Trump Nominates California Lawyer and Activist Harmeet Dhillon as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights
- A longtime conservative activist, she has been an integral part of Trump’s legal team including his 2024 campaign.
President-elect Donald Trump has announced the nomination of California lawyer Harmeet K. Dhillon as assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department. A longtime conservative activist, she has been integral part of Trump’s legal team including in his 2024 campaign.
Announcing the nomination, Trump said Dhillon “has stood up consistently to protect our cherished civil liberties.” He described her as “one of the top election lawyers in the country, fighting to ensure that all, and only legal votes are counted.’ In her new role at the DOJ, Dhillon will be “a tireless defender of our Constitutional rights, and will enforce our civil rights and election laws fairly and firmly.”
In statement posted to X, Dhillon said she’s “extremely honored by President Trump’s nomination to assist with our nation’s civil rights agenda.” It has been her “dream to be able to serve our great country,” he said, adding that she’s she’s “excited to be part of an incredible team of lawyers” led by Pam Bondi, Trump’s choice for attorney general. https://x.com/pnjaban/status/1866275419173073208
Dhillon has served as chair of the Republican National Lawyers Association and chair of the San Francisco Republican Party. She was a legal advisor to his 2020 presidential campaign and a co-chair of the political group Women for Trump. Last year, she unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Ronna McDaniel as chairperson of the Republican National Committee.
A frequent commentator on Fox News, Dhillon is an acerbic critic of liberals and an entrenched advocate of Republican pet causes. She has appeared on the network’s prime-time shows to discuss hot-button topics like vaccine mandates, Hunter Biden’s laptop and the FBI’s raid of Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s Florida estate. Apart from Trump, her law firm has represented several top MAGA officials, including Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake.
Though Dhillon was active in GOP politics for decades, it wasn’t until the Trump presidency that she became a fixture in the Republican Party. Her biggest impact in the modern GOP is undoubtedly her legal work related to Trump’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and myriad legal efforts to roll back voting rights in the biggest swing states.
In the 2022 midterm elections, Dhillon’s firm was “extremely active in various GOP efforts to overturn elections in key states and disenfranchise voters,” according to Democracy Docket, a liberal-leaning voting rights and media platform that tracks election litigation. She was hired by then gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake, “who mounted a massive legal effort to overturn the state’s election results based on false claims of voter fraud,” the Democracy Docket report said. Her firm also represented Abraham Hamadeh, “an election denier who ran for Arizona attorney general and contested the election results after losing,” the report added.
In Georgia, she represented the Republican Party, “which intervened in a lawsuit to defend the state’s disenfranchising wet signature requirement,” Democracy Docket said. In 2021, she represented a member of Pennsylvania’s Bradford County Board of Elections in “a lawsuit to overturn the state’s no-excuse mail-in voting law, which greatly expanded voter access in the Keystone State.”
Earlier this year, Dhillon led an ardas, a Sikh prayer, at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in July. She said she was honored to recite the prayer “to thank God and seek protection and help in upholding values such as humility, truth, and justice for all.” She recited the areas for the first time at the 2016 convention in Cleveland, Ohio. At the time she told The Mercury News that she hoped that her reading the Ardaas would show that the Republican Party is truly diversified. “I think this is an inclusive party. I’ve never felt anything but included since Day One.”