When President Donald Trump began his second term, it was no secret that he planned to use the Department of Justice as his personal attack dog—seeking retribution against anyone he perceived as having wronged him. 

As the year came to a close, Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, who now heads the Civil Rights Division, worked hard to prove that she can be just as unethical and vindictive as anyone else at the DOJ. 

Dhillon is sort of a surprise late entrant here in a crowded field of horrifying Trump DOJ picks that has included Todd Blanche, John Sauer, and Emil Bove—all former Trump criminal defense attorneys who were rewarded handsomely for their service.

Dhillon didn’t represent Trump in his myriad criminal cases. Instead, she was installed at the DOJ because she has spent much of her legal career trying to make voting harder and is a true believer in the big lie that Trump won the 2020 election. 

Since stepping into her role, Dhillon has paused nearly all normal civil rights investigations to instead do things like go after Chicago because the mayor hired Black people. She also declared that her top priority is ending “radical indoctrination” in schools and being a loyal foot soldier in Trump’s war on transgender athletes. 

These things are at least marginally related to civil rights, albeit focused on taking away people’s civil rights rather than protecting them. 

But Dhillon’s recent and extremely enthusiastic participation in going after anyone who was part of the January 6 Commission has no connection to civil rights whatsoever—insurrectionists are not a protected class. Their civil rights were not violated because they were investigated. 

Still, a little thing like that isn’t going to stop Dhillon from getting in on the action. So now she’s using her personal and official accounts on X to issue fact-free screeds and threats about prosecuting members of the January 6 Commission. You gotta leverage your resources, right?

It’s in no way clear how Dhillon decides what is appropriate for an official government social media post and what should be reserved for her personal musings. 

“Trump/Bondi DOJ is working to bring to justice those who weaponized January 6th, 2021,” she wrote on her official account. “No statute of limitations will hinder DOJ's efforts to bring justice to those who weaponized persecution of American citizens. January 6th 2026 is NOT a deadline for DOJ to bring prosecutions.”

Chat, is it good when one of the DOJ’s top attorneys announces that the agency is planning to ignore any statutes of limitation in its quest to prosecute Democrats for investigating Jan. 6?

On that same official account, she resorted to chatting with Grok to have her legal views on the statute of limitations confirmed. 

Chat, is it good when one of the DOJ’s top attorneys thinks that answers from Elon Musk’s MechaHitler Nazi bot count as sound and correct statements of the law?

Related | Trump taps one of his insurrectionists to hide tariff damage

Dhillon’s big idea here is that the five-year statute of limitations did not start running on Jan. 6, but instead from when the committee was formed in July 2021. She’s got six more months to gin up fake charges! Definitely a totally appropriate and not at all vindictive thing to say on your official government account. 

Of course, there’s also the wee problem of how investigating an insurrection isn’t a crime or lawfare or weaponization or a civil rights violation or anything that Trump has demanded these nitwits prosecute. 

Dhillon’s official government account is also the place for weird sycophantic posts about Attorney General Pam Bondi, like “My boss @AGPamBondi works around the clock to bring justice for all Americans! Don’t be a hater and a simp for weaponized online disinformation!!”

But it was on her personal account that she decided to really cut loose about the haters and the simps. She is absolutely furious that pro-Trump influencers who normally praise everything that Trump does are insufficiently enthusiastic about current efforts. 

“‘Conservative’ influencers, if you think you are ‘keeping the pressure on’ or ‘winning’ by spreading bullshit attacks on @realDonaldTrump ’s hand-picked cabinet, you are NOT. You are earning money to spread misinformation. You are hoes. Learn an honest profession!”

So it looks like official government accounts are where you can talk about haters and simps, but if you want to say that Trump’s critics are sexually promiscuous, you have to take it to the alt account.  

Dhillon’s official account is also where she discusses official Civil Rights Division business by yelling “Buckle UP!!!” when Bondi about alleged fraud in Minnesota. 

However, she saved her retweet of Scott Adams, always an authoritative and reliable source, to push some fact-free allegations and filthy, unwarranted racism about Somali people committing fraud in Ohio. 

Also worth a retweet? Some X rando who wrote about more alleged fraud in California. 

Dhillon might not be as high-profile as some of Trump’s other loyalists, but don’t count her out. She’s ready, willing, and able to do whatever it takes to get Trump’s dirty work done. And if that requires two X accounts to get it done, she’s more than up to the task.

rss@dailykos.com (Lisa Needham)مصدر