Harmeet Dhillon, head of the Department of Justice Civil Rights Division, confirmed in an interview with Glenn Beck that under her leadership—even as scores of attorneys are reportedly jumping ship—she will focus attention on protecting the Second Amendment.
Her comments to Beck were the centerpiece of a 12-minute segment of the Four Boxes Diner broadcast on YouTube by attorney Mark W. Smith.
It is yet another signal from Attorney General Pam Bondi’s DOJ that the agency is seriously going after states and local governments which have adopted laws and policies that infringe on Second Amendment rights.
Dhillon, a well-known conservative attorney from California, told Beck, “Prior Republican administrations haven’t paid a lot of attention to affirmatively (protecting the Second Amendment), but in the wake of clear guidance from the United States Supreme Court, to own and use firearms…city after city or state after state are eviscerating those rights.”
She accused those jurisdictions of “mocking the Supreme Court by passing laws that make it virtually impossible,” to exercise the right to keep and bear arms. She pointed to Colorado, California, New York and the District of Columbia as prime examples of abuse.
As noted by the Daily Caller, “Dhillon said the Civil Rights Division will continue its core mission, while expanding to new areas of focus including defending the Second Amendment, ending race discrimination in employment, securing parental rights and fighting antisemitism on college campuses.”
The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms has launched an online petition, allowing gun owners across the country to call on Bondi to turn her new “Second Amendment Task Force” loose on 12 specific states where restrictive gun control policies have dramatically impaired Second Amendment and state constitutional gun rights. There is no indication whether the petition, or a letter to Bondi from CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb, may have at least partly influenced this dramatic attention to Second Amendment troubles.
But according to other news agencies, Dhillon and “other officials” have been “pushing out senior leaders and imposed hard-right policies at odds with the department’s mission,” as reported by the Los Angeles Times.
The establishment media is approaching this story with what appears to be clear bias. For example, MSNBC opened its report asserting, “Rather than execute the Trump administration’s oppressive plans to weaponize the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division against political enemies, dozens of DOJ attorneys have chosen to walk off the job instead.”
They criticize Dhillon for defending President Donald Trump’s effort to challenge the results of the 2020 election.
ABC News is reporting how “over 100” attorneys in the Civil Rights Division were part of a “mass exodus” from the division. According to ABC News, “The resignations come as Dhillon and Attorney General Pam Bondi have made clear the priorities of the division — which was established in the wake of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950s — would shift away from priorities like enforcing voting rights laws and cracking down on unconstitutional policing to culture war issues touted by President Trump in his 2024 campaign.”
As Dhillon told Beck about Second Amendment violations in the various states, “they all violate the constitution, so we will be working together to make this a focus of the civil rights division.”
