Rep. Nancy Mace allegedly berated and cursed at police officers tasked with escorting her through Charleston International Airport in South Carolina on Thursday, allegedly saying they were “[expletive] incompetent,” according to an incident report.
According to a police incident report, officers with the Charleston County Aviation Authority Police Department were assigned to meet the Republican congresswoman at 6:30 a.m. Thursday to escort her from the curb to her flight. The officers were told she would be arriving in a white BMW at the ticketing curb area.
At around 6:35 a.m., they were told she was running late and they kept waiting. According to the report, the officers never saw the car arrive.
Surveillance video from the airport obtained by CBS News via the Freedom of Information Act shows Mace arrive at a sidewalk entrance in a dark-colored sedan around 6:50 a.m. No one else was visible in the vehicle.
Around 7 a.m., the officers were informed that Mace, 47, was at the entrance for the Known Crewmember program – a trusted access lane overseen by the Transportation Security Administration and intended for flight crew members. The report said the officers made their way over “in less than a minute.”
A separate surveillance video from the airport appeared to show Mace at the TSA security checkpoint speaking with airport officials. It took about seven minutes from the time Mace first appeared at the TSA entrance to when the escorting officers arrived, according to the video.
When the officers met Mace to escort her, they said she “began loudly cursing and making derogatory comments to us and about the department. She repeatedly stated we were ‘(expletive) incompetent”‘ and ‘this is no way to treat a (expletive) US Representative’,” the report states.
“She also said we would never treat (U.S. Sen.) Tim Scott like this,” the officer tasked with escorting Mace says in the report.
Police said Mace allegedly cursed and complained at the officers and into her phone during the entire walk to her gate. After she boarded her flight, an airline employee and several other TSA agents said they were shocked and upset by her behavior at the security checkpoint and gate, the officer says in the report.
“Any other person in the airport acting and talking the way she did, our department would have been dispatched, and we would have addressed the behavior,” the officer said in the report.
On X, Mace appeared to respond to part of the story, sharing the surveillance video showing her arrival at the airport, followed by her standing in the TSA screening area “with no security.”
“And for the FAKE NEWS: This is the entrance ALL Members of Congress use at the airport,” she wrote. “Are you going to write that Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott use the same entrance or no?”
The congresswoman’s director of operations, Cameron Morabito, told CBS News in a short statement on Saturday that “apparently, simply arriving at an airport makes headlines if you’re leading the race for governor.
“We are forced to take the Congresswoman’s safety extremely seriously. After the world watched Charlie Kirk’s assassination, the threats against her have only intensified,” the statement said. “Our security procedures are based solely on legitimate safety concerns, and any attempt to politicize this reality is both dangerous and reckless.”
Morabito’s statement did not address the alleged comments made by Mace to the police escort officers.
Mace first came to Congress in 2021 and has gained recognition as a GOP firebrand in recent months after shifting positions in recent years. She launched her campaign for governor of South Carolina in August.