Nancy Mace Curses, Berates Confused Cops in Airport Meltdown: Police Report

Nancy Mace, the South Carolina Republican congresswoman, unleashed a tirade against law enforcement at the Charleston International Airport on Thursday, WIRED has learned.

According to an incident report obtained by WIRED under South Carolina’s Freedom of Information Act, Mace cursed at police officers, making repeated derogatory comments toward them. The report says that a Transportation Security Administration (TSA) supervisor told officers that Mace had treated their staff similarly and that they would be reporting her to their superiors.

According to the report, officers with the Charleston County Aviation Authority Police Department were tasked with meeting Mace at 6:30 am to escort her from the curb to her flight and had been told that she would be arriving in a white BMW at the ticketing curb area. Around 6:35, the report says, they were told she was running late; they never saw the car arrive.

Shortly before 7 am, the report stated, dispatch told the officers that Mace was at the entrance for the Known Crewmember program—a trusted access lane with a smaller checkpoint overseen by the TSA and intended for flight crew members.

When officers quickly located her, according to a supplemental incident report filed by one of the officers, the congresswoman immediately began “loudly cursing and making derogatory comments to us about the department. She repeatedly stated we were ‘Fucking incompetent,’ and ‘this is no way to treat a fucking US Representative,’” the report states.

As officers escorted her to her gate, according to the report, she brought a South Carolina Senate colleague into the fracas.

“She also said we would never treat Tim Scott like this,” says one officer tasked with escorting Mace says in the report.

“The entire walk to gate B-8 she was cursing and complaining and often doing the same into her phone,” an officer writes in the report. In the main incident report, an officer notes that Mace was yelling into her phone, either on a phone call or dictating text messages. “After standing in the vicinity of B-8 for several minutes with her continuing her tirade, she finally boarded the aircraft.”

After Mace’s flight took off, the report states, an American Airlines gate agent approached the officers. According to the report, he “stated he was in disbelief regarding her behavior. He implied that a US Representative should not be acting the way she was.”

The report goes on to state that officers checked with a TSA supervisor, who told the officers “he was very upset with how she acted at the checkpoint.” This supervisor, according to the report, told the officers that Mace had “talked to several TSA agents the same way” and that they would be “submitting a report to his superiors about her unacceptable behavior.” TSA agents are not currently being fully paid, due to the ongoing government shutdown.

“Apparently, simply arriving at an airport now makes for a worthy headline. 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. Our security procedures are based solely on legitimate safety concerns, and any attempt to politicize this reality is both dangerous and reckless,” Mace's director of operations Cameron Morabito wrote to WIRED in a statement.

On X, Mace appeared to address part of the story, writing, “for the FAKE NEWS: This is the entrance ALL Members of Congress use at the airport. Are you going to write that Senators Lindsey Graham and Tim Scott use the same entrance or no? Or no?”

TSA and American Airlines did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

One of the officers noted in the report that after watching video footage, they were able to determine that Mace had originally been dropped off in a BMW that was not white.

“Any other person in the airport acting and talking the way she did, our department would have been dispatch (sic) and we would have addressed the behavior,” the incident report concludes.

Update: 10/31/2025: This story has been updated with a statement from representative Nancy Mace's director of operations.