An appointee of President Donald Trump, Cuffari was found in October 2024 by an independent panel of watchdogs to committed misconduct during his tenure as inspector general of the DHS, including misleading the Senate during his nomination process.

[4] Between 1993 and 2013, he worked for the Department of Justice, culminating in an assignment as the Assistant Special Agent in Charge for the Office of the Inspector General in Tucson, Arizona.

However, Cuffari left the position a month after the report was issued to work as policy advisor for Military and Veterans Affairs for Governors Jan Brewer and Doug Ducey of Arizona.

[2][4] Cuffari was nominated by Donald Trump[12] and was confirmed by a voice vote[13] in the U.S. Senate as the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Inspector General (IG) on July 25, 2019.

[14] Cuffari rejected his staff's recommendation to investigate what role the United States Secret Service played in the forcible clearing of protesters from Lafayette Square during the Donald Trump photo op at St. John's Church in June 2020.

[12] Cuffari also sought to limit the scope of the investigation into the spread of COVID-19 within the Secret Service, which had been attributed to the Trump Re-Election Campaign's not following COVID guidelines.

[17] Following Brian Murphy's September 2020 whistleblower complaint about Chad Wolf, Ken Cuccinelli, and Kirstjen Nielsen politicizing Department of Homeland Security assets to support the views of both Stephen Miller and Donald Trump, Cuffari began his inspector general (IG) investigation into alleged misconduct at Department of Homeland Security (DHS) after the November 2020 elections.

Earlier in 2022, the Senate Judiciary Committee's top leaders raised concerns that Cuffari downplayed widespread reports of sexual harassment and misconduct at DHS.