Trump DOJ’s Harmeet Dhillon: When “Journalism” Becomes a Crime Scene | The Brief

At this DOJ, we believe in the enforcement of our laws. Why, in your eyes and in the eyes of the Department of Justice, is Don Lemon wrong? Don Lemon provided the video evidence of the crimes. You have time, place, and manner restrictions on the First Amendment. When you start interfering with law enforcement, getting in their way, you may get hurt, you may get arrested. Where do you draw the line between protesting and then just violence, broadly speaking? We saw this lack of civility sharply increase during the Obama era. It's the violence that is, I think, new and startling. How would you respond to critics who say, how come the FACE Act hasn't been used before in prior administrations? And welcome back to The Brief. We are joined today by Harmeet Dhillon. Harmeet is the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division since 2025, and perhaps most importantly, she's one of the best Twitter accounts to be following. Assistant Attorney General, thank you so much for joining us today. Thanks for having me. So, a lot to talk about. I want to discuss, I think, the thing that's on most people's mind, which is January 18th. January 18th, a former CNN journalist, now quasi-journalist Don Lemon, he enters the city's church in St. Paul to chronicle what he calls a normal demonstration against ICE. Of course, this is happening in the church during worship services. He was indicted by a grand jury in Minnesota. Of course, he pled not guilty to the civil rights charges. But he's now arguing that you, and by extension, the Department of Justice, are simply attacking free speech. You're attacking journalism as a profession. You're attacking him as a gay black man. Why, in your eyes, and in the eyes of the Department of Justice, is Don Lemon wrong to characterize you and the DOJ in that light? Don Lemon is actually kind of incidental to the incident, other than he provided the video evidence of the crimes that we've indicted, which is helpful. So, thank you, Don Lemon, for that. But the fact that he was there, it's Don Lemon, or who it is, is irrelevant to me. What was more offensive to me was seeing the disruption of the House of Worship, whoever it was, doing it. And, in fact, that's the case. So, while he's framed it and his lawyer, celebrity lawyer, Abbey Lowell, has done a good job demagoguing this issue as some kind of personal attack on Don Lemon, I could care less about who was there. They're all equally, you know, guilty of, if found guilty by a jury. And certainly, in the eyes of the grand jury so far, the people who've been indicted are all conspirators and violators of at least two federal laws and perhaps more. So, what's important for your viewers to know is it isn't just Don Lemon who claims to be a journalist. In fact, some of the evidence we saw later that day that was passed on to my team included social media posts where one of the organizers, Nikima Armstrong, NAACP official, lawyer, she thanked and tagged several journalists who were in the crowd. And so we had names to go off of. I didn't have to do a lot of digging to figure out who was there. One of the journalists was the bearded, somewhat crazed white man you see in that video shouting at children and people because apparently he has some social media account. And another lady who was part of that crowd who's also been indicted also claims to be a journalist as well. The fact that you are a provocateur in violation of federal law who happens to also blog their crimes and or tweet about them or do TikToks about them does not absolve you of the underlying offense. That's a basic premise of federal law. And there's been much litigation over this. I am a former journalist. I love journalists. I respect journalism. And I have represented in my private practice many journalists on First Amendment issues and given them legal advice. And among the advice that any good lawyer would give a journalist is be careful to document and chronicle and even comment on things that you see happening, including protests and crimes and wars and hate crimes and horrible things. But don't be a participant in it because then you risk running afoul of the law. And that's a basic premise that all journalists should know by now. Certainly many conservative journalists have learned this through the weaponization of the prior Department of Justice against various journalists. And so I think it's something that every journalist should keep in mind is that there's being an observer and a chronicler and then there's being a participant and those two are not the same. And I think that's a really important point because it wasn't just Don Lemon who was charged, but you had nine people at least being charged under the 1994 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act or the FACE Act. And that's kind of what I want to focus on just for a moment. The FACE Act prohibits interference or intimidation, I want to make sure I get this right, of any person by force, threat of force, or physical obstruction exercising or seeking to exercise the First Amendment right of religious freedom at a place of religious worship. But this is, correct me if I'm wrong, the first time the DOJ has used the FACE Act in this type of case. So I guess if you can just educate myself and educator viewers, how come the FACE Act is warranted in this particular case? And then number two, how come it hasn't been used before in prior administrations? Well, I wasn't in the prior administrations. I don't know why it wasn't used. This is the second use of the FACE Act by this Department of Justice. The first was a civil case in West