Ep 1289 ｜ “Civil Rights” Were Weaponized to Crush Christians. Now the Trump Admin Is Fighting Back ｜ Harmeet Dhillon
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
167.79263
Summary
In this episode, Hermit Dillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, talks about how the division works, what it does, and why it's important to have a civil rights division at the Justice Department.
Transcript
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Are white Christian Americans and pro-lifers being unfairly discriminated against in blue states?
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My guest today says in many cases, the answer is yes.
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Hermit Dillon is the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in the Trump
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Administration, and she is doing so much work to ensure that our elections have integrity,
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to make sure that no one is being unfairly treated under the law for their faith,
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for their skin color, for their sex. There is so much going on in the DOJ. She is going to give us
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some answers today for how everything works and how justice is actually served. You're going to end
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this conversation feeling very educated about what's going on, but also very encouraged by the
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happenings in our highest level of government. Without further ado, here is our friend, Hermit Dillon.
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Well, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. I've followed you forever,
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but if there's anyone out there who doesn't know, can you tell us who you are and what you do?
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Sure. Well, I'm Hermit Dillon, and I'm the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the United
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States Department of Justice, and I've been practicing law for 33 years. And before I came
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to the DOJ, I have been doing civil rights law for most of my life. And tell us exactly what civil
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rights law is. Like, what cases are you typically taking? So in the DOJ context, the Civil Rights
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Division was started in the 1950s, and it has expanded to cover just about every existing civil rights law
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that we have on the federal level, and also new laws. So when the Americans with Disabilities Act
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was passed, you know, we got that. When the FACE Act was passed, we got that. We investigate incidents
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of police brutality and excessive force. We protect the rights of prisoners, of employees, of public
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institutions throughout the country. A big part of our work, and this dates back to the Civil War,
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is going after state officials who violate federal civil rights. And so throughout the United States,
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we're looking at voting issues. I administer several federal voting rights statutes. The diversity,
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equity, and inclusion dismantling of the federal government's agenda is under our purview, and we
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go after that all over the country, and I'm happy to get into detail. When there's, you know, somebody
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being discriminated against just about anywhere. If someone brings it to my attention, then we decide,
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does it fit under one of the federal statutes? And if so, do we have the bandwidth, and do we then
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look at it? So that's, it's a very broad purview. I have 12 sections, and we added to these sections
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a Second Amendment section for the first time. So it's an expanding portfolio.
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Yeah. Aside from that last one, the Second Amendment section, I imagine that, say, Biden's head of the
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Civil Rights Division might have said all of the same things that you said, that we're making sure
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that justice is carried out, that we're looking at police brutality, that we're looking at voting
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issues, but you mean something very different than what your predecessors, many of them, have meant.
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So how would you say the difference is between, say, how Biden's Civil Rights Division functioned and
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Well, that's a great question, and you can see exactly what the left thinks about that from the
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commentary about what I'm doing. And their commentary is a lot of pearl clutching about how
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I've radically changed the mission of the department. And that is because I think a lot of the lawyers
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who were attracted to doing this job over the years were left-wing activists, and they viewed their job
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as protecting a very small slice of Americans at the expense of other Americans. So there were
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favored groups and disfavored groups. And this is the classic concept of DEI. And so the idea, for
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example, where I've gone out and said that under Students for Fair Admissions and Ames v. Ohio
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and other recent Supreme Court precedents, all Americans are protected by our civil rights laws,
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not just some. That is a radical departure from what the Civil Rights Division's jurisprudence
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has typically been. Now, every time a new administration comes in, corrections and course
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corrections are made. But historically, in a Republican administration, that has meant
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taking the extremely radical left-wing bent of the division and sort of toning that down slightly.
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It's usually still the same personnel, mutinous and resentful during those four years or eight years,
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and they just wait like a dormant virus for their opportunity to resurface and propagate what they
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were doing. And I just made it very clear in my second week in office in April of last year
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that we were going to be enforcing our federal civil rights laws, check, check, check. But the focus was
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going to be on the president's agenda that he was elected to carry out. And that caused more than half
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the lawyers in the division to put in their resignations. And then quite a few more have
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resigned since then, including this last week. And so it has really been a radical personnel change
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at the division, but a radical reframing of civil rights for all Americans, which seems natural to me
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and consistent with my career and what I've been doing my life, particularly those last 25 years in
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You know, just like so many things, sometimes we're saying the same words, the left and the right,
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but we mean totally different things. So how do you define a civil right?
