When Donald Trump dismissed Pam Bondi in early April, he sent a clear signal about his vision for the Justice Department: use it as a weapon against political opponents. For months, he had pressured Bondi to prosecute figures like James Comey, Letitia James, and Adam Schiff. She obtained indictments against Comey and James, but both cases collapsed. Trump fired her anyway, frustrated by what he saw as insufficient progress.
Now Harmeet Dhillon stands as one of the top contenders for a broader role in executing that agenda. The assistant attorney general for civil rights has already reshaped her division in ways that legal experts say signal a Justice Department willing to pursue Trump's priorities over traditional law enforcement practices.
Dhillon took over the civil rights division little more than a year ago and immediately upended its mission. The division had long enforced federal anti-discrimination laws protecting minorities in voting, housing, employment, and policing. Under Dhillon, dozens of those cases were dropped. The focus shifted dramatically: preventing discrimination against white Americans became a stated priority, alongside investigations into what Dhillon terms "woke ideology." The result has been stark. Hundreds of attorneys have departed the division, which Kristen Clarke, Dhillon's predecessor, described as now "nothing more than a shadow of its former self."
"The division has abandoned its mission to fight hate crimes, human trafficking, law enforcement misconduct, voter suppression, redlining, and much more," Clarke said, warning that the shift has left millions of Americans vulnerable.
Rumors now place Dhillon as a potential candidate for associate attorney general, the third-ranking position at Justice. Some have even speculated she could become attorney general itself. From either post, she would wield enormous power over how the government's law enforcement apparatus functions.
Her track record suggests she would direct that apparatus toward Trump's goals with minimal restraint. The civil rights division is currently overseeing an investigation into Cassidy Hutchinson, the former Trump aide whose January 6 testimony detailed the president's actions that day. The division is also handling high-profile prosecutions of journalist Don Lemon and protesters who interrupted a church service. Just this week, Justice fired a veteran civil rights prosecutor overseeing cases against anti-abortion activists.
Ejaz Baluch Jr., a former civil rights division lawyer who departed last year, expressed alarm at the trajectory. "She would direct the Department of Justice to be acting even more at the direction of the president and his priorities than DoJ already has been," he said. "The vast majority of what the division has done has been in line with what the president wants."
Dhillon's approach to managing the division has been characteristically aggressive. After her Senate confirmation in April at a 52-45 vote, she issued new mission statements that gutted traditional civil rights priorities. The Voting Rights Act and Fair Housing Act barely registered in her revised framework. Instead, she emphasized voter fraud prevention, anti-transgender issues, and protecting white Americans from discrimination. She removed career lawyers serving as section chiefs and reassigned experienced attorneys to obscure offices doing bureaucratic work. Over 100 lawyers quit.
During a podcast interview, Dhillon celebrated the exodus. "We don't want people in the federal government who feel like it's their pet project to go persecute police departments based on statistical evidence, or persecute people praying outside abortion facilities," she said. "The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws, not woke ideology."
What happened next revealed a deeper strategy. Even as Dhillon publicly hailed the departures, Justice Department officials quietly asked some departing attorneys if they would reconsider staying. Lawyers exiled to low-level offices were asked if they wanted to return. The division replaced departing prosecutors with attorneys ideologically aligned with the president, some with little background in civil rights law.
Baluch described a vetting operation that began before Dhillon was even confirmed. A deputy conducted one-on-one meetings with staff, asking about their background, which judges they had clerked for, and their views on memos attacking DEI. "To me, that signals that even before she was confirmed by the Senate, she had a plan in place to vet everyone for ideological purity and to get rid of everyone who did not meet that standard," Baluch said.
Once in office, Dhillon kept distance from career staff. When her predecessor took over, she attended section meetings, held office hours, and introduced herself to employees. Rank-and-file attorneys barely spoke to Dhillon until the division's December holiday party, which she later mocked on social media, tweeting that people shouldn't discuss work at such events.
Her social media presence has proven consequential. With 1.3 million followers on X, Dhillon maintains a prolific presence, regularly announcing civil rights investigations and directing focus toward cases aligned with her priorities. She posted official department letters investigating Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson after he discussed hiring Black staff, for instance. After a Pennsylvania school bus driver was fired for posting an "English only" sign, Dhillon took to X to announce she had directed the division to investigate "this situation implicating DEI wokenness."
This practice alarmed former civil rights lawyers. The division traditionally keeps investigations confidential. Revealing them on social media before targets receive formal notice letters represents an extreme departure from standard practice, according to Dena Robinson, a career attorney in the employment litigation section who left last year.