Orange, New Jersey, where a mob disrupted a synagogue service and became violent and used vuvuzelas in the ears of people trying to reach the synagogue and disrupted that religious worship. So that's a civil case currently. This is the first criminal case involving the FACE Act. Stepping back and playing devil's advocate, there have been some conservatives who criticize the law overall. And as you probably know, and your listeners, your viewers will probably know, the primary focus of the FACE Act by its sponsors was to protect abortion clinics from pro-life protesters and objectors. And to get this law passed, they added houses of worship as a protected space. You know, it's very liberally been used in that regard. But some people have questioned whether the necessary...you know, is this constitutional or is it punishing speech? I mean, you know, it's certainly been many prosecutions, including one that I defended, where Jane's Revenge, in the wake of the Dobbs decision, is a pro-abortion group that targeted crisis pregnancy centers in Florida. And the Biden administration, to be fair to them, they did prosecute that and they got a conviction. And I defended that conviction in federal court, and it was upheld by the 11th Circuit. And so certainly that aspect of the law has been tested by the courts and found to be constitutional. So we're now applying another part of that statute in the same way. And so we will see how that shakes out. Now, I found in this particular case, what was really interesting was you had a magistrate judge who actually blocked federal prosecutors' attempt to charge Don Lemon initially. So I guess I'd just be interested in hearing your take and the take of the Trump administration. What is to be done when you have, in President Trump's own terms, you have these judicial activists, you have individuals who are trying to stifle the Trump administration's priorities in favor of their own political priorities? What do you do in those types of cases? So I'm a lawyer, and I have to go in front of these judges. And so I'm going to choose my words very carefully. And I want to be fair, and I do respect the judiciary. And by the way, I practiced law in San Francisco for 25 years. And even though most of the judges there did not share my viewpoint, I generally got a fair shake from the court with only a few exceptions of cases that were truly very political in nature, including some cases involving free speech and Planned Parenthood. There were some disappointments, but overall, I think most judges historically are pretty good. Now, a magistrate judge is not a real life-tenured Article III judge. They're an employee of the court. Their job is to call balls and strikes and see if there's probable cause there. At least one judge in the Court of Appeals there in the Eighth Circuit disagreed with the magistrate judge's determination. And the district court judge in that case refused to intervene either. But a grand jury of Americans did agree with the DOJ's position that there was probable cause to believe that at least nine of these individuals had committed crime. So we obtained a true bill for what we were seeking. And there were another several dozen people at this event, so there may be further charges that come down from the DOJ. What to be done about it is, first of all, we have to increase the pace of judicial confirmations. The president's prior administration was very successful in getting Court of Appeals nominations through, somewhat less so in the district court level. And so we just need to see Congress operating efficiently, I think is my objective standard there. I hope we return to days when people don't look at who nominated a judge and they can determine what the outcome of a case is going to be based on that. That's not how our system is supposed to work. The judges are supposed to be fair and apply the law equally, regardless of who appointed them. I just want to ask, for clarity's sake, so many of the anti-Trump protesters and critics in the media or in politics are creating this narrative that the Department of Justice and the Trump administration, broadly speaking, they're cracking down on protests, specifically anti-ICE protests, and they're using what happened in Minneapolis as this flashpoint. So can you just, again, educate myself and educate my viewers, is it the Trump administration's position to be cracking down on free speech or to be cracking down on protests? Where do you draw the line between protesting and then just violence, broadly speaking? I think that's actually not that hard. There are decades of cases involving this particular dichotomy. And so you go all the way back to the Vietnam War, when we've had prior incidents where police or law enforcement have clashed with protesters and tragedy has ensued. And everyone regrets this because we have a robust tradition of protest in our country. And so if you wish to protest what the government is doing, I mean, I've personally participated in some protests myself when I didn't agree with the government or some foreign government. I've done that in my youth. And so that's a cherished tradition in our country. But you have time, place, and manner restrictions on the First Amendment. This is well-established. You need to get a permit or you need to stay a certain distance away from law enforcement doing their jobs. You cannot interfere with law enforcement. And that's the bright line. When you start interfering with law enforcement, getting in their way, you may get hurt, you may get arrested. And that's, I think, where you have to draw the line is people should stay safely away from law enforcement and not get in their way. That's obstruction