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Well, I look at the statutes first and before that, the constitution, and even before that,
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a concept of natural law. And you date back to the founding of this country, and it was founded on
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religious liberty and religious freedom. And then you look at the constitution and what the framers
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enshrined as our fundamental rights, including in particular, the Bill of Rights, which I think has
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been, you know, really important. Some concepts imported from traditional English jurisprudence that
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the English and the British have now completely abandoned. So really America is the cornerstone of
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these fundamental liberties that date from the Enlightenment. And we still follow them and believe
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them. And until the law changes, that's our guide. But then you have statutes that are passed.
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We had a number of statutes passed. One of the most important of which that I look at in the
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criminal context is portions of the Klan Act, where after we had slavery abolished in this country,
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a lot of state officials, sheriffs, governors, they refused to follow the law and treat blacks
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as equal human beings. So we had to pass statutes that penalized them for doing that. Those same
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statutes are still used today. And we still have, ironically, a number of state officials, including
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governors, attorneys general, they refused to follow the law. They refused to go along with Supreme Court
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precedent relating to voting laws, relating to gun rights, relating to the dismantling of so-called DEI,
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which is discrimination and drag and other problems. And so we have modern day Dixiecrats
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who are refusing to follow the law. And the federal government's job is to police that and enforce
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Okay. I can't let you just say that DEI is discrimination and drag without breaking that down.
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Well, it is a principle that we're going to fix discrimination in the past by discriminating
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today. That's what it is. And so to me, discrimination is wrong. And our civil rights
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laws have a principle and concept of non-discrimination. And literally, when you look at Martin Luther King
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Jr. and one of, you know, many of his speeches, he talks exactly about that, where taking color,
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we should have a colorblind society, not a society where you get extra points if you're certain
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colors. And that's wrong either way. It's wrong to, you know, prefer white people in employment and
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protected areas. And it's wrong to prefer black people and other people of color, say immigrants
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are more entitled to jobs than citizens are. And so, I mean, that's one of the radical changes as
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we have laws on the books that say it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of national origin.
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Well, American is a national origin. And so when I see ads out there saying that certain jobs are
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reserved for H-1B visa holders and, you know, people from foreign countries, that's illegal. And
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we've already reached many settlements in the civil rights division against companies that are doing
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exactly that. Yeah. Can you give me some more examples of how there are state officials who
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are defying the law when it comes to non-discrimination against whites or Americans?
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Well, I have a lawsuit I just signed off on today, so it hasn't been filed yet. So I can't talk about
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that one. But let's say a state or a city has a policy where they're going to prefer
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non-whites for city or state jobs. That's illegal. And every time I see a policy like that, I open an
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investigation. And once the facts are in, we will pursue that, either with a settlement or, if
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necessary, a lawsuit in the race context. And there are many other contexts. There's gender
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discrimination. We filed a lawsuit recently in Loudoun County, Virginia, and that's actually
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religious discrimination, where Christian boys were penalized because they protested against a
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girl identifying as transgender coming into the locker room and filming them. Boys have rights too,
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and boys have a right to modesty and to say, whoa, I don't want a girl when I'm undressing
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filming me in the locker room. And there were two Christian boys and one Muslim boy.
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There was a complaint against all of them. The Muslim boy's parents stood up for the Muslim boy
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and said, wait a minute, we're not going to tolerate this. And I think for politically correct reasons,
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the school didn't go after the Muslim boy, went after the two Christian boys. And that's discrimination,
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both in that particular choice, as well as in punishing them for having a modesty objection to
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their rights being invaded and refusing to comply with these transgender dictates. And so
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people don't understand that students don't lose all of their rights when they go to school. And so
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we're standing up for these issues all over the country.
