider. The contents inside the stolen bag were estimated to be worth about $3,600, with the owner telling police there was about $1,700 of jewelry and $500 in makeup.
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The case was temporarily closed due to investigators' inability to identify an individual in video footage who had taken the luggage case at the Las Vegas airport.
An arrest warrant cited by Insider reports that after recent news articles covering Brinton being charged with stealing a woman's designer luggage from the baggage claim at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport in September, an officer "immediately recognized" Brinton "as the suspect pertaining to" the Las Vegas case.
The warrant says Brinton "can clearly be seen and identified on video stealing" a woman's gray luggage suitcase from the baggage claim area at the Las Vegas airport "and leaving" with the item.
"[Brinton] demonstrated several signs of abnormal behavior while taking the victim's luggage which are cues suspects typically give off when committing luggage theft," the warrant added.
Brinton was put on leave by the Energy Department last month after he was charged with felony theft in Minnesota.
"[Brinton] removed the blue bag's tag and put the bag tag in the handbag they were carrying," read the court documents in the Minneapolis case, as reported by The Washington Examiner. "Defendant then left the area at a quick pace."
Brinton, who reportedly used the stolen suitcase for a European trip before authorities contacted him in October regarding the luggage piece, claims he took the luggage by mistake. A hearing in the case is scheduled for next week.
An MIT graduate who was appointed to the senior position in the Energy Department in June, Brinton garnered media attention earlier this year over posts showing him engaging in sexually fetishistic imagery and actions.
"In a White House bent on normalizing 'queer culture,' Sam Brinton's appointment as deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition is par for the deviant course," wrote Family Research Council President Tony Perkins in an op-ed published by The Christian Post in February.
"But to everyday Americans, who thought they were getting a 'moderate' president, the picture of our newest government official standing over a man in a dog collar is a poorly-timed reminder that voters elected anything but."
