A former CIA officer who rose to become a senior intelligence official in the White House says President Donald Trump‘s administration knew that she was transgender — but everything changed after right-wing provocateur Laura Loomer threatened to publicly identify a trans staffer, Wonderwall.com can report.
Julia Curlee, who served four presidents and once personally delivered daily intelligence briefings to former Vice President Mike Pence, was removed from her White House position less than 70 days into Donald’s second term. Curlee said her firing came shortly after Loomer’s post — even though her gender identity had never been a secret to the officials she served.
Trump officials knew she was trans ‘from day one’
Curlee joined the CIA in 2007 after dreaming of becoming an intelligence officer since childhood. In a first-person account published in The Atlantic, she wrote that she became the agency’s first officer to transition openly and continue serving.
Her gender identity wasn’t a secret as she took on increasingly sensitive assignments. During Trump’s first term, Curlee worked on the President’s Daily Brief before becoming Pence’s personal daily intelligence briefer.
“The White House had needed me,” Curlee wrote. “Trump officials had known I was trans from day one.”
Curlee’s experience with Pence was particularly notable given the former vice president’s long record of opposing same-sex marriage and LGBTQ+ rights.
Yet Curlee said Pence treated her with respect throughout their time working together. In fact, she wrote, “No one has affirmed my gender identity quite like Mike Pence.”
When her assignment ended, Curlee brought her family to the White House, where Pence took her mother’s hand and told her, “You must be very proud of your daughter.”
Loomer’s threat
Curlee continued her government career during President Joe Biden‘s administration, serving as director for intelligence programs on the National Security Council. When Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, Curlee chose to remain despite being advised by colleagues, including her then-boss, to leave before Inauguration Day.
Her working conditions soon changed. On Trump’s first day back in office, he signed an executive order declaring that the federal government would recognize two sexes, male and female. Curlee wrote that the administration’s policies ultimately affected everything from her health insurance coverage to the gender listed on her passport.
She also began leaving the White House complex to use restrooms at nearby coffee shops.
Still, Curlee remained in her position — even as other career National Security Council employees were dismissed — until Loomer posted about a transgender staffer working in the administration.
“SCOOP: A transgender, Biden holdover who hates President Trump is still working in the NSC intel office,” Loomer wrote. “If you are aware of this person and have their name, please send it to me, and I will post their identity.”
Curlee said that while she was on vacation with her family, her boss called to tell her she was being removed from her White House position but offered no explanation, telling her, “I can’t give you a reason.”
She was then asked to return temporarily to help complete the administration’s budget and hand off the portfolio she’d overseen for two years.
Curlee recalled receiving an extraordinary message — “We need you. We need your service. But we don’t want anyone to know you are here.”
‘The wrong kind of American’
Curlee spent the next three days helping finish the budget and handing off the portfolio she had overseen. Then she left the White House for the final time.
“As I walked out the north gate with my small box of belongings, I finally understood the warning: ‘Be discreet,’” Curlee wrote. “This hadn’t been an issue until it was public — and then nothing else I’d done mattered. Not my service, not my war-zone tours, not even which restroom I used.”
“I was the wrong kind of American,” she added.
‘That promise has been broken’
Before losing her White House position, Curlee had encouraged other LGBTQ+ Americans to consider careers in intelligence and would tell young transgender people, “Trans kids should know, CIA is always recruiting.”
Her message has now changed. “That promise has been broken,” Curlee wrote. “I cannot in good conscience advise LGBTQ Americans to join the CIA — and that sentence is the hardest thing I have ever written.”
Curlee had once planned to spend the rest of her career at the agency. But despite the way her government service ended, she made clear that she refuses to let the experience define her.
“I had planned to spend the rest of my career serving my country at the CIA,” she wrote. “This White House took my calling, but it will not take my pride, or tell me that I don’t belong, or that I must disappear.”
