The Biden administration’s top nuclear waste disposal expert, who in 2020 closely advised the Anchorage Assembly on its gay counseling ban ordinance, has been accused of stealing yet another piece of luggage at yet another airport.
A warrant for grand larceny was issued for Sam Brinton, the same high-ranking Energy Department official with top-secret clearance who is already facing a court date this month after he allegedly stole a woman’s suitcase from a Minneapolis airport in September.
Now he has been accused of a luggage heist at a Las Vegas airport, 8 News Now reported Thursday.
Sam Brinton is the deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy. The Nevada news agency is, at this writing, the only news organization reporting the alleged second theft.
Brinton already faces a Dec. 19 court hearing for a theft of Vera Bradley designer luggage from the Minneapolis-St. Paul International airport. He is on leave from the Energy Department, which has refused to say if he is still on payroll.
Brinton is the highest openly “gender fluid” officials in the federal government, and his hiring has been controversial. Brinton has a history of public sexual fetishism, such as “pup play,” where people tie up their sexual partners who are dressed in dog costumes. In fact, while awaiting his hearing for luggage theft, he gave a seminar on the “science of spanking” at a Los Angeles “kink” conference in late November.
For the first luggage theft, he was caught on video taking someone else’s luggage from the Minneapolis airport’s luggage baggage claim carousel. Brinton had allegedly traveled to the city without luggage, but left the airport with an expensive roll-on bag that he took from the carousel and tore the identification tag from.
Later he confessed to investigators that he took the bag. He confessed he took the clothes out of the bag and left them in a drawer at the hotel where he was staying, but officials said no clothes were recovered by the hotel. Brinton then returned to the airport to fly out, and took the bag with him. In October, 2022, he used the bag in his travels to Europe.
When investigators asked Brinton, he first said he didn’t take anything that didn’t belong to him. Later, he said, “If I had taken the wrong bag, I am happy to return it, but I don’t have any clothes for another individual. That was my clothes when I opened the bag.” He told investigators he still had the bag.
Two hours later, Brinton called investigators back and confessed he had not been “completely honest.” He admitted to taking the blue bag, but stated they were tired and took the suitcase thinking it was theirs. DEFENDANT said when they opened the bag at the hotel, they realized it was not theirs. DEFENDANT got nervous people would think they stole the bag and did not know what to do. DEFENDANT stated they left the clothes from the bag inside the drawers in the hotel room. DEFENDANT admitted to taking the blue bag back to the airport on September 18 and checking the bag that did not belong to DEFENDANT. Your Complainant further questioned DEFENDANT on why check the bag on September 18, and DEFENDANT responded they did not want to leave the bag in the hotel room, reasoning it was ‘“’weirder’ to leave a bag than the clothes,” the prosecutor wrote.
Read the prosecutor’s charges against Brinton here.
As for the second theft, the value of the bag and contents is estimated to be between $1,200 and $5,000. Must Read Alaska has not been able to confirm the allegations other than the television news report.
Brinton was the founder of the Trevor Project, a group that advocates for gender-confused and sexually variant youth. In his capacity with the organization, he consulted with the Anchorage Assembly as it designed an ordinance that prohibits counselors from any type of therapy with youth that might dissuade them from a sexually alternate lifestyle.
Violation of the Anchorage ordinance comes with a $500 fine. But counselors in Anchorage may counsel youth to start hormone therapy or chemical puberty blockers, and encourage them toward their journey in transgenderism or gay sexuality, and there is no fine for that form of conversion therapy.
Brinton and the Trevor Project have succeeded in getting over 20 jurisdictions to pass similar legislation.
Citizens pursuing the connection between the Trevor Project involvement with Anchorage politics link it to a made-up identity and an email address set up by a member of the Assembly for “Tom Sconce,” a fictitious person. Members of the Assembly involved in the subterfuge were able to skirt open-meetings laws by using the email address to share secret communications. Attempts to access those communications are ongoing by Must Read Alaska and other concerned citizens, but have been blocked by the Assembly and its attorney.
The Trevor Project provided legal counsel and other services to the liberal members of the Anchorage Assembly during the contentious 2020 debate over whether local government can curb First Amendment rights of counselors. The ordinance banning counselors from dissuading their young patients has not been challenged in court.
Must Read Alaska has made public records requests for documents relating to the legal advice the Assembly was being given by Brinton and the Trevor Project’s lead attorney, but the Assembly has claimed attorney-client privilege, even though there was no legal contract with the D.C.-based organization.
The documents requested by Must Read Alaska and others in the community that were released have been so heavily redacted that the email conversations between Assembly members and the Trevor Project attorney and organization advisors cannot be read.
