Blue Grass Airport suspended public safety chief, officer over sexual harassment complaint
Blue Grass Airport suspended its public safety chief and one of its public safety officers this summer after finding them guilty of sexually harassing a female colleague during a May 15 visit to Lexington by former President Donald Trump, according to documents obtained by the Herald-Leader.
Public Safety Chief Marcus “Brian” Wainscott, 59, was suspended without pay for seven days, placed on probation and ordered to attend 40 hours of leadership training for what his supervisors described as “the current state of the department and your failure as a leader.”
“Brian, I am extremely disappointed and concerned about this incident,” Wainscott’s supervisors told him June 7 in a letter the Herald-Leader obtained through the Kentucky Open Records Act. “In the very near future, please expect a second coaching and counseling session ... to address these issues and establish a path forward.”
Wainscott, a former Versailles fire chief, was named to his airport leadership post in February 2023.
Public Safety Officer Steven Hysell, 52, was suspended for two days without pay. Last year, Hysell was suspended for one day without pay and temporarily demoted for an incident in which he showed “poor judgment,” according to disciplinary records. Airport officials declined to provide more information about the earlier case.
All employees of the airport’s Public Safety Department were told to attend a mandatory meeting July 23 where Wainscott and Hysell apologized to Public Safety Officer Emily Stapleton for their behavior toward her, according to records.
“Blue Grass Airport does not tolerate sexual harassment in the workplace and is committed to providing a positive, respectful and supportive work environment,” Eric Frankl, the airport’s president and chief executive, said Tuesday in a prepared statement.
Wainscott and Hysell remain employed by the airport. Stapleton resigned Aug. 7 to work elsewhere, said airport spokeswoman Amy Caudill.
The airport hired Lexington law firm Stites & Harbison to investigate a sexual harassment complaint that Stapleton filed following Trump’s visit to Lexington for a May 15 campaign fundraiser.
In her complaint, Stapleton said that during a crowded dinner break inside the airport’s firehouse on May 15, Hysell and Wainscott made lewd comments about her body, drawing laughter from their colleagues.
Specifically, she said, Hysell joked that Stapleton showed her breasts to get Trump’s attention as the former president exited his plane and walked to a motorcade, although there was some disagreement among those in attendance as to the exact word Hysell used to describe her breasts.
Wainscott followed, she said, by joking about an incident earlier in the afternoon when Stapleton accidentally dropped a souvenir coin presented to the Public Safety Department by the U.S. Secret Service, prompting her to bend and pick it up.
Wainscott reenacted that scene for their laughing colleagues by bending over and wiggling his buttocks in the air, Stapleton said. Referring to Trump later passing by, Wainscott asked her, “Does that explain you dropping the coin?”, she said.
According to disciplinary records, Wainscott denied shaking his buttocks in the air, but multiple eyewitnesses corroborated Stapleton’s account. Two days of his seven-day suspension were for “misleading investigators” over his denial of the shaking buttocks, according to disciplinary records.
Stapleton went home early that night, in the middle of her shift, according to the law firm’s report.
“I was completely in shock due to the content that was said, it being completely random, unprovoked, and without my involvement in their conversation,” Stapleton wrote in her subsequent harassment complaint.
As part of their investigation, attorneys for Stites & Harbison interviewed eight airport employees, including Wainscott, Hysell and Stapleton, and reviewed security video and text messages between employees.
The firm’s June 4 report concluded that Wainscott and Hysell made inappropriate comments that violated the airport’s anti-harassment policy.
However, the report said, their behavior did not rise to the level of “severe and pervasive harassment” that creates a hostile work environment under the Kentucky Civil Rights Act.
