The Virginia House Public Safety Committee held its first meeting of the 2026 session, receiving and questioning Stuart Mater, Governor-elect's nominee for Secretary of Public Safety, on topics including DOC staffing, in-custody death investigations, and an internal FBI memo from his time leading the FBI Richmond Field Office. No votes were taken; the committee also announced its two subcommittee assignments.
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Delegate Tony O. Wilt raised the subject of 'the internal memo that was released' from the nominee's time leading the FBI Richmond Field Office and asked what he learned from the experience and how it shaped him. Stuart Mater directed the committee to the Office of Inspector General report, stating it found 'no malicious intent, no wrongful purpose, no bias, no targeting of religion,' and noted the report is fully publicly accessible. The specific content or nature of the memo was not described in the transcript beyond Wilt's reference to it.
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“While I had applied in August of 01 to become an FBI special agent, it was serving as a first responder to The Pentagon on 911 that drove my continued commitment and resolve to doing all I could to protect people and to ensure, most importantly, having seen that tragic event up close and personal, that I did my part to ensure that something like that never happened again.”
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Sign in to subscribeAll right, good morning, everyone. Want to go ahead and call this first meeting of the public safety committee of 2026 session to order. The clerk will open the roll. Members will indicate their presence on the electronic voting board for attendance. I think we have a quorum. I know it's early and it's Friday. All right, does everybody have a chance? Is that delegate Anderson? It's the green one on the upper left. Okay. It's okay to push. No, that's not true. All right. I would note that delegate Cousins. I'm sorry, Delegate Anderson and delegate Adams are here. And so a quorum is present. So we're going to go ahead and get things started. So we've got a fairly brief agenda here. Normally we start with introductions, and then as people fill in, we'll come back to them and have them introduce themselves. I want to start on my left with my vice chair and we'll move down the the dais. And if you guys would. I know we have a lot of new members to the, to the general assembly and also to this committee. So if you just take a minute to tell us where your…
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