Donald Trump picked Harmeet Dhillon, a Maga darling and ardent supporter, to steer civil rights circumstances on the US Division of Justice, an indication of main modifications forward within the company’s priorities.
Dhillon made her identify in Maga circles by taking up culture-war circumstances as a San Francisco lawyer and have become a fixture in rightwing media, showing typically on Fox exhibits. She has filed varied lawsuits over election “integrity” points and supported Trump’s quests to overturn leads to 2020.
In asserting Dhillon’s nomination, Trump cited a laundry listing of circumstances she’s engaged on, together with “taking up Large Tech for censoring our Free Speech, representing Christians who have been prevented from praying collectively throughout COVID, and suing firms who use woke insurance policies to discriminate in opposition to their employees”.
He additionally talked about how Dhillon’s lawsuits on election regulation fought to “be certain that all, and ONLY, authorized votes are counted”.
“In her new position on the DOJ, Harmeet shall be a tireless defender of our Constitutional Rights, and can implement our Civil Rights and Election Legal guidelines FAIRLY and FIRMLY,” Trump wrote on Fact Social.
“I’m extraordinarily honored by President Trump’s nomination to help with our nation’s civil rights agenda,” Dhillon wrote on Twitter/X after the nomination. “It has been my dream to have the ability to serve our nice nation, and I’m so excited to be a part of an unbelievable workforce of legal professionals led by @PamBondi. I can’t wait to get to work!”
Trump beforehand introduced Pam Bondi, the previous legal professional common of Florida and a Trump protection legal professional, as his choose to steer the justice division.
As a lawyer in California, Dhillon has sued the College of California, Berkeley for its speech insurance policies, represented rightwing undercover operation Undertaking Veritas and the previous Fox host Tucker Carlson, and filed lawsuits over pandemic restrictions. She served as a authorized adviser to Trump in 2020 and ran to interchange Ronna McDaniel as chair of the Republican Nationwide Committee in 2023, in search of to make the celebration group extra Trump-friendly. In the course of the 2024 election, she was dispatched to Arizona by the Trump marketing campaign, a call that some noticed as an indication the marketing campaign was able to make aggressive authorized strikes if wanted to win there.
She based a authorized non-profit, the Middle for American Liberty, which makes use of the courts to go after violations of civil liberties and defend in opposition to the “coordinated assault on our civil liberties from firms, politicians, socialist revolutionaries, and inept or biased authorities officers”, the group’s web site says.
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A Guardian investigation in 2023 discovered that the non-profit paid Dhillon’s regulation agency, Dhillon Legislation Group, at the least $1.32m, which consultants stated was “problematic”. The reporting additionally famous that Dhillon was paid a $120,000 wage from the non-profit for working two hours per week.
Democracy Docket stated Dhillon has emerged as “one of many main authorized figures working to roll again voting rights throughout the nation”. It tracked Dhillon or different attorneys at her corporations as being concerned in additional than a dozen lawsuits throughout the states that challenged voting rights, election processes or Trump’s eligibility for workplace. She defended Trump within the Colorado case difficult his potential to run for workplace due to the January 6 riot.
“Democrats are conspiring to commit the largest election interference fraud in world historical past, proper earlier than our eyes, as authorities officers avert their eyes to the mockery of the structure and our legal guidelines,” she stated in late 2023 of efforts to maintain Trump off the poll. “This can be a low level in American historical past.”
Dhillon additionally confronted hateful backlash from the far-right over her faith after showing on the Republican conference in 2024. Dhillon, who’s Sikh, gave a Sikh prayer on the conference, which some far-right figures referred to as blasphemous. Earlier than her rise in Trumpworld, she gained public consideration for writing authorized memos defending Sikhs who wore turbans from racial profiling after the 9/11 assaults.
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