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You said something that made me think. The Civil Rights Division has attracted these kind of far
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left activist lawyers for a long time. And really, when you hear civil right, it's almost become a
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progressive buzzword. But you're saying that civil rights law has been, I guess, flouted, but some would
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argue has been used to justify those DEI initiatives or used to justify anti-white or anti-male or anti-American
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discrimination. Why do you think that is? Like, why do civil rights attract that kind of perversion of
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what true equality should look like? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll answer it with a question
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of my own or pointing out a defect on one side, if you will, which is when I went to law school quite a
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long time ago, there really was no career available to a conservative lawyer. And I'm a lifelong
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conservative to make their career, earn a salary, pay your mortgage, doing conservative civil rights
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work. And what I mean by civil rights is where a corporation isn't paying you to do it. You're doing
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it for a greater public good. You may be relying on what's called a fee-shifting statute. So a statute
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where if you win, you get paid. So you're taking an economic risk. But when I graduated from law school,
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there are immediately job opportunities and available pro bono work at my big corporate law
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firms I worked at with the American Civil Liberties Union, with National Abortion Federation, with,
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you know, National Organization of Women. So there is a very well-established liberal edifice using
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facially neutral laws, but only in one direction and no countervailing pressure from the other side.
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Now, it is different today. I started a civil rights organization in addition to my law firm
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that did a lot of civil rights work. And quite a few others have sprung up in the last decade or so,
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initially only in the Christian or religious liberty context, but now going well beyond that.
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You have a lot of organizations now. And so now a young lawyer can make their career, but we're
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decades behind. And so only one side has invested in advancing a ideological or political agenda using
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our federal civil rights laws. Yeah. And so, you know, and what's interesting also is like you look
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at the American Civil Liberties Union. When I was in college, ACLU lawyers stood up for my rights to be
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able to have conservative speech on campus. Not so today. They stopped doing that about 20 years ago.
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And so they, you know, again, they've also retreated from the concept of, well, occasionally we can agree
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with somebody we disagree with. That's not the case anymore. So there's been a vacuum. Now, what I've
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found in building up the civil rights division is we've attracted quite a few young lawyers who are
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interested in feeling good about what they do. I mean, it's great to make a lot of money representing
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one corporation, suing another corporation and fighting over people's money. I mean, I did that
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for a decade. I found it to be quite soulless at some point because I, you know, have my beliefs and
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I feel like doing good during the day, not just with writing checks at tax time. And so, you know,
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I built what I wanted as a civil rights career and I attracted a lot of lawyers to do it with me in
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private practice, but we're behind. And so we're building it. And so it's just a process and more
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lawyers just taking the law context need to know that that's available to them and you can feel good
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about what you do and help your country and help your fellow Americans. What do you think about the
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suggestion that I've seen some conservatives make over the years that we need to repeal the Civil Rights
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Act altogether? Well, I mean, I think that's crazy. I've been using it to benefit Americans and that's
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just, that's not a serious suggestion in my opinion. What needs to be done is to develop the law
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in a positive way. And for that, you bring cases. I mean, some of the civil concepts in the civil rights
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law laws, many laws are being used today by the Civil Rights Division to equalize discrimination of the
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past. When I go into court and I say, when I, when I, when I look at Zoran Mamdani's, you know,
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tenant activist person, say white people are going to have a different relationship to property in the
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future. That is directly at odds with the Fair Housing Act. You can't do that in America. And so
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I'd like there to be a federal vehicle because if I had to rely solely on New York law,
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I couldn't do anything about that then as a federal government. So I do think we have a role
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for federal civil rights laws. I mean, you look at the discrimination that American universities have
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been perpetuating on college applicants. And I've reached with the, you know, with my partner,
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if you will, Linda McMahon, and with the attorney general's blessing, half a billion dollars of
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settlements so far in the first few months of this administration, that's because we have federal
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civil rights laws and title six and, and, and title nine and others that protect our federal civil
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rights. Title nine protects the rights of girls. And we view that as girls having an equal shot in
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sports and title nine is being violated when boys are allowed to take girls trophies.
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That's going to the Supreme Court this week. That's going to the Supreme Court this week. I'll
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be at the oral arguments tomorrow, um, watching that argument. And we authored briefs in that case.
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And if I had to rely on state law, first of all, the federal government couldn't do anything about
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it. California, New York, Illinois, these states are not going to stand up for these rights.
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That's the role of the federal government. When state officials defy federal law, we have to have a
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vehicle to challenge it. And you have to then put personnel in place who are willing to do that and
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perhaps be extremely unpopular with a certain portion of the media and the vocal left.
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Yeah, that's a good point. Um, a lot of people in 2020, very discouraged by what they saw as widespread
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voting fraud, or at least irregularities that made them wonder how fair the process is.