of justice. And it's a violation of federal law to do that. And we've seen that happen time and again. And so we're even seeing in Minneapolis, we're seeing trainings on how to do jury nullification. We're seeing lawyers, officers of the court, who have a duty, a sworn duty when they become officers of the court and members of the bar. They swear to uphold the Constitution and the law. And they are participating with other conspirators in efforts to undermine our judicial system. I think that's shocking and disappointing. I feel the same way if I saw jury nullification in the opposite direction, that that's wrong. So it's not the job of the jury to figure out ways to get on a jury and then evade enforcing the law. That's completely wrong and corrupts our system. So any civilized society, you have to have some boundaries and some norms. And these people think that there aren't any. And frankly, I think there's a video gamization of our society where certainly since COVID, so many people have experienced the world through their computer screens that, I mean, some of my favorite podcasters, Adam Carolla is one who talks about this issue that woke white women have been trained that you can, you know, with your, you know, unfit body, go up against hardened national guardsmen and law enforcement and, like, do battle with them. That's not going to go well physically or legally. And this is not a good practice. So those boundaries need to come back. We need to all respect law enforcement. I have had my own issues with law enforcement. I've been pulled over when I shouldn't have. And you have to just go through a process, create your record, and then, you know, have an orderly way of challenging inappropriate law enforcement. So you're suggesting middle-aged liberal women blowing whistles at ICE officers is not effective. I am shocked. Let me just ask very quickly one last question on this particular incident with Minneapolis. I had written on my own Twitter shortly after the attack that any individual who was involved in disrupting this house of worship, if they are a student, if they're on a foreign visa, on some type of green card, that should be revoked. They should be deported. And interestingly enough, the State Department shortly after announced that they had revoked more than 100,000 visas from foreigners convicted of a crime. So as it pertains to religious liberties, to what extent are deportations and visa revocations important? Do you see a connection between the deportations and revocations and then a decrease in religious discrimination in the United States? Well, that's an interesting theory. Without saying too much about the evidence that I've seen so far that isn't public as yet, I don't think there was a big foreign element in the invasion of the city's church. I think everyone who has been arrested so far has been an American citizen to my knowledge. I think that possibly on our campuses, certainly when I was a student at Dartmouth, some of the most obnoxious agitators challenging Dartmouth's investment in apartheid issues and, you know, companies that did business in South Africa at the time, they're foreign students. And, you know, they were very, very aggressive. Some of them came from Marxist ideologies or countries, even though they were wealthy enough to be privileged, top-tier foreign students at an Ivy League institution. There's almost certainly quite a bit of that at our Ivy League institutions today vis-a-vis the antisemitism and the October 7th, 2023 disruption and agitation on our campuses. And we should have a zero tolerance policy for that. If you're a guest in this country, and Marco Rubio has said this much more eloquently than I just did, you don't have a right to break our laws or disrupt our campuses. You're a guest. You're a visitor. You can't come in and put your dirty feet up on the couch and expect to be greeted warmly. If you come to this country as a student, we expect you to go to class and study and get a degree. If you come here to, like, vandalize a library, take over a campus and do all kinds of crazy things, you know, we're going to get rid of these people and we're going to continue to do it. So when we identify lunatics like these, we take away their student visa. No one's entitled to a student visa. And so it's entirely appropriate for our country, just like all other countries do, police their borders by saying, if you're not going to follow our laws, you can get out. And other countries do a much better job of this than we do. And so certainly when someone is convicted of a crime, they lose their right to stay in this country. But I think there may be even steps short of that. For example, if you lied to get into this country and you are an adherent to Marxist ideology, that would be a basis for a change in your legal status. Right. And you would also assume that a major political party would not give that individual a hug on Capitol Hill. But I digress. I apologize for the rudimentary nature of this question. But we are talking about religious discrimination. And I actually spoke at the White House Religious Liberties Commission about a week or two ago. And I gave this example of a Catholic school not far from where I live in Long Beach, California that was totally vandalized and desecrated. I'm only 26. But I have to say, it sort of seems like as a Gen Z young American, there has been some type of palpable shift and a rise in religious discrimination. In fact, the Religious Freedom Council has documented that there have been more than 430 incidents since 2018, an 800% increase in religious attacks in the United States. I'm just curious, where is this all coming from? The