First senior Trump official Harmeet Dhillon quits in aftermath of midterm elections ‘blue tsunami’ as White House braces for major staff exodus
Harmeet Dhillon resigned as the head of the Justice Department’s civil rights division, becoming the first senior Trump administration official to quit after the midterm elections ‘blue wave.’
Dhillon, a former Republican Party official and lawyer for President Donald Trump‘s campaign, was tapped by the president to serve in the role after his election in 2024.
At DOJ, she had shifted the civil rights division’s focus away from protecting vulnerable communities and towards conservative causes, and oversaw an exodus of more than three-quarters of lawyers in the division.
Shortly after her departure was announced, Dhillon clarified that she had offered her resignation earlier – some three weeks before the election. She said she was not asked to resign.
Trump’s White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, ‘asked me to please wait until after the midterms,’ Dhillon told Fox News.
After Democrats overwhelmingly captured the House and Senate on Tuesday, they have promised to aggressively investigate the Trump administration.
The DOJ’s civil rights division is likely to be at the top of their list. And Dhillon would have been their first target for public questioning.
The department has enacted top administration priorities, including promoting gun rights and stripping away diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies.
The division was also tasked with election integrity efforts, including cracking down on illegal voting operations.
The agency was scrutinized for waiting to open a civil rights investigation after the fatal shootings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis earlier this year.
Democrats are anticipated to focus on those shootings, and other immigration efforts by the DOJ and Department of Homeland Security, in their investigative capacity next year.
Attorney General Todd Blanche confirmed Dhillon’s departure after her 19-month tenure at the DOJ.
‘She has defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor,’ Blanche said.
She will be returning to her California-based private law firm, Dhillon Law Group, which has been managed by her brother Mandeep Singh Dhillon since she took the role at the DOJ.
A group of former Justice Department officials told the Daily Mail in a statement Thursday that Dhillon had ‘decimated’ the division’s more than 70-year mandate.
‘Harmeet Dhillon has been the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history,’ Stacey Young, the executive director of the Justice Connection, said Thursday.
Kalshi, the online prediction market, is taking bets on who will be next to leave.
Special Presidential Envoy Ric Grenell is seen as the most likely to go next.
Kalshi users are rating his exit probability at around 60 percent, ahead of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth with 51 percent.
The third most likely victim is Chief of Staff Susie Wiles with around 47 percent.
Wiles, the all-powerful chief of staff, is being privately blamed for Republicans’ losses in the midterms, the Daily Mail previously reported.
But she appears to have miraculously pulled it back from the brink.
She is, say multiple insiders, expected to survive the coming White House ‘purge’ by playing a very Trumpian game of ‘4D chess’, pitting the President’s top Cabinet members – namely Vance and Rubio – against each other and flying herself to safety under the radar.
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