After a grueling year of paperwork, interviews, and vetting, career intelligence officer Donna Charles finally landed an offer for a coveted Homeland Security counterterrorism post – only for the position to vanish before she could take her seat.
But for the 49-year-old Air Force veteran with 20 years experience in national security and foreign policy, the real insult came months later when the role was suddenly revived and handed instead to a 29-year-old novice with a MAGA friend she called her 'big boss daddy'.
Charles couldn't help but gasp and grit her teeth when the Daily Mail last month exposed that the young woman, Julia Varvaro, had been posting on a sugar daddy website, hoping to date rich, older men.
Within hours of our bombshell report, the Department of Homeland Security removed Varvaro as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism and placed her on administrative leave.
'I'm so angry,' Charles huffed, taking aim at the raven-haired beauty now away from the position she believes should have been hers.
'I've had security clearance for longer than that person has probably been alive.'
As Charles sees it, Varvaro's hiring debacle should serve as a wake-up call, demonstrating a need for higher standards and screening for high-level government jobs, particularly ones involving national security.
'It's not even just a bunch of high-level department heads who are out there having affairs with their security details and drinking on the job, what have you,' she told the Daily Mail.
Air Force veteran Donna Charles spent two decades working in national security and foreign policy before losing out on the DHS role
The position was later reinstated and given to 29-year-old counterterrorism novice Julia Varvaro, the Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism with the Department of Homeland Security
'It's trickled down to these positions that should be held by career civil servants, with the background, the expertise, the vetting and the credentials.'
'This is what happens when you start bastardizing the process at this level, and it has huge national security implications.'
The case has sparked alarm on Capitol Hill, where top Democrats on the House Committee on Homeland Security cited the Daily Mail expose in a letter to the committee chairman.
'At DHS, a Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism was referred to the Office of Inspector General for soliciting thousands of dollars to support her luxurious lifestyle, which the complainant believes poses a national security risk as financial stress or greed presents blackmail and coercion vulnerabilities,' Representatives Benny Thompson and Seth Magaziner wrote April 29.
The members argued the administration has 'lost sight' of its mission to protect Americans from terrorist threats, pointing to a 'reduction of counterterrorism personnel and resources'.
It also cites other news sources including another Daily Mail report that the White House had blocked US intelligence from warning law enforcement across the country about rising threats tied to the war with Iran; and a piece about FBI director Kash Patel being 'unreachable and unstable' at crucial moments.
One DHS official, speaking with the Daily Mail, shared their own concerns.
'In national security roles, expertise and experience matter a lot,' the source said.
Varvaro was placed on administrative leave after the Daily Mail's revelations about her personal life and hiring. Charles has argued that counterterrorism positions should be filled by experienced career civil servants, not political loyalists
'Counterterrorism jobs are extremely coveted and take years of experience, often in war zones, to get and especially at the executive level.
'It is really strange for a senior official with an offer to suddenly have the position closed, then watch it get turned into a political appointment and given to someone with no counterterrorism experience.
'Then you see a person who got this extremely senior job who was [advertising] herself online on some sugar daddy site. It puts our nation at risk,' the official added.
Charles joined the Air Force shortly before 9/11 and served two deployments to Iraq as an intelligence officer.
She later joined the federal government as a civil servant, working for the National Security Council, the Department of Defense and State Department, where she served in the counterterrorism bureau.
She was working as a staffer for the House Foreign Affairs Committee in 2022 – during the Biden administration – when DHS listed the counterterrorism position on USAJOBS.
Asked by the Daily Mail why she applied, Charles gave an apolitical answer.
The allegations against Varvaro came to light after ex-lover Robert Bianchi, 57, CEO of software company SDVO Solutions, filed a complaint with the Inspector General of Homeland Security claiming he had national security concerns after he spent $40,000 funding her lavish lifestyle during a brief fling earlier this year
Bianchi filed an official complaint with the Department of Homeland Security's Inspector General, claiming his ex lover had a profile on the sugar daddy website Seeking
'I applied for this job because I knew I could well apply my decades of expertise in counterterrorism, specifically as an analyst, intelligence officer, and a policy advisor, to addressing threats to the homeland.
'I also knew I would be successful because of my unique experience with UAVs and other intelligence collection platforms. And I believe that is why I was selected.'