anti-Christian sentiments, the anti-Mormon sentiments, anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish. Why is this happening in the United States? Well, so far in the 10 months that I've been in office here, we've actually had numerous cases of the nature that you've described. And we've obtained many convictions with respect to attacks on houses of worship, arson against a synagogue, arson against a Mormon church, and other horrible incidents, including mortal wounding of people on the basis of their religious identity or perceived identity. I think you're correct. And I've been a lawyer for most of my life now. There has been a decided uptick. And I won't call it religious discrimination because discrimination is a persistent factor of human life. It's the violence that we are seeing accompanying the discrimination that is, I think, new and startling. The violent attacks and people leaving backpacks full of explosives at churches, and people invading... There was a Sikh temple a few years ago where a neo-Nazi went in and murdered six Sikhs, which is my faith. It is truly shocking. People used to leave their disagreements with somebody because of their bigotry or what have you at the door of a house of worship that was considered to be a sanctuary and off-limits. There was a certain level of respect. If I were to diagnose this as an amateur sociologist or anthropologist, I would say there's a definite decrease in religiosity in our culture, which is a bad thing. There is a decrease in respect for other faiths. That's also, I think, a coarsening of our dialectic in our society, which is unfortunate. We saw this kind of political lack of civility really sharply increase during the Obama era, where before you used to see Republicans and Democrats disagree on Capitol Hill and then hug it out and have a beer afterwards and play softball together. Now, people are shooting each other and not being very tolerant of other viewpoints. This is unfortunate. It's a breaking down of society. It is our job at the Department of Justice and the jobs of also local and state law enforcement to use the laws that are on the books already that amply protect people of faith and enforce those laws. They haven't been enforced. It's a good question. Why wasn't the FACE Act? There are other federal statutes as well that prohibit defacing houses of worship. Many states have Religious Freedom Restoration Act laws and versions of our federal RLUPA, Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act laws. So we're using at this DOJ, because we believe in God and we believe in the enforcement of our laws, we are using the full plenipotentiary of the force of the federal government to enforce our federal civil rights laws to protect all people of faith. And, you know, some of that's controversial. I believe every person of faith in this country, no matter what your religion is, has a right to go into their house of worship, be it a mosque, synagogue, mandir, gurdwara, temple, church, and feel safe there and not worry about being attacked or having their property vandalized. And similarly, there are a host of other areas. We have a right to reasonable accommodations and employment in religion. You have a right to, in almost every type of job, wear your yarmulke or a turban or other head covering and not be discriminated against on the basis of that. And our country is unique in that regard. In Europe, you can't wear a cross or a kippah or a turban in a public school. You just can't. You can't do it in a job. So it's a beautiful thing about our country that we respect faith and we must be ever vigilant because when we casually accept violence and discrimination on the basis of faith, then it will go underground. And we have seen what happens when that happens in our society. And it's not a good thing. Well said. And I must add a breath of fresh air from the previous administration. I do want to shift the conversation in the few minutes we have left to talk about American institutions of higher learning. It's no secret. You, the Department of Justice, the Trump administration have been aggressively not only investigating institutions of higher learning for anti-Semitism and other acts of religious discrimination, but you're also practically doing something about it, whether it's withholding federal funds, whether it's deporting foreign students who violated the law. So when I talk about religious discrimination, you know, my name is Shabbos Kestenbaum. I wear a yarmulke. In many cases, it falls on deaf ears. So I think it'd be really important and interesting for our viewers to hear it directly from you. In the course of your investigations against American college campuses, what have you been finding as it pertains to religious discrimination? I would say there are two broad categories of discrimination that we've seen. And to be clear, my focus has really been on that really top 1% of institutions because there's no way there's over 6,000 institutions of higher learning that obtain federal funding. We're also looking at K-12, by the way, and I'll get to that in a minute if I remember. But you're seeing widespread discrimination against Jews in employment, in elite educational institutions, and in admissions. And you are, beyond that, seeing active discrimination and contempt of Jews in numerous institutions of higher learning. Tolerance of gross, repugnant discrimination at Harvard, Columbia, Northwestern, many other institutions. Some of these have come to the table and reached settlements with us and made agreements with us to stop what they were doing. Some of them haven't. Harvard is an example of that. I have cases in the pipeline involving