The Justice Division’s division tasked with implementing the nation’s federal civil rights legal guidelines has not too long ago seen a mass exodus of “over 100” attorneys, the newly confirmed official main the division stated in an interview this week.
“What we now have made very clear final week in memos to every of the 11 sections within the Civil Rights Division is that our priorities underneath President Trump are going to be considerably completely different than they had been underneath President Biden,” DOJ Assistant Lawyer Basic Harmeet Dhillon stated in an interview with conservative host Glenn Beck. “After which we inform them, these are the President’s priorities, that is what we might be specializing in — you already know, govern your self accordingly. And en masse, dozens and now over 100 attorneys determined that they’d quite not do what their job requires them to do.”
The resignations come as Dhillon and Lawyer Basic Pam Bondi have made clear the priorities of the division — which was established within the wake of the Civil Rights motion within the Fifties — would shift away from priorities like implementing voting rights legal guidelines and cracking down on unconstitutional policing to tradition warfare points touted by President Trump in his 2024 marketing campaign.
Harmeet Dhillon, President Donald Trump’s nominee for Assistant Lawyer Basic for Civil Rights, prepares for her affirmation listening to earlier than the Senate Judiciary Committee within the Dirksen Senate Workplace Constructing on Capitol Hill on February 26, 2025 in Washington, DC. A civil liberties lawyer who served vice chair of the California Republican Occasion, Dhillion lead quite a few unsuccessful lawsuits to halt the implementation of stay-at-home orders and different restrictions in the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. (Picture by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Photographs)
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In latest weeks, the division has stated it could pursue authorized motion in opposition to states that allow transgender athletes to take part in women’ and girls’s sports activities, withdrawn from a Biden-era lawsuit in opposition to Georgia’s voting legal guidelines and convened a activity drive to research incidents of “anti-Christian bias.”
Of the latest resignations, Dhillon stated within the interview that she thinks it is “effective” the attorneys opted to go away.
“We do not need folks within the federal authorities who really feel prefer it’s their pet venture to go persecute, you already know, police departments based mostly on statistical proof or persecute folks praying outdoors abortion amenities as an alternative of doing violence,” Dhillon stated. “That is not the job right here. The job right here is to implement the federal civil rights legal guidelines, not woke ideology.”
The US Division of Justice (DOJ) headquarters constructing in Washington, D.C.
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On the identical time, Dhillon stated within the interview she was looking for to workers up the division so they may pursue points just like the administration’s actions concentrating on Harvard College.
“You want extra attorneys, investigators and dedication to do the work, and also you want the folks in the US figuring out this stuff for us,” Dhillon stated. “We will run out of attorneys to work on this stuff sooner or later.”
A number of high Democrats despatched a letter to Bondi, Dhillon and DOJ Inspector Basic Michael Horowitz Monday elevating issues over what they described because the “politicization” of the DOJ’s civil rights division.
