Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has unapologetically embraced the agency’s woke initiatives since taking office two years ago — including recruiting at Pride events, hosting seminars on pronoun use and even hiring a popular female YouTube daredevil to attract a more diverse workforce.
Cheatle, 53, laid out his marching orders in the Secret Service’s 2023-2027 strategic plan, requiring agents to be “focused on achieving excellence through talent, technology and diversity,” documents reviewed by The Post show.
“We must embrace diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) across the agency,” wrote Cheatle, a longtime friend of first lady Jill Biden who was plucked in 2022 from her previous role as PepsiCo’s global security chief by President Biden to become the second woman to lead the federal agency. “DEIA must be demonstrated by all employees – by example – through ‘every action every day.’”
Part of the diversity effort to attract women included letting YouTube influencer Michelle Khare — best known for posting videos of herself training to become everything from an astronaut to a bomb disposal officer — try out for the Secret Service academy.
Khare’s 41-minute “I Tried Secret Service Academy” segment has been viewed more than 12 million times since it was posted in November 2022.
“I’m very conscious, as I sit in this role today, of the need to make sure that we attract diverse candidates and make sure that we develop and provide opportunities to all of our people, and particularly women,” Cheatle told CBS last year, adding that she had set a goal of having 30% of hires be women by 2030.
Other examples of the increasingly woke turn of the secret services include:
- Hosted a seminar on “Respectful Use of Pronouns” during the agency’s annual “Unity Day,” where diversity is celebrated.
- Have a recruiting brochure that touts the agency as “striving to be the gold standard” in DEIA.
- Form an “Inclusion Engagement Council,” which the agency’s website defines as “changemakers” helping the Secret Service shape a workforce “where diversity and inclusion are not just ‘talked about’ — but demonstrated by all employees through ‘Every Action, Every Day.’”
- Setting up agency booths at Pride events across the country to recruit.
On a 2022 agency podcast, Andrew “Drew” Cannady of the Secret Service’s Office of the Chief Legal Counsel revealed that recruiting efforts targeting the LGBTQ community have resulted in more transgender people joining the force.
He also said the “pronouns” seminar was necessary “to try to educate the workforce…because some of these things, you know, are cutting edge and new, and people may not be familiar with them.”
Cheatle had been under fire for resigning since the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, punctuated by a series of critical missteps by the agency.
Videos released by various media outlets and on social media showed some female agents struggling to fully shield the much taller former commander in chief (6-foot-3) after a gunman shot at him from a nearby rooftop, hitting him in the right ear. One female agent then appeared to struggle to put her firearm away as the wounded Trump was bundled into his SUV to flee.
“Both the Obama and Biden administrations have populated federal departments and agencies with bureaucrats more concerned with DEI than with achieving their organizations’ missions,” Rep. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) told the Post on Friday.
“It is not unreasonable, then, to assume that Director Cheatle took the same approach with the Secret Service. The spectacular security failure that nearly led to the assassination of President Trump suggests that this is exactly what happened.”
Secret Service agents are tasked with protecting — and even using their own bodies as shields — current and past presidents, their families, and certain high-ranking government officials.
The agency began hiring women as special agents in 1971, and in April 2021, for the first time, women outnumbered men in a graduating class of agents. Women currently make up about 24% of the agency’s 7,800 employees.
As was the case before Cheatle’s appointment, women undergo the same training as men, but their fitness standards are far lower than those of men.
For example, men aged 20 to 29 who want to get an “excellent” grade must do 55 push-ups in one minute and 47 sit-ups. They must also do 11 pull-ups and run 1.5 km in 10 minutes and 16 seconds.
Women of the same age receive the same grades if they do 40 push-ups, 44 sit-ups, 4 pull-ups, and run a mile and a half in 12 minutes and 50 seconds.
The Trump team praised the efforts of female agents to get the former president to safety, but critics blamed Cheatle’s woke recruiting efforts for the security failures that nearly cost Trump his life.
“Having a small person as a body cover for a large man is like a Speedo that’s too small at the beach – it doesn’t cover the subject,” Elon Musk, owner of X, wrote on his platform. “It can be a man or a woman, to be clear, it just has to be big enough to do the job.”
Cheatle, who served 27 years in the Secret Service before joining PepsiCo, now faces investigations by congressional committees and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general into the agency’s response to the assassination attempt.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said his agents and officers “are highly trained and fully capable of performing our missions,” adding that “it is an insult to the women in our agency to imply that they are not qualified because of their gender.”
“Such baseless claims undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our staff,” he added.
“Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion allows us to attract top talent, build a strong and effective team that reflects the society we serve. We stand united against any attempt to discredit our people and their invaluable contributions to our mission and are appalled by the derogatory and disgusting comments made against any of our employees.”
