Embattled Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle has unabashedly embraced woke initiatives at the agency ever since she took over two years ago — including recruiting at Pride events, hosting seminars on pronoun use and even bringing in a popular YouTube female daredevil to attract a more diverse workforce.
Cheatle, 53, unveiled her marching orders in the Secret Service’s 2023-2027 strategic plan, demanding 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 job as global security boss at PepsiCo by President Biden to be the second woman to lead the federal agency. “DEIA must be demonstrated by all employees — leading by example — through ‘every action every day.’”
Part of the diversity effort to attract women included letting YouTube influencer Michelle Khare — who’s best known for posting videos of herself training to become everything from an astronaut to a bomb squad officer — give the Secret Service academy a try.
Khare’s “I Tried Secret Service Academy” 41-minute segment has scored more than 12 million views since posting in November 2022.
“I’m very conscious as I sit in this chair now, of making sure that we need to attract diverse candidates and ensure that we are developing and giving opportunities to everybody in our workforce, and particularly women,” Cheatle told CBS last year, adding she set a target of 30% of recruits being female by 2030.
Other examples of the Secret Service’s increasingly woke turn include:
- Hosting a seminar on the “respectful use of pronouns” during the agency’s annual “Unity Day,” where diversity is celebrated.
- Having a recruiting brochure that boasts the agency is “striving to be the gold standard” of DEIA.
- Forming an “Inclusion Engagement Council,” which the agency’s website defines as “game changers” helping the Secret Service mold a workforce “where diversity and inclusion is 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.
During a 2022 agency podcast, Andrew “Drew” Cannady of the Secret Service’s Office of Chief Counsel, revealed recruitment efforts targeting the LGBTQ community has resulted in more transgender people joining.
He also said the “pronoun” seminar was needed “to try and educate the workforce … because some of this stuff, you know, is cutting-edge and new, and people just may not be familiar with it.”
Cheatle had been under fire to resign since the July 13 assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a Butler, Pa., rally punctuated by a series of critical agency blunders.
Video from various media outlets and on social media show some female agents having difficulty trying to fully shield the much-taller 6-foot 3-inch ex-commander-in-chief after he was fired on by a gunman from a nearby rooftop and hit in his right ear. One agent later appeared to struggle trying to holster her firearm as a wounded Trump was whisked into his getaway SUV.
“Both the Obama and Biden administrations have populated federal departments and agencies with bureaucrats more concerned with DEI than carrying out their organizations’ mission,” Rep. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) told The Post Friday.
“As a result, it is not unreasonable to assume Director Cheatle has taken the same approach with the Secret Service. The spectacular security failure that almost resulted in the assassination of President Trump would indicate that is exactly what has happened.”
Secret Service agents are tasked with protecting — and even using their own bodies as shields — current and past presidents, their families and some high-level Cabinet officials.
The agency first began hiring women as special agents in 1971, and in April 2021, women outnumbered men in a graduating class for agents for the first time. Women currently make up roughly 24% of the agency’s 7,800 employees.
As was the case before Cheatle’s appointment, women go through the same training as men, but are held too much lower standards than men for physical fitness.
For instance, men ages 20-29 seeking “excellent” marks must do 55 pushups in a minute and 47 sit-ups. They also must do 11 chin-ups and run a mile-and-a-half in 10 minutes and 16 seconds.
Women the same age receive the same grades if they do 40 pushups, 44 sit-ups, 4 chin-ups and run a mile-and-a-half in 12 minutes and 50 seconds.
Team Trump praised the female agents’ efforts getting the ex-president to safety, but critics accused Cheatle’s woke hiring efforts of causing the security breaches that nearly cost Trump his life.
“Having a small person as body cover for a large man is like an undersized Speedo at the beach – doesn’t cover the subject,” X owner Elon Musk wrote on his platform. “Could be a man or a woman, to be clear, just needs to be large enough to do the job.”
Cheatle, who served 27 years in the Secret Service before her stint at PepsiCo, now faces inquiries by Congressional committees and the Department of Homeland Security’s inspector general over the agency’s response to the assassination attempt.
Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said its agents and officers “are highly trained and fully capable of performing our missions,” adding “it is an insult to the women of our agency to imply that they are unqualified based on gender.”
“Such baseless assertions undermine the professionalism, dedication and expertise of our workforce,” he added.
“Our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion ensures that we attract the best talent, fostering a robust and effective team that reflects the society we serve. We stand united against any attempt to discredit our personnel and their invaluable contributions to our mission and are appalled by the disparaging and disgusting comments against any of our personnel.”