Bulwark Takes - The DOJ Is Burning Down—and She’s Tweeting Through It

Episode Date: May 1, 2025

Sam Stein and Will Sommer break down the chaos inside the DOJ’s civil rights division, where Harmeet Dhillon’s Twitter habits and leadership style are raising eyebrows and prompting resignations.

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bulwark, joined again by Will Sommer, who is the author of False Flags. You should read that newsletter. It's awesome. You should subscribe to this YouTube feed. It's awesome. Today, we're going to be talking about another unique character in the Trump orbit. This person actually has been confirmed, has a very serious job. It is Harmeet Dhillon. She oversees the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, where she serves as Assistant Attorney General. Harmeet is a longtime lawyer in conservative circles, I believe. I might be wrong that she represented Trump on some prior matters. She got a very big job, and she got confirmed for it. But I've been tickled to watch that even though she's gotten this job and that she's gotten her feet wet and all that stuff, she's remained a fairly

robust, if not obsessive Twitter user and mostly from her private account, which I happen to follow. And it's like the most amazing stuff. It's like, here's some recommendations for how to deal with the pollen in Washington, D.C. and like, you know, engaging, you know, her trolls in like very direct manner in which I would I don't personally do. I don't really know many people who do it, but she's she's right there in the mentions. So, Will, you dove into this and I think you have some data for us. What is the situation with Harmeet? So, Harmeet Dhillon, she's the assistant attorney general.

And this is a job that typically handles, you know, housing discrimination, voting rights, police brutality. But the way Harmeet Dhillon is doing it, it also includes a lot of tweeting. Tweeting, tweeting, tweeting. So, she was sworn in April 8th. She's tweeted over 200 times. So eleven point nine times a day, according to my level. And I'm bad. Yeah.

I mean, she she's she's just she's jamming them out. And to be clear, a lot of these are not like, you know, hey, stop discriminating or like what the Justice Department is doing. A lot are what color tesla should i buy and um and the the one you referenced was which was um you know oh my gosh there's so much pollen in dc but you know you might want to get a neti pot you know and so you know the you're putting your nose yeah and so these are like here's what i'm having for lunch today uh so you know i mean this is a i think it's an interesting experiment we have going on in the trump administration where we take these right wing media personalities. Now, I mean, Dylan is obviously she is a lawyer, but she's, I think, most famous for being sort of a Republican legal talking head.

She's a fox fixture, right? Exactly. And sort of taking on these conservative causes legally. And so now she's in charge of this division of, I think, roughly 400 lawyers, although many of them are quitting. And so, you know, like other people we've seen, like Pete Hegseth, Christine Ohm, Dan Bongino, she's also still kind of tending this personal audience of hers, in this case, by tweeting constantly. All right. And let's talk about the what you referenced there, the people who are leaving the department. This was a CNN story from this week. I'm just going to read it because it's shocking. It goes like this. Approximately 70% of the Justice Department Civil Rights Division is expected to accept a second offer to federal workers that allows them to resign from their positions and be paid through

September, according to a source familiar with the situation. The division employs roughly 340 people who add until Monday night to accept the offer. Assistant Attorney General Hermit Dillon, who oversees the Civil Rights Division, said over the weekend that more than 100 attorneys had accepted the offer, but the final number is expected to be well over 200. So that will leave the office with about 100, 140 or so. She went on Glenn Beck on his podcast over the weekend to talk about this. And this is what she said. And mass dozens and now over 100 attorneys decided that they'd rather not do what their job requires them to do. the federal government who feel like it's their pet project to go prosecute, you know, police departments based on statistical evidence or prosecute people praying outside abortion facilities instead of doing violence.

