Serial riot-instigator Maxine Waters, traveling to Minneapolis for the Derek Chauvin trial, requested two federal air marshals (FAMs) on her plane and two more for added security when she landed. This is in addition to the two armed Capitol Police officers and two Secret Service agents that flew with her to the Twin Cities’ party for the reading of the Derek Chauvin triple-guilty verdict. Not only is this a double dose of hypocrisy, but it’s also not allowed.
Since the January 6 Capitol riots, some members of Congress on both sides of the aisle have requested extra muscle, whether traveling home to their districts or on vacation. The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is in charge of the FAMs and has been diverting undercover air marshals from “high-risk” security flights to babysit frightened Congress non-binaries. This creates a national security gap and angers air marshals, whose mission is to protect the public.
“Air marshals can only be assigned to high-risk flights. That means flights that have been deemed through our vetted process that have a security risk,” said Sonya Hightower LoBasco, executive director of the Air Marshal National Council, which filed a complaint with the House Committee on Ethics, according to Fox News. “When these processes are violated and they’re taken advantage of and they are just tossed to the side now as if they don’t matter, we’re really looking into creating a major problem for ourselves in the aviation domain.”
FACT-O-RAMA! There were 33 FAMs on 9/11. Shortly thereafter, then-president George W. Bush expanded the department. Today there are an estimated 4,000.
The complaint mentions police defunder Rep. Maxine Waters specifically,
“Congresswoman Maxine Waters utilized numerous government resources inappropriately. Federal Air Marshals were removed from a ‘High Risk’ flight to cover Ms. Waters [sic] flight to Minnesota,” the complaint reads. “The High Risk flight took off with no armed law enforcement on board leaving a gap in National Security.”
Hightower LoBasco had more to say:
Air marshals for Miss Waters’ trip were assigned high risk missions, they were removed from those missions and assigned to Miss Waters’ mission on top of her already armed security detail from the Capitol Police. That was not an official business trip. We still don’t have any justification as to why government resources were utilized to fly Miss Waters out to Minnesota.
“Placing FAMs on aircraft simply because a member of Congress requests it is an egregious misuse of government resources,” said David Londo, president of the Air Marshal National Council (who represents roughly 2,000 air marshals) in a strongly worded complaint to the Department of Homeland Security Inspector General on April 20. “The FAMs are now taking agents off of regularly scheduled ‘high risk’ flights to put them on flights with members of Congress, that in most cases have their own armed federal security details onboard already. It has become akin to a type of extremely expensive concierge service for Congressional members.”
Thirty-two percent of the TSA’s annual budget of $2.4 billion comes from the September 11 Security Fee, which charges passengers $11.20 for a round trip. The rest comes from Congress, which may be why the TSA isn’t in a hurry to say no to congressional requests for extra firepower when traveling.
Mad Maxine did not respond to several Fox News inquiries.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member