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And the prevailing notion was, you know, it doesn't, all these other issues, it's not that they don't
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matter, but they almost matter less if we don't get election integrity right. If we want to make our
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voices heard, it's obviously very important that that process is impartial and transparent and fair.
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And that's one of the things that you said that you're working on when it comes to what's going on,
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um, as far as voting regulations and actual practices go in states. So what's happening there?
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So let me break that down. So in 2020, I was one of the lawyers for, I was active, both member of the
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Republican National Committee, and also, um, a lawyer for the campaign, uh, at various levels.
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The vast majority of our election laws and how the constitution is set up is that state legislatures
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pass most of the election laws. And there's some certain federal laws that I'll get to in a minute.
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And so the hard work that has to be done is hand to hand combat at the state level. Now, again,
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there's a disproportionate disarmament here because the left has actively invested in lawyers like
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Mark Elias and others. They can count on a revenue stream of tens of millions of dollars to fund their
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law firms to bring frivolous, maybe facially valid, uh, challenges, but in any event, who's fighting
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that on the other side. And one of the reasons I ended up talking about politics for a minute,
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which I don't do now, but like telling you how we got to this point, you know, I was frustrated
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with the Republican National Committee for not being active enough in funding and fighting these
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frivolous challenges. And so that's one of the reasons I, you know, picked up the, picked up the
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torch and ran to challenge the leadership there, um, which did not work out eventually, but I think
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it raised a lot of awareness at what could and should have been done. What happened in 2020 is
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lawyers in the battleground States, including my own law firm went to Pennsylvania and some other
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States. And we did challenge these cases and we filed briefs and we went all the way up to the
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Supreme courts of those States and occasionally to the United States Supreme court, the United States
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Supreme court whiffed and refused to take up the challenge of Pennsylvania, for example, simply
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ignoring its own election laws. Um, many, the, the left very wisely used COVID as an excuse to
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abrogate election law. So Wisconsin has a law that says you can't have an absentee ballot unless you're
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effectively in a nursing home or in your deathbed. They just ignored that. And so, you know, COVID,
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um, people were not allowed to observe the counting of the ballots in Pennsylvania. My law partners were
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there on the ground or in Detroit or other areas because of COVID, of course, you know, that's a really
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great excuse to just ignore laws and nobody held these people accountable. So there was a real
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failure by the judiciary and sort of a little bit too little, too late approach in 2020. And I think
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that some people, many people learned lessons from that. And there was certainly a better job done
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on these issues in, uh, 2024. I mean, the president faced the unprecedented challenge of state officials,
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starting with Colorado and Colorado versus Anderson saying he wasn't entitled to be on the ballot
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because of this fake insurrection narrative. And, um, again, my old law firm led the way for the
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campaign and filed or responded to over 100 challenges in the country. And that one effort
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winning at the United States Supreme Court made the difference in the fact that I'm sitting here
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talking to you today instead of a different fact pattern. Um, but what people don't understand is
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there is no substitute for doing that work in the States. First of all, electing good leaders in
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your States who aren't going to do crazy things. Second, pressing for legislation that creates good
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law, voter ID laws, um, that don't allow ballots to be counted for weeks before or after the election.
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Why, why are we doing that? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Um, early voting in person is one thing
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or a short period perhaps, but election day is election day, not election month or year. Um,
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and so these are some of the things that I think need to be done in the States. Now at the federal
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government level, I administer several federal statutes that are narrow and tailored in scope,
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but they cover some real estate. The, one of the most activist areas of the civil rights division
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in history has been the use of the voting rights act to effectively change outcomes. And, um,
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Georgia passed a very good passage, uh, package of laws after the really shambolic performance in
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the 2020 election and administering their own voting laws. And what's the first thing that the
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Merrick Garland DOJ did and my predecessor is challenged Georgia for trying to clean up and
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improve its voting laws. And so that's one of the lawsuits that we ended when we came into office.
