Conservative Activist and Trump Loyalist Harmeet Dhillon Confirmed to Lead Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division
- She will now oversee criminal and civil work ranging from hate crime prosecutions and voting rights litigation.
The U.S. Senate has confirmed San Francisco attorney and longtime conservative activist Harmeet Dhillon to lead the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. A Trump loyalist and an integral part of his legal team, including in his 2024 campaign, she is the founder of the Dhillon Law Group Inc. She will now oversee criminal and civil work ranging from hate crime prosecutions and voting rights litigation to investigating law enforcement agencies for engaging in patterns of discrimination.
At her confirmation hearing, she said she supports the Trump administration’s efforts to ban the use of diversity, equity, and inclusion policies by government and private corporations, calling such programs “illegal and unconstitutional,” as reported by Reuters.
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 Trump’s 2020 presidential campaign and a co-chair of the political group Women for Trump. Last year, she unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Ronna McDaniel for chair 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.
According to Democracy Docket, Dhillon’s confirmation “appears likely to herald a troubling about-face in the mission of a unit that historically has been at the forefront of protecting access to the ballot for marginalized groups.”
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 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.”
Last 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.”