Sam Brinton, the disgraced Biden administration official who was arrested for stealing women’s luggage at multiple U.S. airports, snagged a cushy plea deal last week.
The former Department of Energy employee will serve no jail time after he pled guilty to misdemeanor petty larceny, downgraded from his felony grand larceny charges that carried a sentence of up to 20 years, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Back in 2022, Brinton, 37, who uses they/them pronouns, was fired as deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy and charged with stealing a woman’s Vera Bradley suitcase from the Minneapolis airport and another woman’s suitcase from the Las Vegas airport. The suitcases and their contents had a combined value of more than $9,000, according to police and court documents.
Then, in May of last year, Brinton was arrested a third time for stealing a Tanzanian fashion designer’s luggage with her custom designs, which he proceeded to wear himself at high-profile public events. That theft occurred at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
In all three cases, Brinton has escaped jail time.
The plea deal in the designer clothes case was quietly announced last week by prosecutors in Arlington General District Court.
Brinton is now required to undergo mental health treatment, write a letter of apology, and perform 50 hours of community service helping the elderly, per the terms of his plea deal.
The Tanzanian designer, Asya Khamsin, went public with her allegations against Brinton last year after seeing photographs in news articles of Brinton wearing her custom designer clothes.
“I saw the images. Those were my custom designs, which were lost in that bag in 2018,” she said. “He wore my clothes, which was stolen.”
She said she had flown to Washington, D.C., for an event where her clothing was set to be on display, but when her designs went missing, she was not able to show them.
At one point, the fashion magazine Vanity Fair published an article praising Brinton’s style, including some of Khamsin’s designs he was wearing.
Khamsin also sued Brinton and reached a settlement this week. In it, Brinton agreed to pay her an unknown amount of money and wrote her an apology letter.
“Mr. Brinton has apologized to Asya Khamsin, and Asya Khamsin has forgiven Mr. Brinton,” Khamsin’s attorney said. “Asya Khamsin has decided not to publish Mr. Brinton’s letter of apology, as she considers the letter to be quite personal, sensitive, sincere, and heartfelt.”
A follow-up hearing scheduled for June of next year will examine Brinton’s progress.
Brinton initially attracted attention for being one of the federal government’s first “non-binary” officials.
Before his stint in the Biden administration, Brinton worked for The Trevor Project, where he helped create a model school district policy that says schools should hide suicidal students’ sexual orientation and gender identity from their parents unless the student wants their parents to know. Several states have adopted this policy.
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Sam Brinton, the disgraced Biden administration official who was arrested for stealing women’s luggage at multiple U.S. airports, snagged a cushy plea deal last week.
The former Department of Energy employee will serve no jail time after he pled guilty to misdemeanor petty larceny, downgraded from his felony grand larceny charges that carried a sentence of up to 20 years, the Washington Free Beacon reported.
Back in 2022, Brinton, 37, who uses they/them pronouns, was fired as deputy assistant secretary for the Office of Nuclear Energy and charged with stealing a woman’s Vera Bradley suitcase from the Minneapolis airport and another woman’s suitcase from the Las Vegas airport. The suitcases and their contents had a combined value of more than $9,000, according to police and court documents.
Then, in May of last year, Brinton was arrested a third time for stealing a Tanzanian fashion designer’s luggage with her custom designs, which he proceeded to wear himself at high-profile public events. That theft occurred at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
In all three cases, Brinton has escaped jail time.
The plea deal in the designer clothes case was quietly announced last week by prosecutors in Arlington General District Court.
Brinton is now required to undergo mental health treatment, write a letter of apology, and perform 50 hours of community service helping the elderly, per the terms of his plea deal.
The Tanzanian designer, Asya Khamsin, went public with her allegations against Brinton last year after seeing photographs in news articles of Brinton wearing her custom designer clothes.
“I saw the images. Those were my custom designs, which were lost in that bag in 2018,” she said. “He wore my clothes, which was stolen.”
She said she had flown to Washington, D.C., for an event where her clothing was set to be on display, but when her designs went missing, she was not able to show them.
At one point, the fashion magazine Vanity Fair published an article praising Brinton’s style, including some of Khamsin’s designs he was wearing.
Khamsin also sued Brinton and reached a settlement this week. In it, Brinton agreed to pay her an unknown amount of money and wrote her an apology letter.
“Mr. Brinton has apologized to Asya Khamsin, and Asya Khamsin has forgiven Mr. Brinton,” Khamsin’s attorney said. “Asya Khamsin has decided not to publish Mr. Brinton’s letter of apology, as she considers the letter to be quite personal, sensitive, sincere, and heartfelt.”
A follow-up hearing scheduled for June of next year will examine Brinton’s progress.
Brinton initially attracted attention for being one of the federal government’s first “non-binary” officials.
Before his stint in the Biden administration, Brinton worked for The Trevor Project, where he helped create a model school district policy that says schools should hide suicidal students’ sexual orientation and gender identity from their parents unless the student wants their parents to know. Several states have adopted this policy.
“}]]