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Uh, so voting rights act is an important part of our work. The help America vote act,
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which requires states to maintain clean and up-to-date voter rolls and some verifiable
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computerized mechanism for maintaining their voter rolls. That's a very active area. There's the, uh,
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National Voter Registration Act, so-called motor voter law. And then there's the, uh,
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UO CAVA, which is Uniform Overseas and Military Voters, which is another kind of widely abused
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law. If you ask me on both sides, not enough military get their right to vote and way too
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many people who don't live in the United States claim residency in a jurisdiction, which they
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really don't have any ties to, to affect the outcome of an election. These are problems on
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both sides that Congress frankly needs to get in there and fix. But under the help America vote
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act, this department of justice has now sued or threatened to sue most of the states in the
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United States. First, I asked for the voter rolls of every state and jurisdiction. I'm now suing 23
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states and the district of Columbia for refusing to comply. I have current compliance from seven
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jurisdictions. I have negotiations that are close to finalized with a number more and they'll be
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announced recently. And I'm about to sue a few more states in the next literally few days. And, uh,
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that only leaves a handful of states. So within nine months, we have put our money where our mouth
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is and insisted that states turn over their data so that the federal government can help them do
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what they're not doing. And that's red states and blue states. I mean, I sued Georgia. I'm going to be
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suing another couple of red states shortly that are refusing to comply. And what they're claiming is,
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oh, Ms. Dillon, AAG Dillon, we have, um, we have state privacy laws. Well, this is a fundamental
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concept of law that every attorney general who's saying that to me or secretary of state, they know
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very well that's not true. The federal government has supremacy over certain areas and our federal
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civil rights laws preempt their privacy statutes. And when you say to me, I can't give you the social
00:26:02.180
security number of a voter because of privacy laws or their date of birth with a straight face,
00:26:09.200
who do you think hands out the social security numbers? Like we hand them out in the federal
00:26:14.820
government. There's no privacy there, folks. You're literally handing it out on the phone,
00:26:19.240
you know, when you're doing banking relationships or, or, you know, many other relationships,
00:26:25.960
you're handing over your driver's license at the airport or, you know, to check into a hotel.
00:26:31.140
I had to do that three times in the last two days. And so what are we talking about here? That's a
00:26:36.480
excuse. And I think the fact that so many election officials, red and blue states are fighting so hard
00:26:44.080
against the federal government, simply comparing the voter rolls against our federal databases of
00:26:50.640
who's a citizen. Are they dead? Are they registered in multiple states? That is very telling because you
00:26:58.860
would think they'd be like, yeah, okay, we are kind of our housekeeping is behind, but you're offering
00:27:03.180
me a free cleaning and I'm not taking it. What's up with that? So we're going to go, go and finish
00:27:08.240
this job pretty soon. But we're also, you know, looking at states that are continuing to engage
00:27:14.840
in racial gerrymandering, which is in our view, illegal. And we're waiting for the Supreme Court's
00:27:19.960
ruling in Louisiana versus Calais, important voting rights act case, which again, my team authored the,
00:27:26.780
coauthored the amicus brief on should come out any minute now, frankly. And the Supreme Court will
00:27:32.660
settle this question forever. But I think it's very clear under the Voting Rights Act,
00:27:36.120
the use of race as a proxy for how people are going to vote is impermissible and outdated.
00:27:46.780
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I saw a story, and you can tell me it's veracity, but that in Minnesota that there has been like
00:29:03.680
this process of basically someone saying that they can vouch for someone else or a group of people
00:29:10.840
when it comes to voting. So I guess not having to show their ID is just saying, yeah, I know these
00:29:16.220
people. They're with me. What's going on there? Yeah, that's crazy. So I'm already suing Minnesota
00:29:21.520
for its refusal to turn over its voter rolls to us. And that's before it became fashionable to
00:29:27.340
dunk on Minnesota in the last couple of weeks. But that story is accurate. So Scott Pressler,
00:29:36.160
who's a friend of mine, brought this to my attention. And I immediately opened up a federal
00:29:40.260
civil rights investigation into this because under Minnesota law, and this law dates back over 50 years,
00:29:46.900
an individual can vouch for up to eight people. So if you're a registered voter, you can say,
00:29:54.340
Bob and Susie and Dave and Doug, they're with me. They're my neighbors. And trust me,
00:30:00.460
they live in my neighborhood. So they're entitled to vote in this county. That's it. No ID shown. I mean,
00:30:07.600
even in California, I think when I registered to vote, I had to show my utility bills or my rent bill
00:30:14.540
or whatever mortgage statement. Not in Minnesota, but even worse, if you're an employee of a residential
00:30:21.800
facility like a nursing home or an adult disability center, you can vouch for the entire population of
00:30:27.680
that facility with no evidence of where these people live. Okay, so that is one of the reasons why
00:30:33.840
Democrats don't want to disrupt what's going on there with these fake daycares. Of course. That really
00:30:39.180
just kind of represent these Somalian communities that I guess go there, they take the taxpayer money,
00:30:44.020
million dollars every year or more. I don't know what they do there all day, sit, eat, whatever.
