GOP Sen. Rand Paul ‘Detained’ at Nashville Airport After Refusing Patdown
from The Blaze
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was detained at the Nashville airport, according to his Facebook page. Reports say he was in a “standoff” over an incident involving a full body scanner and a subsequent request for a patdown. Paul reportedly refused the latter, and now TSA denies he was officially detained, but rather stopped.
ABC News has more:
@moirabagley, the Twitter account associated with Paul staffer Moira Bagley tweeted around 10 a.m., ET, “Just got a call from @senrandpaul. He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville.”
A spokesman for TSA said the agency was looking into the matter but could not immediately comment.
Paul apparently set off an airport security full-body scanner, “on a glitch,” a spokesman in Paul’s office told ABC News.
The Paul staffer said TSA agents would not let Paul walk back through the body scanner they were demanding, according to the staffer, a full body pat-down.
The senator’s chief of staff, Doug Stafford, told the Daily Caller that Paul refused to get the full-body patdown after TSA would not let him walk through the scanner again.
“I spoke with him five minutes ago and he was being detained indefinitely,” Bagley told Politico Monday morning. “The image scan went off, he refused patdown.”
Ron Paul, the senator’s father who is running for president, acknowledged the story on his Twitter account:
