The Secret Service was supposed to be the best of the best.
But that reputation went straight down the toilet.
And a Secret Service agent got caught doing one bonkers modeling job under Joe Biden.
Biden’s Secret Service let standards collapse in favor of woke agenda
Donald Trump survived two assassination attempts last year because the Secret Service dropped the ball.
Former Director Kimberly Cheatle pushed diversity, equity, and inclusion as her top priority instead of protecting her principals.
Cheatle aggressively pursued the Biden administration’s "30×30" initiative to make the workforce 30% female by 2030 — hitting 24% before she resigned in disgrace after Trump nearly got killed in Butler, Pennsylvania.
Tennessee Senator Marsha Blackburn told RealClearPolitics that Cheatle took her eye off the Secret Service’s core mission of protecting people in favor of chasing arbitrary gender quotas.¹
"Now, if that is going to be your goal, and you’re taking your eye off of your core mission, which is to protect individuals, and then you are no longer meeting your prescribed mission, this is how you end up getting ineffectiveness into agencies," Blackburn stated.²
The results were predictable — and dangerous.
Overweight agent moonlighted as plus-size model while failing fitness tests
RealClearPolitics uncovered that during Cheatle’s tenure, the Secret Service became so focused on DEI that one overweight female agent never passed her physical fitness tests but was still retained and allowed to moonlight as a plus-sized model.³
The agent was assigned to protect Kamala Harris’s stepdaughter in New York while billing herself as a "nationally published curve model, plus-size fashion and fitness influencer, and body-positive advocate" on social media.⁴
She even did a photo shoot labeled "Undercover, But Never Underdressed" — trading on her federal law enforcement job for modeling gigs while unable to meet basic fitness standards required for protective duty.
After multiple failed fitness tests, the agent was quietly moved to Special Services Division handling vehicle maintenance and mail screening — positions far removed from protecting anyone.⁵
While Trump was dodging bullets in Butler, Pennsylvania, agents who couldn’t pass basic fitness tests were doing fashion shoots and trading on their federal law enforcement credentials to build modeling careers.
That’s where Biden’s Secret Service ended up: agents who couldn’t run down threats modeling plus-size fashion instead of maintaining the elite physical conditioning required to take a bullet for their principal.
Trump’s new director keeps Biden’s DEI architects in power
President Trump’s new Secret Service Director Sean Curran inherited an agency infected with woke policies that put politics over protection.
But seven months after taking over, agents are questioning whether Curran is doing enough to clean house.
While Curran eliminated DEI programs following Trump’s executive order, he kept several of Cheatle’s lieutenants in key positions — including Darnelly De Jesus, who helped architect the agency’s DEI push and now oversees all misconduct cases and disciplinary decisions.
De Jesus’s LinkedIn resume bragged about her work on Cheatle’s 30×30 initiative until RealClearPolitics started asking questions — then those references mysteriously disappeared from her profile.⁶
She still touted creating "a ground-breaking first-line supervisory class for all females across 22 separate agencies" and boasted about increasing minority and female hiring by 128% in one division.
The agency had become so woke under Biden that different ethnic groups had their own "café" chat rooms on an internal DEI website to discuss the difficulties of being minorities in the Secret Service.⁷
In 2023, the Secret Service sent five employees to an LGBTQ conference in Melbourne, Australia during the height of campaign season.
The head of the Boston field office returned with "action items" to make the agency "trans-inclusive" — including determining whether fitness standards negatively impacted recruiting transgender agents and installing private changing areas in locker rooms for "gender non-conforming employees."⁸
The Secret Service needs the same overhaul Trump gave the military
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth proved what’s possible when he gathered military brass and announced 10 directives shifting away from "woke garbage" back to "warrior ethos."
"No more identity months, DEI offices or dudes in dresses. No more climate change worship," Hegseth declared. "As I’ve said before and will say, we are done with that shit."⁹
His commitment to meritocracy transformed military recruitment from crisis to bonanza.
The Secret Service needs the same treatment, especially with Trump and Vice President JD Vance maintaining brutal travel schedules that demand peak performance from their details.
Over the past decade, the agency’s shift toward DEI coupled with demanding schedules has driven an exodus of mid-career and senior agents choosing to leave before hitting their 20-year retirement mark.
The agency started offering $40,000-$50,000 recruitment bonuses and retention bonuses up to 25% of salary to stem the bleeding — with limited success.
Former Secret Service agent Rich Starapoli put it bluntly: "You would think that doing time on a presidential detail would be something that you would want from everyone on your team of eight assistant directors given the gravity of your one mission. You can’t keep the status quo — it’s bad for optics."
Curran has made changes — improving communications with local law enforcement, creating an Aviation and Airspace Security Division for drone monitoring, and shifting resource allocation based on actual threats rather than DEI goals.
But keeping Cheatle’s DEI architects in leadership positions while Trump and other administration officials face unprecedented threats raises serious questions.
The Secret Service used to be the elite protective force in American law enforcement because agents were selected and promoted based on excellence and results, not checking diversity boxes.
Under Biden, that standard collapsed so completely that an agent who couldn’t pass basic fitness requirements was protecting the vice president’s family while modeling plus-size clothing on the side.
Trump won a mandate to end this madness across the federal government.
The question is whether his Secret Service director will deliver the cultural revolution the agency desperately needs — or whether elite protection will continue taking a backseat to woke virtue signaling.
¹ Susan Crabtree, "Is Secret Service Chief Committed to Reforming DEI, ‘Woke’ Culture?" RealClearPolitics, October 22, 2025.
² Ibid.
³ Ibid.
⁴ Ibid.
⁵ Ibid.
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ Ibid.
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ Ibid.