anti-Semitism in employment and in admissions and on campus in Title IX context of discrimination against admitted students as well in several institutions. And so we are taking this very seriously. I would say this president and this administration is the most protective of the Jewish community of any in American history. I'm proud to be part of that and leading the effort here at the Civil Rights Division. So we don't just walk the walk and talk the talk. We are filing indictments, we are filing lawsuits, and we are reaching settlements to put an end to this discrimination wherever we find it. It is an American and it is not a Jewish problem. It is an American problem. And it is a shameful chapter in our history that we've seen this level of discrimination on our campuses, but we are not going to let it persist under our watch. Amen. And I know I'm supposed to be objective, but as someone who registered to vote as a Democrat the day I turned 18 and only supported liberal causes, I would say that you, Harmeet Dhillon, you're one of the reasons I went over to the other side. And I've seen firsthand how this administration has really held these institutions of higher learning accountable. One last question, then I will shut up. How would you respond to critics who say that, hang on a second, if you're withholding federal funds from Columbia, from Harvard, from elsewhere, how is that practically solving the issue of discrimination? How is that alleviating the concerns of faith-based students? What would you say, on behalf of yourself or the DOJ, why is it important to withhold those funds? So first, I would say we are a nation of laws, and those are the tools at my disposal. So every federal grant comes along with it, some strings attached. And they include that whoever gave you the grant has the right to inspect and review your compliance with federal law, which is a condition of receiving federal funding. So that is the first and easiest thing that we can do is withhold that federal funding. It's actually our duty to do that. Where a recipient of federal funding is not complying with federal law, discrimination laws, and otherwise, they don't get the money. And so we have, I think, a baseline fiduciary duty to stop handing out that cash, number one. And then there are some tools we have beyond that. Discrimination, for example, in employment, you don't have to be a recipient of federal funding to be required to follow those particular laws. Every employer in the United States has to comply with those federal laws and then some state laws as well. And then there are a host of other laws that we use as well. For example, failure to comply with our anti-money laundering provision. So taking a bunch of money from a foreign, a Gulf state, and then using that to discriminate against people and also not properly reporting it, that's illegal. Making false claims. Saying you're complying with federal law and taking the money and not being compliant with federal law is a False Claims Act violation. It could be criminal in nature. And so I would just say that we...and then there's some things I wish I could do something about, but I can't. So we are as aggressive as we can be within the framework of the federal laws that we administer. I totally lied. I have one last question, then I promise I will shut up. You don't have to answer this. We can totally cut this. But just because you mentioned Harvard, I'm curious if you're able to give us an update on where we stand with these negotiations. I know President Trump had said on True Social recently that he wanted a billion dollars from the university. For President Alan Garber, that seems to be a hard no from him. Is there any insight you're able to divulge as to where we stand now? You can plead the fifth. Yeah, I was gonna say, there's a line from a British show, you might very well think that, but I couldn't possibly comment. But I cannot say, but I can tell you that I hear from the president regularly about Harvard, including in my recent visit to the White House for Black History Month, he specifically mentioned Harvard to me. And this is in front of cameras, so I'm not divulging any privilege. It's important to the president that Harvard, as an elite institution in our country, comply with federal law. And it is a topic of great discussion, and we fully intend to get on the same page with Harvard and get Harvard on the same page with us to make sure that they stop discrimination and they respect the rights of all of their applicants and employees and everyone who touches Harvard. Well said. And I can say on behalf of many, many American Christians, American Catholics, American Mormons, American Jews who've seen what you and this Department of Justice and what this White House have been doing. So I just want to say thank you, thank you, thank you, not just for making the time for this show, but really everything you have been doing the last year and a bit. Harmeet Dhillon, the U.S. Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. And again, if you are not following her on Twitter, she's also very funny and she knits sweaters. So maybe I can get one one day. We really appreciate it. Thank you so much. Thank you so much, Chavez. Well, thank you so much for watching. Make sure to like and subscribe if you have any questions, comments, or if you want to see a particular topic addressed, make sure to put it down in the comments and feel free to keep the conversation going through all of your questions or yellings or rants. Find me on social media. Just type in Chavez Kestenbaum. You're not going to find many other Chavez Kestenbaums. And I'm looking forward to speaking with you all very soon.