Who Is Secret Service Chief Kimberly Cheatle?

President Joe Biden’s Secret Service chief is facing a House hearing next Monday following her failure to prevent a sniper from shooting at President Donald Trump.

Kimberly Cheatle “has a lot to answer for,” House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox News radio today.

Cheatle spent 27 years at Secret Service before retiring in 2019 under President Donald Trump.

Then she was hired as head of security for PepsiCo North America and worked there for 14 months. She was hired back to run the agency by Biden in August 2022. A White House statement from Biden said:

Jill and I know firsthand Kim’s commitment to her job … When Kim served on my security detail when I was Vice President, we came to trust her judgement and counsel. She is a distinguished law enforcement professional with exceptional leadership skills, and was easily the best choice to lead the agency at a critical moment for the Secret Service. She has my complete trust, and I look forward to working with her.

The statement described her career, noting, “Prior to serving as Assistant Director [of protective operations], Cheatle served as the Special Agent in Charge of the Atlanta Field Office, providing oversight for all mission-related investigations, protective intelligence and protective visits in the state of Georgia.”

Her LinkedIn account says she took a sociology degree from Eastern Illinois University in 1992.

The Secret Service is part of the Department of Homeland Security. So her immediate boss is Biden’s impeached progressive pro-migration border chief, Alejandro Mayorkas.

The security of the presidential candidates “is one of our … most vital” priorities, Mayorkas said in an 8:43 p.m. tweet after the assassination attempt.

Cheatle is now facing criticism for prioritizing the progressive goal of diversity over the traditional goal of merit. The goal, for example, justified the hiring and promotion of women over men more capable to execute the agency’s task.

Chris Rufo, a critic of DEI policies, wrote in City Journal:

This is official policy. The Secret Service openly boasts that it “prioritizes recruiting women candidates” and has formulated an “affirmative action” plan to increase the number of women, LGBT, Native Americans, and other identity groups.

Cheatle herself told CBS News that her goal was to reach 30 percent female recruits by 2030: “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.” The agency is well on its way. In 2021, for the first time, the special agent training class graduated more women than men.

But “the best candidates—the strongest and fastest, the best marksmen—will be men,” Rufo wrote, adding:

It’s a reality that the Secret Service is determined to circumvent. The agency itself has published its fitness standards in two parts: one for men, and a separate, less rigorous one for women. These biological facts should be obvious. Every nightclub owner knows that physicality matters. A bouncer who is six-foot-five, 200 pounds, will provide better security than a smaller woman.

In early July, ABC News asked Cheatle about threats, and she replied: “There’s nothing specific and nothing credible out there right now.”