A Secret Service agent is for the first time publicly speaking out against the agency’s diversity, equity, and inclusion policies, which he says contributed to the first assassination attempt against President Trump last summer.
A 13-year veteran of the agency who has served in an elite unit and top protective assignments, Rashid Ellis sat down for an interview with the Independent Women’s Forum, a Virginia-based conservative nonprofit.
IWF is in the process of making a documentary, titled “Qualifications, Not Quotas,” about Ellis’s experience and released an explanation of the documentary and a trailer Thursday providing a snapshot of his experience and concerns.
“My initial thoughts when seeing the Butler assassination attempt was dread,” Ellis states solemnly in the trailer. “My stomach was in knots watching it because we had known for years that this was coming.”
“I believe agendas have taken priority at the United States Secret Service for a long time, which is why Butler and July 13 happened and why we got a president get shot,” he adds.
A graduate of The Citadel, a prestigious military college in South Carolina, Ellis has served on the Secret Service’s Counter Assault Team, an elite unit that provides tactical support to the president of the United States. Ellis went on to serve on the Presidential Protective Detail, a top assignment protecting presidents and their families, and as an instructor at the Secret Service James J. Rowley Training Center, where he has taught new and experienced agents about counter-surveillance, according to a 2023 article on The Citadel’s website.
“To be in the Secret Service, you have to be worthy of trust and confidence,” Ellis, wearing his Citadel class ring on a braided necklace around his neck, states in the video. “I’ve always viewed [it] as an honor and privilege to serve in this capacity. However … what I’ve seen with the United States is a different set of standards based on gender.”
Despite his accomplishments, Ellis, who is black, says he was unfairly denied a leadership position and believes that DEI gender “quotas played a factor.” He argues that the agency’s hiring and promotions based on skin color and gender have directly contributed to lowering morale and the ongoing exodus of senior agents leaving the agency. The previous Secret Service leadership placed a special emphasis on hiring and promoting women.
“Real danger is out there,” he states. “We need to restore confidence. We have to be focused on the threat that’s outside and the threat that’s in front of us.”
During the final weeks of the campaign, whistleblowers warned members of Congress that Trump was facing multiple “assassination teams,” including three inspired by Iran and other governments. The FBI arrested Asif Merchant, a Pakistani national with ties to Iran, one day before the Butler rally and later charged him with murder for hire as part of an alleged scheme to assassinate Trump on U.S. soil. The Justice Department in November announced separate charges against an “Iranian asset” and two Americans in a murder-for-hire scheme against Trump.
Even before the assassination attempts in the final months of the campaign, Secret Service agents were sounding the alarm that DEI policies were lowering hiring and training standards in the push to reach quotas for female and minority agents and officers, as RealClearPolitics reported in late April.
The criticism came in the wake of an incident in which a female Secret Service agent physically attacked a superior at Joint Base Andrews, home base for Air Force One and Air Force Two. Secret Service spokesman Anthony Guglielmi described the incident as a “medical matter” and said the agency would not “disclose further details.”
The incident attracted scrutiny of an initiative signed by former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle to increase the number of female agents. Cheatle, whom former President Biden tapped to serve as USSS director, was responding to Biden’s executive order requiring all federal agencies to demonstrate a commitment to DEI, which he issued on his first day in office in 2021.
Cheatle, who resigned under pressure from Congress after the Butler assassination attempt, signed onto the 30x30 initiative, a national campaign to increase the representation of women in all law enforcement ranks across the country to 30% of the workplace by 2030. Before Cheatle stepped down, she was close to reaching that goal, with women making up nearly a quarter of Secret Service agents and Uniformed Division officers, Secret Service sources told RCP.
In addition, at least until Trump’s first days in office, the Secret Service had an “Inclusion and Engagement Council,” which pledged to become the agency’s “game-changers” when it comes to helping the agency “build, foster, create, and inspire a workforce where diversity and inclusion are not just ‘talked about’ but demonstrated by all employees through ‘Every Action, Every Day.’”
The agency also had an Office of Equity & Employment Support Services, which maintained an internal website to provide “executive leadership and oversight for the effective management of all resources and, agency-wide initiatives, and external requirements” for DEI. That office included at least a dozen officials devoted to working on DEI programs, according to screenshots of the internal website that RCP viewed.
After the first assassination attempt against Trump and before the second at Trump’s West Palm Beach golf course, the Secret Service’s DEI office sent out an agency-wide email soliciting nominations for agency employees to attend the “Out and Equal” Workplace Summit at Disney World. The all-expense paid, three-day LGBTQ+ conference, which RCP first reported, took place Oct. 7-10, during the height of the campaign season when agents were working at a frenetic pace with no leave permitted.
The internal agency solicitation spurred a wave of criticism from members of Congress investigating the agency’s failures at Butler. The Secret Service rationalized its participation with a spokesman noting that only a limited number of administrative personnel were permitted to attend.
On his first day in office, Trump began to dismantle the previous administration’s DEI efforts across the federal government. His executive order, titled “Ending Radical and Wasteful Government DEI Programs and Preferencing,” directed all federal DEI staff be placed on paid lead and, eventually, laid off.
Trump also tapped Sean Curran, head of his campaign detail, as the new director, replacing acting Secret Service Director Ron Rowe who retired last week. Just two days into the job, Curran started cleaning house. On Jan. 21, he reassigned or pressed at least 10 senior leaders to retire immediately in a shake-up agents referred to as “Bloody Friday.”
Though many agents applauded these actions from the new administration, they believe it will take years of effort to right the DEI wrongs, which they say have severely weakened the agency.
“Though I welcome the change of leadership at the top of the agency and the reforms I hope they will prioritize, I worry that it will take years to rectify the damage that discriminatory diversity, equity, and inclusion policies have caused,” Ellis told RCP in a written statement. “The Secret Service’s role is critical, and if we do not clean out the rot that has embedded itself in this agency, our people – and our protectees – will pay the price.”
Ellis noted that he has proudly worked for the agency for 13 years and has repeatedly put his “life on the line to advance this agency’s mission and secure the safety of our protectees.”
Unfortunately, he says, over the past several years he watched the agency’s leaders abandon its critical protective mission “in favor of ideological goals.”
“The relentless push by Secret Service leadership to meet diversity quotas in particular has compromised our ability to meet our protectees’ needs,” he argued. “This agenda has contributed to devastating security failures, including the July 13 assassination attempt of President Donald Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania.
“I know this firsthand because I am one of many Secret Service agents who was wrongly sidelined by agency leadership because I did not meet their sex-based diversity requirements,” he said.
The IWF is continuing to work on a full documentary about Ellis’ experiences and deep concerns but decided to release a trailer to highlight the “counterproductive” impact DEI policies have had on several federal agencies, including the Secret Service. DEI policies are especially detrimental to the Secret Service’s “zero-fail” mission and its top priority of protecting presidents, vice presidents, their family members, and key Cabinet members, according to Kaylee McGhee White, editor-in-chief of Independent Women Features, IWF’s storytelling and journalism arm, which is producing the documentary.
“The Secret Service is one of many federal agencies whose work has been hampered by divisive and counterproductive diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies,” McGhee White said. “Given the Secret Service’s critical work, this agenda has had particularly visible consequences. The Secret Service’s protectees should not be worried about whether the agency is able to adequately prepare for and respond to threats due to unfair hiring and promotion standards.
“Unfortunately, as Rashid Ellis has confirmed, that is exactly what has happened,” she said.
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