The pace and pressure behind investigations have also raised red flags. When Baluch was assigned to investigate antisemitism at the University of California system, he and colleagues were told they had 30 days to produce a draft lawsuit. Such investigations typically take over a year, and Justice normally requires strong evidence before filing suit. "We're under a lot of pressure to bring this case," a Dhillon deputy told Baluch's team. The comment made clear to him that White House or Justice Department leadership was directing efforts.
When field teams reported back that they lacked sufficient facts to merit litigation, a Dhillon deputy suggested they could rely on news reports as evidence. Baluch found this approach shocking. "We don't want to use the weight of the federal government to sue someone unless we have direct evidence that the law has been violated," he said. Justice sued UCLA on antisemitism allegations earlier this year after the school rejected a settlement offer.
Under previous leadership, career attorneys could meet with political officials to air concerns about cases. That practice essentially ceased under Dhillon. "It was very clear we were not going to have any say with Ms. Dhillon," said Brian McEntire, another former employment litigation attorney. "She was going to be making her decisions unilaterally."
Dhillon's path to power reveals a long alignment with Trump and conservative causes. Before joining Justice, she served as co-chair of Lawyers for Trump, appearing frequently on television to defend the false claim that the 2020 election was stolen. She suggested Trump's Supreme Court appointees would intervene to save his presidency. Her firm later defended Trump and close aides in litigation related to January 6, and successfully defended him against a 14th Amendment disqualification effort. David Warrington, now Trump's White House counsel, was managing partner at the firm.
Dhillon's earlier Republican credentials aligned with mainstream positions. She chaired the San Francisco Republican Party in a liberal bastion, ran unsuccessfully for state legislature twice, and served as vice-chair of the California Republican Party. She had supported abortion rights under Roe v. Wade, backed a pathway to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, and opposed government interference in same-sex marriage. She even urged the RNC to pursue genuine diversity rather than tokenism.
That evolution shifted sharply in recent years. By 2018, she gained national attention representing James Damore, the Google engineer fired after writing a memo attributing gender disparities in tech to physiological differences. She filed a class action suit alleging Google discriminated against conservative and white or Asian employees. The case was dropped in 2020 with unknown settlement terms.
Trump has praised her aggressively. At a White House Hanukkah reception last year, he said Dhillon was suing "the ass off" antisemitic entities, pointing to Harvard as an example that would pay heavily. Conservative influencer Mike Cernovich tweeted that Dhillon was "putting points on the board."
Yet Dhillon's legal handiwork has drawn criticism for sloppiness. Last July, Trump pushed Texas to redraw its congressional map to benefit Republicans. Dhillon sent a letter to Texas Governor Greg Abbott and Attorney General Ken Paxton concluding that four congressional districts were unconstitutional because lawmakers had considered race too heavily. The letter created immediate problems for Texas attorneys who had been arguing in ongoing litigation that race played no role in the original maps.
A three-judge panel struck down the revised map in November. Texas attorneys had called the Justice Department letter "unsound," "baseless," "erroneous," "ham-fisted," and "a mess." US District Judge Jeffrey Brown noted the letter contained "so many factual, legal, and typographical errors" that it was "challenging to unpack." The Supreme Court eventually let the new map take effect anyway.
The division's voter roll litigation has proved similarly troubled. Justice is suing dozens of states to obtain comprehensive voter information, with Dhillon frequently touting the lawsuits. Yet the department has won none of them. Courts in California, Oregon, Michigan, Massachusetts, and Rhode Island have dismissed the cases, ruling Justice lacks a sound legal basis for the demands. Georgia dismissed its lawsuit because Justice filed in the wrong jurisdiction.
The incompetence has extended to basic litigation mechanics. Attorneys repeatedly emailed an incorrect address seeking Oklahoma's records. Washington state lawyers struggled to properly serve the lawsuit to officials. A Justice Department attorney accidentally left editing notes in the margins of a filed document in D.C. In Rhode Island, the acting voting section chief told a judge Justice hadn't analyzed obtained voter roll data, then filed notice days later saying it had.
The irony was not lost on observers when Dhillon posted on X in late February that job application letters with typos belonged in the trash. "If your letter for a law job has typos in it, circular file," she wrote. "You are not ready for a legal job."
Author James Rodriguez: "Dhillon's elevation signals a Justice Department increasingly willing to abandon traditional law enforcement standards in service of a political agenda, and that should alarm anyone who believes in the rule of law."
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