It appears that our favorite transgender luggage thief is back in the news again, but not in the way I'd been expecting. Sam Brinton was due back in court again in Virginia last week, facing charges of grand larceny for stealing the luggage of a Tanzanian female fashion designer. Considering that he already had two convictions on his record, he should have been looking at a fairly serious sentence as a repeat offender. But that's not what happened. The Arlington prosecutors quietly amended the charges against him from grand larceny (a felony carrying a sentence of up to twenty years) to petit larceny, a misdemeanor. Brinton was allowed to enter a "diversion program" where he will be required to undergo mental health treatment, send an apology to his theft victim, and perform some community service. Who arranged this obvious sweetheart deal for him has not been revealed. (Free Beacon)
Sam Brinton is a free man. The disgraced former Department of Energy official pleaded guilty to petit larceny as part of a sweetheart deal that will see him serve no jail time after facing felony charges that carried a sentence of up to 20 years.
State prosecutors quietly announced the plea deal during a hearing last week in Arlington General District Court, which is just an eight-minute drive from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport where Brinton stole a Tanzanian female fashion designer's luggage containing her custom designs six years ago.
According to prosecutors, Brinton entered into an adult diversion program, which requires him to undergo mental health treatment, write a letter of apology, and complete 50 hours of community service helping the elderly.
We are reminded that this is the third time that Sam Brinton has been arrested for stealing luggage at airports and the third time that he has managed to slip away without being sentenced to any jail time. Some people just seem to have all the luck, don't they? The first time might be understandable because it was his first offense (that we know of, anyway) and it was a much less expensive bag. The second time was pushing the envelope because he was already a repeat offender at that point. But the third offense involved a bag containing thousands of dollars worth of custom, designer clothes. That should have been three strikes and you're out.
But not for fashionable Sam Brinton, apparently. He leads a charmed life. You typically don't see anyone else with multiple convictions having a felony charge downgraded to a misdemeanor. So what are we to make of this? The prosecutors were under no obligation to offer him a deal like that. Plea bargains are frequently offered when prosecutors may be unsure of being able to bring home a conviction or to shorten the process if they anticipate the trial to be long and drawn out. This should have been an open-and-shut case. They found the suitcase in his apartment. He posed for public pictures wearing the clothes. The designer he stole them from was willing to testify. Brinton had no defense to mount.
Further, even if the prosecutors were able to summon up some reason for offering the deal, the judge was under no obligation to accept it. And then there is the commonwealth's attorney who was certainly the author of this scheme, Parisa Dehghani-Tafti. She holds an elected position so we can't immediately assign a partisan label here, but her recent social media posts don't leave much doubt about which side of the fence she sits on.
The decision by SCOTUS that a President is presumptively entitled to immunity from prosecution for any official act even when taken with corrupt motive more than ever makes it clear that for the sake of our democracy we can't return to office a man so utterly lacking in character
— Parisa Dehghani-Tafti (@parisa4justice) July 2, 2024
So everyone involved mysteriously went along with this sweetheart deal. And the convict in question was (briefly) a highly touted member of the Biden administration as one of their DEI picks. His series of arrests were an embarrassment to the White House, but he comes from the right pedigree to qualify for some help when he's in a jam. His third and most serious case was assigned to a court barely a stone's throw from DC. He walked with a slap on the wrist when anyone else in similar circumstances (particularly if they happened to be a conservative) almost certainly would have gotten a decade or more in prison.
Is it really a conspiracy theory or a stretch of the imagination to ask if this is all too much to be attributed to coincidence? This was a very high-profile case given the national notoriety of the defendant, and yet the court seemed to do its best to handle the entire thing very quietly. It was only some determined digging by dedicated conservative reporters that brought it to national attention. So I smell a rat and the wind is blowing from the direction of the White House. Then again, we shouldn't be all that surprised, I suppose. After all, "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges against Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden for even worse acts than they've tried to run Trump toward a jail cell over. Sam Brinton clearly must have had a "reasonable prosecutor." It's rather shocking that he was ever charged to begin with.
