WASHINGTON, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Senior US Justice Department official Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division and oversaw investigations into universities, voting and religious liberty, plans to resign imminently, two people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.
Dhillon is one of the first high-ranking departures from President Donald Trump’s administration following the Republican Party’s rout in Tuesday’s midterm elections that led to Democrats retaking both chambers of Congress.
Dhillon, a Trump ally, oversaw a sweeping overhaul of the Justice Department’s civil rights unit, shifting its focus from combating discrimination against racial minorities and investigating local police to Trump priorities around gun rights and combating antisemitism on college campuses. Dhillon played a leading role in the Trump administration’s investigations of elite US universities.
(Reporting by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Andrew Goudsward; editing by Ryan Patrick Jones and Franklin Paul)
