Hundreds of former employees from the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division are sounding the alarm about Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon’s perversion of the division into a tool for pro-MAGA lawfare.
In April, The New York Times reported on a mass exodus of employees as Dhillon was twisting the division from one that worked to protect voting rights and school desegregation laws to one that fights against assault weapon bans and against diversity at public institutions.
Dhillon responded by saying that the employees who left would “rather not do what their job requires them to do” — an ironic claim from someone who seems preoccupied with pressing public matters such as gaining more social media followers.
In an open letter released Tuesday, nearly 300 former employees rebuked her allegation, saying that many of them worked for presidents of both parties — but that Dhillon’s debasing of the department is unprecedented.
Every election brought changes, but the fundamental mission of our work remained the same. That’s why most of us planned to stay at the Division following the 2024 election. But after witnessing this Administration destroy much of our work, we made the heartbreaking decision to leave—along with hundreds of colleagues, including about 75 percent of attorneys. Now, we must sound the alarm about the near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel.
The signatories, who worked in sections including those that focused on disability, immigrant and voting rights, said they left because “this Administration turned the Division’s core mission upside down, largely abandoning its duty to protect civil rights.”
The letter cites the administration’s decisions to drop various voting rights cases alleging racist discrimination, to withdraw findings and pull out of settlement agreements that sought to hold abusive police departments accountable, and to dismiss a lawsuit alleging sexual abuse of immigrant children at a Florida facility.
The letter alleges that the administration “launched a coordinated effort to drive us out” that involved reassigning many of them to jobs unrelated to their expertise, demoting others and Dhillon “encouraging everyone to resign after a period of paid leave while threatening layoffs if enough staff did not accept.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to MS NOW’s request for comment.
The circumstances described here sound similar to the strategy described by Russ Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, who once threatened to put civil servants “in trauma” by making them “not want to go to work.”
The letter ends with praise for those at the DOJ who elected to stay and try to uphold civil rights despite the Trump administration’s goals. And while the former employees end their letter with the hope that “one day we can return the Division to its righteous work,” they also had a call to action for their fellow Americans: “Demand that the Division enforce our civil rights laws and defend the Constitution’s promise of equal justice for all.”
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