The destruction of the Justice Department is one of the biggest stories of the second Trump administration. But coming as it does amid chaos on the world stage, violence on the streets of America’s cities and a news cycle moving at warp-speed, the department’s demise feels as though it’s happening in slow motion. But if, as the old saying goes, “personnel is policy,” then the policies of this DOJ are about as extreme and corrupt as it gets.
The ascension of Todd Blanche, who led a purge of the department, to the post of acting attorney general following the firing of his former boss Pam Bondi made it clear that the in-house assault on the rule of law isn’t going away. Blanche may or may not be an ideologue; his history is vague in that regard. But he is fiercely loyal to Donald Trump, and that fidelity will guide his every decision.
There are others, though, whose own zeal and blind ambition are obvious. Among those is Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, and is rumored to be in line for a promotion to one of the department’s top jobs.
Dhillon is a media-savvy operator with deep roots in Republican politics, and her bomb-throwing style, which she frequently highlights on social media, has made her a favorite of MAGA media and Trump’s base.
Unlike Blanche, Dhillon is a media-savvy operator with deep roots in Republican politics, and her bomb-throwing style, which she frequently highlights on social media, has made her a favorite of MAGA media and Trump’s base. While Blanche was toiling in the Justice Department as a prosecutor for many years before he went into private practice and joined Team Trump by serving as the president’s personal lawyer, Dhillon has been a political player since she was in college, when she began making her name as a conservative activist.
As part of a cadre of future right-wing operatives at Dartmouth during the 1980s, Dhillon served as editor of the Dartmouth Review. In 1988 she published a shocking column called “Ein Reich, Ein Volk, Ein Freedmann” about the university’s president James O. Freedman, with a cover featuring a drawing of Freedman as Adolf Hitler. The piece satirically drew a parallel between conservatives on campus and the Holocaust, calling it the “Final Solution of the Conservative Problem” and making other grotesque analogies. Being Jewish, Freedman was justifiably appalled.
So imagine the surprise of those who knew Dhillon then at seeing her take charge of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and immediately use her power to attack universities for alleged antisemitism, using the issue to threaten and sue them unless they adhere to conservative demands to change curricula and police speech on campuses. After years of complaining vociferously about being shut out of the conversation at Dartmouth, her demands that colleges curtail free speech is nothing if not gutsy. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, she has not gone after Dartmouth, calling them “one of the good guys” for not fighting the Trump administration’s crusade against universities.)
Having spent most of her career as a conservative antagonist in the liberal bastion of San Francisco, picking fights with the California power structure, Dhillon is not a shrinking violet. That doesn’t mean she hasn’t dipped her toe into the left-wing pond at times. After 9/11, she worked for the ACLU, representing the Sikh community in a series of discrimination lawsuits. As an immigrant herself — she was born in India and came to the U.S. as a child — this would not be unexpected. But coming from someone who is now pushing the policies of the most xenophobic administration in more than a century, it’s yet another example of her willingness to use whatever tools she finds at her disposal to achieve her ends.
Dhillon ran for statewide office as a Republican and lost badly, and later became the chair of the San Francisco Republican Party. Intriguingly, she contributed to Kamala Harris’ 2003 campaign for San Francisco district attorney, later explaining that, as a Republican in the liberal city, she was forced to choose between the lesser of two political evils. That, along with her ACLU affiliation and her delivery of a Sikh prayer at the 2016 Republican National Convention, caused her to draw harsh criticism from some conservatives, but it didn’t dampen her ambition. As a right-winger in a blue state, she was just doing what was necessary to advance her career.
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Naming Dhillon to head the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division was a perfect middle finger to the liberal constituencies of the Democratic Party. Charged with protecting the civil rights of all Americans, but especially those protected classes outlined in the Civil Rights Act, she immediately set out to turn federal policies that have been in place for decades inside out. No longer would the department be concerned with violations of civil rights against minorities and women. Today the department is obsessed with supposed discrimination against white males and protecting the police against charges of misconduct.
In perhaps the most famous example of the latter, Dhillon refused to investigate the January death of protester Renee Good, who was killed on camera by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent in Minneapolis. Weeks later, instead of assigning an experienced civil rights attorney to investigate the killing of Alex Pretti, another Minneapolis protester, she tapped a workplace discrimination attorney. In years past, this would have been practically a pro forma investigation, but Dhillon decided to focus on prosecuting journalists Don Lemon and Georgia Forte for covering an anti-ICE protest in a church, claiming they were participating in the “desecration of a house of worship.” Four civil rights officials at the Justice Department resigned over Dhillon’s decisions in those cases, which came on top of a massive purge in that division, with experienced employees being reassigned to lesser positions and many leaving the federal government altogether.
The fact that this assault on liberal policies, values and norms is coming from an Indian-American woman and an immigrant makes it all the more delicious to the ascendant far right. And no one is enjoying it more than Dhillon herself. She told POLITICO on Monday that she was not interested in winning a popularity contest — but by that she clearly meant popularity among the mainstream public.
Dhillon is an accomplished and enthusiastic right-wing provocateur in the tradition of Trump himself, and she has proven herself to be unconcerned about appropriate public behavior or the dignity of her office. She prolifically re-posts material from all the worst right-wing actors and willingly wrestles in the partisan mud. Hardcore activists like Mike Cernovich are big fans and are boosting Dhillon in her media campaign to be named Trump’s attorney general. “Harmeet Dhillon always seemed to me to be the obvious AG,” Cernovich told POLITICO. “If this isn’t locked down, she’s definitely someone most supported by the base.”
My sense is that Blanche will ultimately be Trump’s choice for attorney general and that the Republicans will have no problem confirming him. For one, he doesn’t have the provocative paper trail that Dhillon has. But she is actively being talked up for associate attorney general, one of the DOJ’s top jobs, where she will be in a powerful position to further mold the department in her (and Trump’s) image.
There is every reason to believe she is on her way up. In the Trump era, activists like Dhillon are transforming the federal government from the inside out, and there is no sign anywhere that the Republican establishment has even the slightest problem with that.
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