Rep. Nancy Mace (R-South Carolina) berated airport police and Transportation Security Administration officers with profanity and demeaning insults during a chaotic airport encounter in October, leaving airport employees “visibly upset,” according to an internal investigation by the Charleston Airport Police Department.
The Nov. 12 investigation report, transcripts of interviews with officers and officials, and video related to their encounters were obtained by The Washington Post on Monday through a public records request. They offer more details from the Oct. 30 confrontation, which was initially disclosed in a police incident report.
Mace made national headlines over the October eruption at her home district’s airport when she was said to lose her temper after a misunderstanding during her drop-off led to a delay in her meeting with an official escort. Mace was traveling to Chicago.
Members of Congress are routinely escorted through airport security, but the process does not normally result in testy exchanges. Mace has said she will not walk through airports without an escort because of security threats.
A delay in finding her police escort led to the heated reaction. A police supervisor incorrectly said she would be arriving in a white BMW when she in fact arrived in a silver BMW.
The airport holds “a certain level of responsibility” for a “minor miscommunication” about the color of the vehicle that Mace would arrive in, airport police chief James A. Woods wrote in the new report. But Mace’s “continued failure to follow established procedures at the checkpoint” escalated the situation into “a spectacle” and negatively affected airport staff, the report concluded.
The investigation, which included several interviews with TSA staff and police officers, found Mace told officers “I’m sick of your s—,” said that they were “f—ing idiots” and “f—ing incompetent” and yelled in front of TSA officers and police using similar expletives as she proclaimed that she is a “f—ing representative.”
One airport employee described Mace’s tone as “very nasty, very rude” and described her behavior as “very unbecoming if she’s representing us” as a member of Congress. Others who were involved or directly witnessed the incident described the employee as “visibly upset” after the interaction and others as “downtrodden” by the encounter.
Mace’s office called the report “a full exoneration” and said they “look forward to remaining fully focused on the issues that actually matter to South Carolinians: affordability and law and order.” Mace is running for governor of the state.
The report depicts Mace complaining that she was not receiving special treatment. At the time of the incident, TSA agents were not being paid because the government was shut down.
A transportation security officer heard Mace on the phone “saying things like ‘she shouldn’t have to wait’ and ‘why isn’t she being treated like a senator?’” They said she used repeated profanity to accuse officers of always being late and called the delay “ridiculous.”
The report also touched on prior airport security incidents involving Mace, including a time earlier this year when the congresswoman arrived to the airport with a relative. An agent at the time said they needed to ask a supervisor whether the family member required a standard TSA screening.
While waiting, Mace spewed more profanity as she complained about what she characterized as persistent mistreatment by the airport.
Two police officers familiar with the escort procedure told investigators that Mace is “rarely on time and that this is often exacerbated by the fact that their communication is often relayed through multiple staffers, as the Congresswoman appears to have high personnel turnover.” They said there were “countless” times when Mace was not where she said she would be or that she’d show up in a different vehicle than expected, and that Mace and her staff did not forward requested information about threats to her safety.
The officers said they found the dispute with Mace frustrating.
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