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I can, straining my credulity to the max, allow that he took the luggage by some kind of temporary brain eclipse. I could do weird stuff if I am tired and deeply distracted - not stealing somebody's luggage, but e.g. trying to get into somebody else's car. So let's assume theoretically it's possible it's an innocent mistake. But then he was contacted about it and lied. Repeatedly. I mean, the guy is not a village idiot. He knows there are video cameras in the airport, in the hotel and he's on these cameras with the luggage he took. Everybody who comes in and out is on these cameras. And now he gets asked about it - how he thinks that happened? The police just started to call round-robin every person living in the US and randomly got to him? Of course they already know he took the luggage. They already have the videos of him. And of course he knows he took the luggage - it's not something you can fail to notice for days. WTF would he not just fess up on that stage? The only plausible idea I can have is that he somehow expected that the normal people rules don't apply to him and he lives in some kind of imaginary world with tenuous connection to this reality. And that's the angle that makes it especially scary to see this person in the government office.
Also, a person who works for US government tried to sell us a story that he, after taking the luggage, "didn't know what to do" and thus repeatedly and stupidly lied. He works for US govt. He's got M.Sc. from MIT. He's a political activist. And with all that he doesn't know a single lawyer he could ask, and a single person that knows how to contact a lawyer? This is either a level of impacted brain function that should not qualify a person for working at DoE, or a very badly executed lie.
For stealing, and doubly - for lying, and in triplicate - for being such a complete idiot.
We would probably never know unless Sam fesses up. There's no reason for him to, but at this point reason is not even a point in the rear window...
By "people like Sam" you likely mean flamboyant nonconforming personalities proudly parading their lifestyle. I think if I were responsible for making such decisions (which I thankfully am not), I'd be cautious about such people - at least to the point of carefully verifying how far their non-conformity extends and if it also reaches the areas that could impact the work performance, and whether there's a case of just uncommon preferences in personal life, or there may be a reason to suspect a compromise of rational facilities. But that would probably be the case even before that, so I'd say not much movement here.
P.S. Oh and btw, how did he know it's woman's suitcase? It seems to be just generic blue. I have a blue one (I am not female). Was there some distinctive features or was it just random gamble? OTOH, the guy is a bisexual as I read, so maybe either way would be good.
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