He would have gotten away with it, too, were it not for those meddling kids (and the Internet... but mostly the Internet):
You might think he would have considered that wearing a seatbelt in one's house might look a little excessive from a safety standpoint, but consider the fact that one of the other participants was wearing a face mask.
On a video call:
The full video of the meeting is below, but let me give you a little flavor first so that you can get the most out of the experience.
Sen. Brenner starts off the call sitting in his car:
At 2:35, he inexplicably transitions to the classic "up-nostril" shot. I see this a lot with FaceTime (or really when anyone is doing video with their phone). I don't care who you are, this is not a good look:
At 3:31, he flicks on the fake background. There's nothing subtle or sneaky about it. There's a little fade out shortly before – suggesting maybe he thought he had turned off the video – but it went from looking up his nose in his car to looking up his nose in his living room:
At 3:38, he casually sits back and no one is the wiser!
At 3:40 he turns off the video:
He reappears at 4:20, seatbelt safely secured, and starts looking to his right and left. Stop sign maybe?
It goes on like that. You'll have to watch the video to fully appreciate it: the office background flickering around the edges, doing a hand-over-hand wheel turn around 5:20, hitting an obviously bumpy section starting around 7:16 (maybe they should allocate some funds for that) and so on.
Brenner denied he was distracted and was only listening like it was a regular phone call.
Contrary to some reports, this meeting was not about distracted driving; however, the very same day a bill addressing distracted driving had been introduced that would arguably make what Brenner was doing a violation.
Here's the highlight video is below (but I encourage you to click here for the full video in all its glory):
The lingering question is, why? It's like toddler playing hide-and-seek and concealing himself behind a broomstick.
