The Secret Service just had a trainee arrested for hiding a spy camera inside a phone charger to film his roommate in the bathroom.
Biden hired this man to monitor threats to the president.
A 25-year Secret Service veteran who ran the Presidential Protective Division just went public with what he says is really going on – and it is worse than the arrest.
The Secret Service DEI Hiring Crisis a 25 Year Insider Warned Was Coming
Richard Staropoli is not a talking head.
He spent 25 years inside the Secret Service – on the Presidential Protective Division, on Counter Assault Teams, and conducting roughly 500 polygraph exams for the very hiring process he says is now broken.
He was in the White House on September 11. Trump later appointed him the first Chief Information Officer in DHS history.
When Staropoli says the Secret Service has a hiring problem, he is not guessing.
"Wokeness, optics, appeasement of minority groups and DEI hiring practices replaced common sense, negated the purposes of the agency and broke every rule of successful business practice," Staropoli toldFox News.
He has been saying it since at least August 2025.
"It's getting worse because now all the people that were problems to begin with, that were your DEI optics hires, are now ascending the ranks," Staropoli told Fox Across America last summer.
"These are now who you're dealing with as your senior level managers. Who do you think they're surrounding themselves with? This is a big problem."
That was eight months ago.
A spy camera arrest at the federal training academy just proved him right.
Secret Service Trainee Joel Lara Canvasser Hid a Camera in His Roommate's Phone Charger
Joel Lara Canvasser was not a random applicant who wandered into training.
Before becoming an agent-trainee, he worked as a civilian analyst in the Secret Service's Office of Strategic Information and Intelligence – the office that monitors and assesses threats to the president.
He joined the agency in fall 2025.
In March 2026, Canvasser offered his roommate at the Federal Law Enforcement Training Center in Glynco, Georgia, a phone charger after the roommate's original charger disappeared.
He allegedly told the roommate the cleaning ladies may have taken it.
The roommate plugged it in below the TV.
The hidden camera inside had a full view of the entire suite – including the bathroom.
For weeks, Canvasser allegedly sent harassing text messages designed to make the roommate believe a stranger was watching him.
In one instance, the roommate used the bathroom with his phone in his pocket, then checked it and found a message referencing what he had just done.
He examined the charger.
The light hit the lens.
Canvasser was arrested April 8 and charged with unlawful eavesdropping and surveillance.
He posted a bond of $8,458.
Three weeks earlier, a Secret Service agent assigned to Jill Biden's detail shot himself in the leg at Philadelphia International Airport after claiming his gun fell out of its holster and discharged itself.
That story vanished in 48 hours.
Why the Secret Service DEI Problem Will Take a Generation to Fix
Staropoli is not describing isolated embarrassments.
The bad hires Biden pushed into the agency are not leaving.
"By reputation, no other agency wants them," Staropoli said.
They are staying, accumulating seniority, and moving into leadership positions vacated by the wave of agents who quit after Butler.
Those leaders are now making the hiring decisions.
"Who do you think they're surrounding themselves with?" Staropoli asked.
He put a timeline on the damage: at least a generation.
Staropoli adds one detail that has not gotten nearly enough attention.
DEI hiring practices, he writes, "continue under this Trump-appointed director."
The people Trump trusted to reverse the damage Biden caused are still running the same broken pipeline.
The agency that missed a gunman on a rooftop 130 yards from Donald Trump at Butler in July 2024 has not been fundamentally reformed.
Corey Comperatore died shielding his family that day.
The independent DHS review called Butler a "historic security failure."
Right now, the agency responsible for making sure it never happens again is processing trainees who were filming their roommates in the shower while working as presidential threat analysts.
Staropoli's conclusion is not a suggestion.
"Clean house of all senior leadership – stop this cycle of woke DEI hiring and promotions. Find the right people, people who understand the magnitude of the job, who are willing and capable to actually do it."
The question is whether anyone inside that building is listening.
Sources:
- Richard Staropoli, "I was a supervisor for the Secret Service. It has huge problems with the people it hires," Fox News, April 16, 2026.
- Rich Staropoli, "The Secret Service Is Headed In The Wrong Direction," Fox Across America, August 28, 2025.
- Rich Staropoli, quoted in "Secret Service Agent Faulted for Butler Failures Suspended Again," RealClearPolitics, March 20, 2026.
- Sasha Pezenik and Josh Margolin, "Secret Service trainee accused of spying on roommate with hidden camera," ABC News, April 10, 2026.
- "Secret Service Trainee Arrested for Secretly Filming Roommate with Hidden Spy Cam," The Gateway Pundit, April 2026.
