U.S. Senator Rand Paul is currently being held by the TSA in Nashville, Tennessee, after he reportedly refused a full-body patdown after setting off the scanners.
Moira Bagley, the junior Kentucky Senator’s Communications Director, just tweeted this:
Just got a call from @senrandpaul. He’s currently being detained by TSA in Nashville
Rand Paul’s father Ron Paul, who you might know as a Presidential candidate, also tweeted about the event, referring to an “anomaly” regarding the body scanner:
My son @SenRandPaul being detained by TSA for refusing full body pat-down after anomaly in body scanner in Nashville. More details coming.
Both of the Pauls have been critical in the past of the TSA’s patdowns and other practices, referring to them as government overreach. Speaking to a TSA official in 2011, Rand Paul said “[my constituents] are still quite unhappy with you guys as well as myself and a lot of other Americans who think you’ve gone overboard, you’re missing the boat on terrorism because you’re doing these invasive searches on six-year-old girls.”
It also appears that this incident is interfering with an event that Paul was supposed to attend today. Paul’s last tweet says that the Senator was on his way to March For Life in DC:
Today I’ll speak to the March for Life in DC. A nation cannot long endure w/o respect for the right to Life. Our Liberty depends on it. #ky