She was given a tentative job offer in May 2023, but it was rescinded the following year after an 'internal realignment' shifted the position's key duties elsewhere.
Her subsequent complaint with the US Office of Special Counsel was rejected in November 2024 – the same month Trump won re-election, records show.
Earlier that same year, Varvaro earned a doctoral degree at St John's University in New York, completing a program in Homeland Security.
That October, she posted a video of herself schmoozing with Trump loyalist Paul Ingrassia – soon to be White House liaison to DHS – poolside at Mar-a-Lago, sipping cocktails while promoting the screening of a movie about culture wars.
Ingrassia later helped her land the senior government role, sources told the Daily Mail.
'Julia is beautiful and Paul is Paul,' a DHS insider told the Daily Mail. 'He had a lot of power in personnel decision making.
Varvaro posted this photo with then-DHS Secretary Kristi Noem, who has herself been accused of being vulnerable to blackmail due to the cross-dressing exploits of her husband Bryon
Varvaro,was appointed Deputy Assistant Secretary for Counterterrorism within the Department of Homeland Security in May 2025, four months after Donald Trump had been sworn in for his second term as President
'He could help her get to where she wanted to go and she was not the type to turn that down or shy aware from it.'
It's unclear what vetting Varvaro underwent for the job, but the Daily Mail later discovered that she was already actively courting rich men online.
A New Jersey construction executive said he met her on the 'sugar daddy' app Seeking, where she was using at least two aliases.
He said they dated for four months between December 2024 and April 2025 while she was working as a program analyst for FEMA, spending most of their time together in his home state while she commuted to Washington, DC.
The following January, she started dating Robert Bianchi, a 57-year-old software executive from the Washington, DC-area who had millions of dollars in government contracts.
He told the Daily Mail that he met her on the dating app Hinge and took her on first-class trips to Aruba, Italy, San Diego and South Carolina, bought her luxury bags and jewelry, and helped pay her rent, but she kept demanding more.
They split in early April and he filed a complaint with the Inspector General days later.
'I did not want a sugar daddy...relationship...,' Bianchi wrote in the official complaint.
The Daily Mail has previously reported Varvaro's close ties to Trump loyalist Paul Ingrassia, who helped her land the senior government role. In a photo shared with the Daily Mail, Varvaro is seen having a glass of wine while sitting with Ingrassia and Rudy Giuliani, six days before Trump's 2024 inauguration
Paul Ingrassia, a longtime MAGA insider, has come under fire for his controversial remarks
'I believe that she's under financial stress and that her actions pose a security risk,' he added, while also accusing her of consuming marijuana nearly a dozen times during their time together, something she adamantly denies.
Donna Charles grew furious as she read the Daily Mail stories, including a follow-up on Varvaro's cozy bond with Ingrassia, detailing how the pair met regularly for dinners, spent time at her apartment and even stayed together in hotels, though in separate beds and not romantically.
The Daily Mail also revealed a note Varvaro wrote to Ingrassia with DHS letterhead stating: 'Have a great day Big Boss Daddy!'
'Big boss daddy! So gross!' Charles recoiled.
Her initial reaction was to wonder why Varvaro didn't get flagged when she was considered for the top security job, and why the DHS didn't balk until a year later when her red-flag lifestyle was exposed by an ex-lover and the Daily Mail.
'They're supposed to be doing continuous vetting, especially for high level officials like her,' Charles said.
'Had they truly done that, they would have known that she had this sugar daddy profile on a site like Seeking that is notorious for honeypots and personas and compromising people in sensitive positions.'
'If you have any kind of a profile on a site like that, you should automatically be flagged,' she continued.
'It took this one guy,' she said, referring to Bianchi's IG complaint. 'And the reason this guy blew her up is because he's a defense contractor and he knew how this whole process works.
'He knew he could get back at her by blowing her up and saying she's on this website.'
She kept returning to what she sees as the bigger issue.
'It may be nice for donors and cronies to get these plumb positions, but at the end of the day, the civil service exists because you need to have serious people doing serious work for our national security.'
'This story blows up that idea,' she continued. 'Yes, this sort of thing has happened to varying degrees ever since civil service existed.
'It happened under Biden and it has happened under Trump. It's just that under Trump, it's always to the nth degree, the most extreme cause and effect.'