T.J. Holmes Accused of Stealing Cellphone

Back in January Amy Robach admitted she had no idea the level of scrutiny T.J. Holmes was under as a Black man in white female dominated media spaces, before they became a couple [click here if you missed that].  

This week Amy & T.J. share a story about the last time they took a flight and T.J. was accused of stealing someone's cellphone...

From Page Six

On Tuesday’s episode of the “Amy & T.J.” podcast, the former news anchor told listeners he and Amy Robach were minding their business on a JetBlue flight when a woman, who was sitting four rows in front of them, claimed to their flight attendant he took her phone.

“I was using the bathroom up front — right next to the cockpit — and I come out and there’s a flight attendant standing there with this little old lady,” the 46-year-old recalled, noting that the woman was “white with dirty blond hair.”

“She’s standing there and the flight attendant asks, ‘Did you see a phone in there?’ and I immediately turned around and said, ‘Oh, no. I didn’t see anything.'”

Despite Holmes’ denial, the passenger then “stepped towards” him and “gestured like she was about to frisk [him].”

“And says, ‘Oh, you don’t have it?’” he recalled. “In front of the plane, she flat out accuses me of taking her phone.”

“And she is a short lady so I actually crouched down, put my hands on my knees and got down on her level and I say, ‘Ma’am are you telling me I took your phone?’”

Although the woman tried to “ignore” Holmes, the flight attendant was “overly apologetic” about the situation.

Sure enough, the passenger found her phone “in her seat” and “turned” around to Holmes “mortified, screaming across the five rows, ‘I’m so sorry!'”

“Sorry doesn’t cut it at that point,” Robach, 51, said, which Holmes agreed with.

“I have to be calm,” he explained. “If there weren’t more people around then I wouldn’t have bent down and been as assertive as I was because I wouldn’t have a witness that I wasn’t aggressive towards her.”

Elsewhere in the episode, Holmes noted that Robach has “witnessed” how he gets treated as a “Black man going through some of the same scenarios in life but getting treated very differently.”

“Very differently,” Robach added.