Harmeet Dhillon exits after radical overhaul of Justice Department's Civil Rights Division

WASHINGTON (AP) — Harmeet Dhillon, a conservative attorney who oversaw a radical reshaping of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, celebrated the mass departures of career lawyers and spearheaded sweeping investigations into elite universities, said Thursday that she had resigned from her post.

Dhillon had been a powerful and divisive figure inside President Donald Trump’s Justice Department since her confirmation last year as assistant attorney general, where she dramatically changed the direction of a division created during the country’s Civil Rights Movement to protect the rights of minorities.

“We ushered in the downfall of illegal DEI, we fought to protect women and girls’ sports, and so much more," Dhillon said in a social media post announcing her departure, using the acronym for diversity, equity and inclusion. She called serving in the position “the honor of a lifetime.”

Though the resignation was announced on the heels of midterm elections in which Democrats swept the House and Senate in a startling rebuke of Trump, Dhillon said in an interview with Fox News Digital that she had made the decision to depart weeks earlier but was asked by the White House to remain in her post until after the elections. She said she wanted to return to the private sector and had not been asked to resign.

“My decision, my choice,” she said.

As leader of the division, Dhillon drew fierce criticism from former Justice Department attorneys who accused her of abandoning its traditional civil rights enforcement mission in favor of conservative causes. More than three quarters of the unit's workforce at the beginning of Trump's second term have left — a move Dhillon has called the “biggest single personnel self-purge in DOJ history.”

She accused the past administration of pursuing a misguided liberal agenda and welcomed the departures of attorneys not aligned with the Trump administration's priorities, saying in an interview last year with conservative pundit Glenn Beck that “the job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws — not woke ideology.”

During her tenure, the Civil Rights Division scrapped police reform settlements and investigations and launched probes into universities the Trump administration saw as improperly prioritizing diversity and inclusion, discriminating against white applicants in the admissions process and failing to crack down on antisemitic conduct on campus.

Her pressure campaign against schools led to numerous settlements, and in one case, the resignation of the president of the University of Virginia. She also led an effort to pressure states to turn over detailed voter records despite repeated court losses.

Attorney General Todd Blanche wrote in a social media post announcing Dhillon’s departure that she had led the division with “conviction” and “defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor.”

“The Department is grateful for her dedicated public service, and we wish her every success in her future endeavors,” Blanche wrote.

But Stacey Young, a former Civil Rights Division attorney who now leads a network of Justice Department alumni, called her “the most destructive, lawless and hateful” head of the division in department history.

“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," Young said in an emailed statement Thursday. "Dhillon decimated it.”