Donald Trump’s chief of the storied Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice has resigned, marking the first top administration official to leave the administration after Republicans suffered brutal losses in midterm elections this week.
Harmeet Dhillon — who steered the agency away from critical missions like protecting voting rights, police oversight and combating racial discrimination during her 18 months at the Justice Department — submitted her resignation Thursday.
“She has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor,” Attorney General Todd Blanche announced Thursday.
“The Department is grateful for her dedicated public service, and we wish her every success in her future endeavors,” he added.
Dhillon, an attorney who supported the president’s efforts to reverse his election loss in 2020 and joined his “election integrity” team in 2024, had refocused the Civil Rights Division to investigate what she called “woke ideology,” including transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports, “anti-Christian bias,” and institutions with diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives, among other culture war issues that departed from the department’s core mission to combat discrimination and protect the rights of historically marginalized groups.
In her resignation letter to the president, Dhillon said she told White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles in October that she was planning to leave the administration. “I resigned three weeks ago, and Susie asked me to please wait until after the midterms,” she told Fox News.
“Consistent with that conversation, I hereby resign as Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Justice,” she wrote Thursday. “Serving you and your Administration has been the greatest honor of my lifetime. Thank you for giving me this opportunity.”
She had reportedly grown frustrated with other top Justice Department officials as she was allegedly overlooked for other senior roles at the agency, according to MSNOW.
And according to The New York Times, the president and other White House officials were unhappy about her comments to 60 Minutes that they allegedly believe had downplayed the idea of noncitizen voting — a key target in the administration’s legal threats to state election officials in the weeks leading up to the midterms.
“While I am leaving this post, I will continue fighting for our country in the years ahead. Thank you again,” Dhillon wrote.
She will return to Dhillon Law Group, the California-based law firm she founded.
In response to requests for comment, the Justice Department sent The Independent a post from X with Blanche’s brief statement.
Still, the timing of her departure follows blowout losses for the president’s party, with incoming congressional Democrats preparing to investigate administration officials across the government.
Under her leadership at the Justice Departments “crown jewel,” the Civil Rights Division dropped lawsuits intended to protect voting rights and instead pivoted to aggressive federal intervention in election administration, with the agency’s pivotal Voting Section turning into an arm of the administration’s attempts to obtain sensitive voter data and investigate alleged voter fraud.
In the leadup to the 2026 midterms, her office filed lawsuits against 30 states and Washington, D.C., to obtain voter registration lists — and federal judges tossed out 27 of them.
“Harmeet is one of the top Election lawyers in the Country, fighting to ensure that all, and ONLY, legal votes are counted,” Trump said in a statement announcing Dhillon’s nomination in 2024. “In her new role at the DOJ, Harmeet will be a tireless defender of our Constitutional Rights, and will enforce our Civil Rights and Election Laws FAIRLY and FIRMLY.”
She mounted the largest-ever deployment of election monitors in Justice Department history, sending more than 900 election observers to polling locations in all 50 states, a move that voting rights advocates condemned as unconstitutional voter intimidation.
“Election integrity has been one of the top priorities for this Administration and this Division,” Dhillon said in a statement on Monday, one day before polls opened, announcing the deployment. “I am very proud we are deploying the largest monitoring effort in DOJ history, and pursuing transparency for elections in an assertive and nondiscriminatory manner.”
Earlier this year, Dhillon’s office also announced that the Justice Department was abandoning investigations into allegations of police misconduct, constitutional violations and civil rights abuses in the wake of high-profile police killings.
She experienced a mass exodus of hundreds of career officials and government attorneys who resigned or were forced out under her watch. More than 75 percent of the division’s staff left the agency within the last two years.
“Harmeet Dhillon has been the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history,” according to Stacey Young, executive director of Justice Connection, a group of former Justice Department officials speaking out against the administration’s upheaval of the agency.
“Americans’ civil rights don’t enforce themselves. For almost 70 years, the Civil Rights Division brought to fruition the civil rights laws that Americans demanded. Dhillon decimated it,” Young said.