00:30:50.280
But the Democrats are getting voters from that. Look, we're investigating it. That would be a fair
00:30:57.920
inference to the shady practices that we're seeing in Minnesota. And Minnesota, there's one other state
00:31:05.760
that has that practice, but it's a state that doesn't have voter rolls. So they have a kind of,
00:31:13.000
that's North Dakota. Interesting. So they don't have maintained sort of voter registration and voter
00:31:18.120
rolls as such by, by jurisdiction, by either by political or otherwise. So there is a vouching
00:31:24.080
process there and it's very different. There's not a huge influx of, you know, immigrant voters there and
00:31:31.380
it's a much smaller population. So I think it, it's a quaint practice. We'll see. We'll, you know,
00:31:36.960
maybe that needs to be stopped as well. But for now, my focus is on Minnesota where this entire
00:31:42.560
state's management seems to be rampant and ripe with fraud.
00:31:48.540
Yeah. And what is the involvement of the DOJ and your division in what is going on there with the
00:31:55.720
daycares? We can talk about a lot that's going on there with ICE and everything, but let's start
00:32:00.640
with the daycares and the fraud. Do y'all have involvement in that? Not the civil rights division
00:32:06.200
as such, but certainly the United States Department of Justice is investigating that. And so the United
00:32:10.980
States attorney in Minnesota has already brought numerous charges. Even the Biden administration
00:32:17.080
opened up investigations into fraud there so far, if I recall correctly, and I hope I'm not inaccurate,
00:32:22.620
but I think there've been, um, 62 convictions already of people with fraud. Many new investigations
00:32:30.600
opened up. Uh, I think 90, there are 90 plus investigations ongoing that were opened up by
00:32:36.780
the Department of Justice. And I'm sure in the last couple of weeks that's accelerated. And so, um,
00:32:42.140
I spoke to the U S attorney there just yesterday by message and, you know, he's got his hands full
00:32:48.460
with so many issues going on there in Minnesota. And what, one of the positive things that's come
00:32:56.120
out of Minnesota is citizen journalists have begun to investigate this in other States. So DOJ is
00:33:02.560
getting reports in Ohio and other jurisdictions of similar rings of fraud that are happening
00:33:08.740
systematically. And I can only imagine that California is also a target rich environment based
00:33:13.920
based on their bogus, uh, homeless industrial complex and other government grant programs that
00:33:20.900
are ripe for abuse. Are sanctuary city or state policies where a state or a local jurisdiction
00:33:29.580
refuses to comply with ICE, like a detainment order, or they refuse to release an illegal alien to
00:33:37.500
ICE. Is that legal? And does that fall under your purview?
00:33:41.500
Not in the civil rights division, but the sanctuary city policies are being used by other parts of the
00:33:49.380
government. And there are some DOJ investigations involving active obstruction of our law enforcement
00:33:54.580
efforts that is illegal under federal law. But, uh, I think, you know, ICE, uh, Homeland Security
00:34:01.400
have been active in that area as well. And, um, you know, challenging jurisdictions that are refusing
00:34:07.820
to comply with federal law when it comes to that. But, um, yeah, there are many different parts of the
00:34:13.600
government focused on that particular issue. It seems to me that if you're an open defiance of
00:34:18.920
federal law, now we do have supremacy in the United States over immigration, you can't, under certain
00:34:25.560
federal opinions, force states to do your work for you, to do the compliance work. And there've been
00:34:30.720
some rulings in California and other jurisdictions where you can't sort of deputize or expect them to
00:34:35.680
comply. But at the same time, every state in the United States is a welfare queen. They get a ton
00:34:41.620
of federal money from the federal government. And if they're openly defying federal law,
00:34:48.820
why is that? And so I think there's definitely the power of the purse and spending power that can be
00:34:55.140
deployed to put pressure on states to do that. That's a policy matter for the White House.
