‘NUKED’ BY THE CAM
The rainbow atomic-symbol T-shirt should have been a clue.
Sam Brinton, the allegedly sticky-fingered Biden administration nuclear-energy official, was captured on security footage making off with a woman’s bag worth more than $3,670 from a Las Vegas airport July 6, KLAS News reported.
A surveillance snap from Harry Reid International Airport shows a stern-faced Brinton, who made history as one of the federal government’s first gender-fluid officials, wearing the white T-shirt with the colorful symbol while rolling the suitcase through the airport.
The distinctive tee, which Brinton also sported in a selfie posted to Instagram that same day, led Las Vegas police to issue a warrant for Brinton’s arrest on grand-larceny charges.
Last month, Brinton, the deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, was charged in the September theft of a woman’s suitcase in Minneapolis.
The Las Vegas security footage showed the luggage — valued at $320 and containing $1,700 worth of jewelry, $850 of clothing and $500 of makeup, police said — being removed from a baggage carousel by “a white male adult wearing a white T-shirt with a large rainbow-colored atomic nuclear symbol design,” a detective wrote.
The man “demonstrated several signs of abnormal behavior while taking the victim’s luggage which are cues suspects typically give off when committing luggage theft,” according to the declaration, then grabbed the bag and walked away with it quickly. The victim filed a police report July 10.
Police were initially unable to identify the thief, but on Nov. 29, when the Las Vegas investigator saw media reports of the Minneapolis accusation against Brinton, an officer “immediately recognized” the Energy Department employee “as the suspect pertaining to this case.”