Sam Brinton, fired Biden official, accused of stealing fashion designer’s luggage in 2018

A fashion designer claimed that former Biden energy official Sam Brinton stole her luggage from a District of Columbia area airport five years ago after seeing the accused thief wearing her clothes on TV.

Asya Khamsin, a Tanzanian fashion designer based out of Houston, said she lost her bag at Reagan National Airport in March 2018. It wasn’t until she spotted Brinton, who is nonbinary, wearing her clothes in a news report about the suspect’s active stolen luggage cases that she said the disgraced official was behind her lost clothing.

“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.”

My name is Asyakhamsin tanzanian fashion designer based in houston Texas USA I lost my bag 2018 in DCA recently I heard the news on @ FoxNews about @sambrinton luggage issue surprisingly I found his images wore my custom made outfitswhich was in the lost bag on 2018 pic.twitter.com/lJwLHtMJlz</ a>

— asyakhamsin (@asyakhamsin1) February 20, 2023

Ms. Khamsin posted multiple additional photos of her designs on Twitter as well as photos of Brinton wearing them to corroborate her claims. 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 originally filed reports in 2018 with the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority and with her flight carrier, Delta Air Lines, but to no avail, according to Fox News Digital. Ms. Khamsin was adamant about Delta helping her find her bag at the time and said it had expensive clothes, jewelry and other belongings.

The designer filed a police report with Houston authorities in December after news coverage showed her clothes being worn by Brinton. 

Even this jewellery was in my lost bag dah pic.twitter.com/cXnhuoDTl3</ a>

— asyakhamsin (@asyakhamsin1) February 23, 2023

Ms. Khamsin received a call from the FBI field office in Minneapolis last month regarding her complaint.

“Houston police, I guess, they [sent] the case to the FBI in Minnesota,” Ms. Khamsin‘s husband told Fox News Digital. “He called to say, ‘I’m [with] the FBI, I’m working on this case.’ Then my wife gave him the information and we didn’t hear anything. We don’t know whether the case is on. We don’t know whether the case is cold.”

Brinton is facing felony charges in stolen luggage cases in Minnesota and Nevada. The criminal complaints said Brinton flew from D.C. to Las Vegas and Minneapolis before snatching the luggage from the baggage carousels in the separate incidents, according to the New York Post. 

Brinton was ousted as a deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy soon after charges were filed in Nevada.

Brinton was released without bail after a court appearance in Minnesota last week. A December appearance in Las Vegas court resulted in Brinton being released on $15,000 bail.

If convicted, the former energy official faces up to five years in prison for the Minnesota theft and up to 10 years behind bars for the Las Vegas theft.