The Department of Energy’s point-person for nuclear waste issues is out of a job this week after being implicated in a pair of brazen luggage thefts at airports in Minnesota and Nevada, according to reports.
Sam Brinton, who had been DOE’s deputy assistant secretary of spent fuel and waste disposition since June 19, is no longer working at the agency, a spokesperson told several news outlets including the Daily Beast Monday.
A DOE spokesperson did not respond to repeated requests for confirmation by deadline Friday. Brinton is no longer listed on an organization chart for the agency’s Office of Nuclear Energy.
News of Brinton’s departure comes as the non-binary-identified former official, who uses the pronoun “they,” faces two separate felony charges for allegedly stealing luggage from airport baggage claim areas.
Brinton was arrested and charged with felony grand larceny by Las Vegas police Wednesday in connection with a July theft at Nevada’s Harry Reid International Airport. According to a warrant issued by authorities last week, the DOE official was seen on airport surveillance footage July 6 taking a hard-case roller bag from a baggage claim carousel.
According to Nevada state law, grand larceny of property valued up to $5,000 carries a maximum sentence of one to four years in prison and up to $5,000 in fines. The value of the items in the stolen luggage was estimated to be around $3,700, according to police.
Brinton in November was also implicated in a similar crime that took place at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, for which they were charged with felony theft — a hearing for which was scheduled for Dec. 19 in Minnesota’s Hennepin County District Court.
Although Brinton’s attorneys had requested that they be allowed to attend remotely, the court Tuesday refused, saying that Minnesota law requires defendants to appear in person for the initial hearing.
Brinton did not respond to a request for comment on their employment status. They have previously refused to comment on the alleged thefts.
In the six months or so they worked at DOE, Brinton briefly oversaw the agency’s latest attempt to site a federally-run interim storage facility for spent nuclear fuel. They were head of the agency’s waste activities in September when it announced a roughly $16 million funding opportunity for potential host communities to engage with the feds on nuclear waste disposal.
Meanwhile, Kim Petry is DOE’s acting spent fuel lead. Petry told colleagues in a Nov. 18 email viewed by RadWaste Monitor that Assistant Secretary for Nuclear Energy Kathryn Huff had asked her to stay on in that capacity “for the foreseeable future.”