Former Biden official Sam Brinton avoids jail time in luggage theft

The nonbinary former Energy Department official accused of serial luggage theft has avoided jail time in one of the cases.

Samuel Brinton, 35, pleaded no contest to misdemeanor theft charges in a stolen-luggage case at Las Vegas airport in Nevada last July and received a suspended jail sentence of 180 days.

The former official also was ordered Wednesday, according to a report in the Daily Mail, to pay $3,670 to the theft victim.

Brinton initially had been charged with felony theft because, according to authorities at the time, the stolen goods were worth $3,670.

Misdemeanor theft, according to the Daily Mail, means the stolen goods were worth less than $1,200.

Brinton had been deputy assistant secretary of the Energy Department’s office of spent fuel and waste disposition but was fired when an arrest warrant was issued in the case.

Citing Las Vegas court records, the Daily Mail said Brinton was told to stay out of trouble.

Brinton faces one other formal charge of luggage theft and has been accused in a third such case.

According to Las Vegas authorities, Brinton was spotted on the baggage claim area’s surveillance cameras taking a $320 woman’s Away-brand bag that contained more than $3,500 worth of jewelry, clothing and cosmetics.

The victim and Brinton had flown on the same United flight from Washington Dulles International Airport.

Brinton, who does not identify as either male or female, was described in the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department’s arrest warrant, as “a white male adult wearing a white T-shirt with a large rainbow-colored atomic nuclear symbol design.”

The former official still faces felony theft charges in a Sept. 16 pilfering at the Minneapolis-St. Paul Airport, in which a woman’s Vera Bradley suitcase with $2,325 worth of contents was snatched from baggage claim.

According to the criminal complaint in that ongoing case, Brinton removed a tag from the luggage of a fellow passenger on an American Airlines flight from Washington.

The airline confirmed that Brinton, who was seen on the airport’s surveillance footage claiming luggage, actually didn’t check in any bags. The victim also identified the baggage Brinton was carrying as hers, according to authorities.

Brinton could get up to five years in prison and/or a $10,000 fine in that case.

Although the Las Vegas theft happened earlier, it was ironically a news report about the Minnesota case that made Brinton a suspect in Nevada.

An investigating officer there happened to see the report. The photos of the two “suspects” matched and some of Brinton’s social-media posts provided further corroboration.

There’s been a third luggage-theft charge made against Brinton.

Tanzanian fashion designer Asya Khamsin has claimed that Brinton wore certain custom-made outfits for a Vanity Fair photoshoot that she had stolen from her in 2018 at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.

She saw those images on TV in a news report about Brinton’s other luggage-theft cases.

“I saw the images. Those were my custom designs, which were lost in that bag in 2018,” Ms. Khamsin told Fox News Digital in an interview. “He wore my clothes, which [were] stolen.”

Ms. Khamsin corroborated her claims by posting on Twitter multiple photos of her designs as well as photos of Brinton wearing what appear to be the same outfits.

Included were pictures of a necklace, another dress and at least two tops she said were all in the stolen bag.

She and her husband filed reports in 2018 with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and with Delta Air Lines, but to no avail, according to Fox News Digital.

Ms. Khamsin said she received a call from the FBI field office in Minneapolis in January regarding her complaint.

Before being let go, the Energy Department had hailed Brinton as a barrier breaker because of the “nonbinary” identification.

• Matt Delaney contributed to this report.