Harmeet Dhillon Resigns as Head of Justice Department Civil Rights Division

Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general who has led the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, resigned on Thursday, Nov. 5, two days after Democrats won control of Congress, NBC News and CBS News reported. Attorney General Todd Blanche said on X that he accepted her resignation, and CBS quoted him saying she ‘led the Civil Rights Division with conviction the past 18 months.’ Neither outlet named a successor.

In a post on X, Dhillon called the job an ‘honor of a lifetime’ and said her time there helped bring about the ‘downfall of illegal DEI,’ according to NBC. In a letter to President Donald Trump, she said she told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in early October that she planned to leave after the midterm elections, CBS reported. She cited work ending what she called unlawful and discriminatory diversity programs and lawsuits over women’s sports, and wrote that she would ‘continue fighting for our country in the years ahead,’ per CBS. The White House, through spokeswoman Lauren Bis, called her job performance ‘fantastic.’

CBS also reported, citing two sources, that Trump had demanded she be fired after an Oct. 18 ’60 Minutes’ interview in which he felt she should have been more forceful on election-integrity efforts, and that Justice Department officials delayed the removal so she could leave after the election. NBC did not report that, and the claim rests on two unnamed sources in a single outlet.

Dhillon, a Republican attorney and longtime election lawyer for the party, oversaw a major overhaul of the division, both outlets reported. It brought lawsuits alleging discrimination at elite universities, and her office sued 30 states and the District of Columbia over voter registration lists, NBC said; federal judges dismissed 27 of those cases. CBS counted 31 lawsuits seeking unredacted voter rolls and said the department has lost 27. CBS also reported that more than 75 percent of the division’s staff left during her tenure, that it dropped more than 50 decades-old school desegregation consent decrees, and that it dropped consent decrees with the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments.

The record drew sharp criticism. Stacey Young, a former division attorney now with Justice Connection, called Dhillon ‘the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history,’ in both outlets’ accounts. Kristen Clarke, the NAACP’s general counsel and a former Biden-era division chief, told NBC that Dhillon ‘destroyed the crown jewel of the Justice Department.’

Her supporters see the same record differently. The White House praised her work, and Dhillon herself pointed to ending diversity programs she called unlawful and to her lawsuits over women’s sports as accomplishments. NBC also noted her office tried to indict former Trump aide Cassidy Hutchinson, which a grand jury declined to do, and brought a criminal case against Don Lemon and protesters over a church demonstration.