Harmeet Dhillon, who led anti-Israel campus protest crackdown, resigns

Harmeet Dhillon, who led anti-Israel campus protest crackdown, resigns

Several senior US Justice Department officials have resigned, including Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon who was one of the department’s leads in the administration’s efforts to crack down against anti-Israel protests on college campuses.

US Attorney General Todd Blanche, a former personal lawyer for Trump, announced on Thursday that he had accepted the resignation of Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon.

According to Democracy Now, Dhillon spent her 19-month tenure "gutting" civil rights, and diversity, equity and inclusion protections in education, and led the campaign to target dozens of universities nationwide over student-led pro-Palestine activism and campus protests.

It added that under Dhillon, the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division stopped investigating accusations of systemic racism and sexism.

Dhillon was also directly involved in unsuccessful attempts to obtain voter registration lists from some 30 states ahead of this week's midterm elections that dealt heavy defeats to Trump's Republican Party.

In her resignation letter, cited by US media outlets, Dillon said that she submitted it in October and agreed to remain in her position until the election.

Blanche also announced on Friday the resignations of Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Eisenberg, and Jason Reding Quinones, US attorney for the Southern District of Florida.

Quinones oversaw an investigation into former intelligence officials whom Trump accused of seeking to remove him from power.

The Justice Department under Trump has pursued cases against a number of perceived enemies, and several prosecutors have lost their jobs over their reluctance or inability to bring charges.

Report by AFP