00:34:58.780
Mm-hmm. You mentioned earlier the rights of prisoners and a story, a persistent story,
00:35:05.840
uh, that we have, you know, covered, talked about on this show for many years is in places like
00:35:12.580
California, Washington, other blue states, you have men who believe they're women many times with a
00:35:18.580
violent past, sometimes sexually violent past transferring into women's prisons. And sometimes
00:35:25.000
women are assaulted. I just saw a story, I think, I think it was maybe Massachusetts where a woman
00:35:29.960
said, Hey, I've been raped multiple times by this guy who says he's trans. And very often the woman is
00:35:36.200
actually chastised. Yes. So I assume that does fall under your purview. What's going on there?
00:35:41.840
Yes. Um, I saw the news story about Massachusetts and we've opened up a federal civil rights investigation
00:35:46.360
into that fact pattern. We have, um, uh, active civil rights investigation under our, um, prison reform laws
00:35:55.520
into Colorado for prisoner conditions ranging from transgender violence to, uh, abuse of the elderly
00:36:04.460
prisoners and heating and cooling conditions and others. And, you know, um, and there's some horrific
00:36:11.620
stories out there and like, look, it's my perhaps bleeding heart view that you, you should, no one
00:36:17.600
should be raped in an American prison, male or female. Like you are serving your time for a crime
00:36:24.680
you committed that should not include unreasonable violations of cruel and unusual punishment, which
00:36:31.760
certainly would include being violently assaulted or raped, which is such a traumatic thing. Um,
00:36:38.780
they're being forced to share an intimate space with a man. Same. That is cruel and unusual.
00:36:43.860
You don't lose your religious rights in a prison. I mean, you know, there's certain restrictions on
00:36:47.600
your liberty, but I've opened up investigations into houses of, um, of incarceration that are refusing
00:36:54.160
to allow prisoners to pray according to their faith. Uh, and there are some great religious
00:36:59.220
organizations that Christian Jewish and others seek and others that stand up for the rights of these
00:37:05.560
prisoners and they should, they should come out of prison able to integrate into society. And faith
00:37:11.600
is such an important part of coming to grips with our shortcomings as human beings. And so depriving
00:37:16.720
that is illegal. And we are certainly going after that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very concerned about the
00:37:23.100
transgender issue and, and prisons. And, you know, you've got a lot of people, people who identify as
00:37:29.060
Christian, obviously a lot of progressives who, you know, they feel like they're taking up the cause of
00:37:34.020
the most vulnerable and they're the first to speak up about, you know, the dangers of ice and this is
00:37:40.500
Nazi Germany. But when it comes to very vulnerable populations, whether it's unborn children inside
00:37:46.180
the womb or who are literally the least, you know, the, the least powerful and have the least political
00:37:51.900
capital, or when it comes to these vulnerable women who can't offer anything, they certainly don't
00:37:57.160
have any political capital. It's not in vogue to defend them. Like, I just don't see them sticking up
00:38:02.540
for them and saying, yeah, they have a right not to be raped or they have a right not to change in
00:38:07.180
front of a man in prison. And it really disturbs me. And so I'm glad to hear that you care so much
00:38:14.400
about that and that y'all are doing something about that as much as you can anyway, because it is,
00:38:21.020
It is. I mean, the progressives are total hypocrites and you've seen some voices on the left break from
00:38:27.080
that progressive movement. J.K. Rowling is a great example of that in the UK where she's, I think,
00:38:32.500
said in the last 24 hours that I saw online that, you know, you shouldn't be raped in a prison or
00:38:38.480
forced to, you know, subordinate your human dignity. Of course, that would seem obvious. And yet
00:38:46.060
there's this total hypocrisy on the left on this issue. And it's as if the feminist movement has
00:38:53.020
completely abandoned its original premise. I mean, Title IX is about equalizing girls' opportunity
00:38:58.900
in sports, really, and education. Where's the hue and cry when boys take the girls' trophies?
00:39:07.840
What does that do to the self-esteem of girls? We've all been girls and that was a tough time and,
00:39:13.860
you know, you really needed that extra boost and opportunity to be able to
00:39:17.100
win trophies and compete and have scholarship opportunities.
00:39:21.780
They're being taken away and we're being victimized as a sex yet again by this woke movement.