That's not the job here. The job here is to enforce the federal civil rights laws, not woke ideology. So look, I mean, this is bound to happen because they want a rapid change of direction. They just want to reduce the footprint of the government. I would just say that it's a shame to a degree. And also, if I had a boss who was spending so much time on Twitter and then lecturing me about not doing my job, I probably would take the fork in the road email too. I would be like, screw this. Like, go have your NEPI pods and buy your Teslas. Like, what the road email too. I would be like, screw this, like, go have your neppy pods

and buy your Teslas. Like what the hell? Yeah. I mean, what's interesting here is, I mean, in terms of her management of the civil rights division, she really is pivoting it much more towards, you know, it'd be one thing to be like, all right, we're going to be a little laxer on police departments perhaps. But I mean, she is making it about conservative culture war issues. So she says, I'm looking at anti-white discrimination i'm looking at transgender women in women's sports i mean these are the you know anti-christian discrimination the whole government's being reconfigured around that stuff i mean that's it right it's like all anti-dei yeah exactly and and so you know that frankly i think that'll leave her with not a ton to do uh and so maybe that explains why she is sort of jousting with her Twitter trolls.

But she's really aggressive with the unfollowing blocks, I've noticed. Well, she's like a hardcore blocker, unfollowing, muter. And she'll let you know. And so in this case, she... You don't have to tell them that they're being blocked. You can just block block but she's like you are blocked she'll post like this is what I

cooked for lunch and people will say shouldn't she be running the justice department and she'll say like muted for ignorance or like a lot of the anger at her I will say she does get a fair bit of racism which I feel is very unfortunate so she blocks on that but yeah what, it is also like, hey, what's going on?

Like you have a job. Well, and a lot of it is sort of these Trump grassroots who have been, you know, as we also saw with Dan Bongino, people who thought that, you know, Hillary Clinton was going to be shipped to Guantanamo on day one. And then she's saying, should I buy a Tesla? And they're saying uh where are the arrests we want the arrests yeah so what are what are the things that they're actually frustrated for i mean she's not her division is not like epstein files right like that's not it but is she getting shit for stuff like that yeah she's getting a lot of criticism for just generally the sense that republicans have that uh you know number yeah as you said that we aren't getting the epstein files we aren't getting the arrests and so when she tweets things like, you know, look at my garden, how it's going great.

And my new rental house in DC, then, you know, they say, Hey, where are the arrests we were promised? And she says, muted for dim wittery, you know? And so there's this kind of constant back and forth she has with her trolls. And again, you know, she's running this department of, at least for now, like 400 people, but you know she's running this department of at least for now like 400 people but you know it's hard to believe in september will be about a third of that ultimately this is i think you alluded to it it's just sort of like this is the fox newsification of the government right like these people are very good at managing or not very good at least they're very attentive

to managing their uh public facing images and they like being on tv and they like interacting with folks it's a little bit more complicated when you have a job at one point she said she tweeted like all right first week on the job what podcast should i go on just like you have other things to focus on her has she gone on a fair number i mean she obviously did glenn beck i haven't seen it i've watched fox that religiously does she do a lot of tv um yeah a good amount i mean she she definitely did Glenn Beck. I haven't seen it. I haven't watched Fox that religiously. Does she do a lot of TV? Yeah, a good amount. I mean, she definitely has been on some podcasts. I watched one recently where she was like, these schools have become woke madrasas.

So, you know, she's getting the message out. Right. But it's funny because I just don't recall ever seeing like any official from the Department of Justice under Joe Biden ever doing TV or a podcast for that matter until it was absolutely necessary. But like, even then it was very rare. So that's just the new world we live in, right? Like they're all doing media. They're all doing their own media. They're all doing podcasts and you know, they learn from the boss who's Trump. Yeah. I mean, it is, it's a striking thing to watch, but then at the same time you think like, wait, what about the actual discrimination? Is any of that going to be prosecuted? And the answer appears to be no,

no. Well, different types of discrimination, just not traditional types. Um, all right, well, thank you for doing this.

Thank you for going through the shorter feeds of people. So I don't have to, uh, thank you all for watching. We'll talk about this. Really appreciate that. Subscribe to the feed. Talk to you later.