By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Andrew Goudsward
WASHINGTON, Nov 5 (Reuters) – Senior US Justice Department official Harmeet Dhillon, who led the Civil Rights Division and oversaw investigations into universities, voter rolls and alleged violations of religious freedom, has resigned, Attorney General Todd Blanche said on Thursday.
Dhillon is one of the first high-ranking departures from President Donald Trump’s administration following the Republican Party’s defeat in Tuesday’s midterm elections that led to Democrats retaking both chambers of Congress.
“She has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor,” Blanche said.
Dhillon, a Trump ally, oversaw a broad 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.
Dhillon had previously told Bloomberg Law that she wanted to return to her law firm, The Dhillon Law Group, after leaving the Justice Department. Her firm had recently shrunk as some attorneys left for other practices.
Two people familiar with the matter said Dhillon was frustrated that she had been passed over for promotions in the department and wanted to return to her firm to reinvigorate it.
Dhillon’s overhaul of the division’s priorities led to an exodus of career staff, which she publicly welcomed, arguing that attorneys in the unit pursued liberal priorities and were unwilling to implement Trump’s agenda.
The unit in prior administrations conducted investigations into police departments accused of systematic civil rights violations, including after high-profile killings of Black people by local police.
Dhillon withdrew earlier findings from those probes and harnessed the unit’s authority to investigate whether some Democratic-led cities violated people’s gun rights under the Second Amendment to the US Constitution.
(Reporting by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff and Andrew Goudsward; editing by Ryan Patrick Jones, Franklin Paul and Sanjeev Miglani)
