What is more important… a narcissistic House member flying to a city to encourage violence or a high-risk flight filled with hardworking Americans?
If you ask Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA) that question, she will tell you to protect the politician, because that is exactly what she and other officials have been doing since the January 6 riot at the Capitol.
According to representatives of the air marshals, Waters is among a group of members of Congress that have decided to turn air marshals into a VIP “concierge service.”
I’ll Take One!
Prior to the 9/11 attacks, air marshals on any flight were a rarity.
The agency boasted a total membership of less than three dozen officers, but 9/11 changed that rather dramatically.
At its height, about 4,000 marshals were working the skies to cover some 30,000 flights.
Today, there are still about 2,000 marshals protecting flights, but not so much high-risk flights.
According to the Air Marshal National Council, significant requests have been made by elected members of Congress to have their flights covered, which has pulled marshals off high-risk flights to accommodate the requests.
Sonya Hightower LoBasco, executive director of the Air Marshal National Council, stated, “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.
“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.”
There have been elected officials on both sides of the aisle abusing this, most notably Waters, who asked for special coverage when she flew to Minnesota during the Derek Chauvin trial.
The complaint filed with the House Ethics Committee specifically mentioned her abuses, stating, “Congresswoman Maxine Waters utilized numerous government resources inappropriately.
“Federal Air Marshals were removed from a ‘High Risk’ flight to cover Ms. Waters flight to Minnesota. The High Risk flight took off with no armed law enforcement on board leaving a gap in National Security.
“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.”
David Londo, president of the Air Marshal National Council, has also filed a complaint with the Homeland Security IG, stating, “Placing FAMs on aircraft simply because a member of Congress requests it is an egregious misuse of government resources.
“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.”
This is clearly an abuse of power, and censure is not good enough for members of Congress wasting resources like this to feed their egos, especially when many of them already had a security team with them.
Regardless of their party affiliation, they must all be held accountable.
Source: Fox News