00:39:30.100
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We were talking off air just about kind of the demands that you and then other people in the
00:40:51.260
administration and the DOJ get. Hey, we want this person arrested. When are the arrests going to
00:40:56.500
happen? And of course, all of us, we have an instinct. We want the bad guy to get what's coming,
00:41:02.320
you know, and we want goodness to win. But what does that process actually look like? And why are some
00:41:11.500
So just starting with myself, the vast majority of the work that I do in the civil rights division
00:41:17.640
is civil in nature, meaning I can go after people, punish them. I can get fines. I can get injunctions.
00:41:22.720
I can stop bad practices. I can get consent decrees. But that doesn't typically involve arresting
00:41:27.940
people. Where I will arrest people is hate crimes, attacks on houses of worship, synagogues, murders.
00:41:34.580
We're investigating numerous hate crimes involving race, religion, sex, and otherwise. And those
00:41:42.740
are some headlines in the news. So I can't really talk about those cases. And when people are talking
00:41:48.060
about, I want to see members of Congress perp walked, or I want to see election officials perp walked.
00:41:55.060
What you have to first understand is that's mostly the purview of other people in the government,
00:41:59.140
and they face the following challenge. Much of the evidence involving what I believe is a
00:42:04.120
systematic violation of federal civil rights and due process and Fourth Amendment and search and
00:42:09.800
seizure laws by the prior administration was also actively hidden by the prior administration. I
00:42:15.620
think we've all seen the stories of documents being uncovered from burn bags that are stuffed in
00:42:20.460
safes and in rooms in the FBI building across the street from me at the United States Department
00:42:25.560
of Justice. So some of that is still coming to light. Some of that will never come to light.
00:42:29.440
And some of that has come to light, and we're processing it in the DOJ.
00:42:36.980
There is a deep state in the FBI and the DOJ. So while there's a leadership that the president
00:42:41.940
called to service, and we have a layer of leadership under us, the rank and file in FBI, DOJ, some of them,
00:42:52.960
that's why they quit in my department. They didn't quit in some other department. They're just like
00:42:56.460
slow rolling things that they ought to be looking at. So we're getting our hands around that and
00:43:00.960
forcing the issue. But I think you are going to see these things eventually come to grand juries and
00:43:07.540
result in indictments. We haven't even been in office for a year as yet. The head of the criminal
00:43:13.540
division of the United States Department of Justice was just sworn in last month.
00:43:16.940
There are senators on our side who don't particularly find the needs of the Department of Justice and the
00:43:26.880
president's administration to get people confirmed so they can do their jobs. That may be less important
00:43:31.560
than having fundraisers back in their districts. Okay. Some of us are working around the clock. I mean,
00:43:36.200
I was on a panel last week with Tyson Duva, the head of the criminal division. He's got a huge force of
00:43:42.800
people under him. And with the Epstein files, he was working on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve,
00:43:48.880
redacting, reviewing, and heading up a team to do that. So we are understaffed and working extremely
00:43:56.700
hard at the DOJ. And I'm hiring. And frankly, there are not enough lawyers out there who want to step up
00:44:06.440
and serve their country with us. So if anyone's watching this and wants to make a difference,
00:44:10.440
you could do it in any of the 94 United States attorney's offices. They all have needs all
00:44:15.660
over the country or in main justice in a number of different areas. And so it's really rewarding work
00:44:21.520
and we need more people to do it. But this attorney general could not be more conservative and loyal
00:44:31.040
to the president, both and principled. And so we are not the other side where we come up with an
00:44:37.340
endpoint. And then we work backwards to find some crime and get the person who you don't like. That's
00:44:44.040
not how justice works. It's the Department of Justice, not the Department of Perp Walks and
00:44:49.120
Convictions. And so what you do is you build the case, you find the violation, then you have a law
00:44:58.120
enforcement process. Law enforcement includes getting people's communications. You have to go to a
00:45:03.760
federal judge and get a warrant for that. You do your investigation. You then build the case and
00:45:10.820
you then figure out, if I bring this case in this district, am I going to get a setback from the
00:45:15.680
Court of Appeals that bars this road for me or where do I bring this case? And so there's just like
00:45:19.920
a number of different things that we look at when we decide which case to bring first, where to bring
00:45:25.440
it, when to bring it, and how to bring it in such a way that we get the conviction or the outcome that
00:45:32.060
we are seeking in the course of justice. Yeah. What about something like the FACE Act? There have
00:45:38.560
been pro-lifers that have been put in prison. I mean, we're talking elderly Christian women who were
00:45:44.280
trying to, you know, protest, maybe stand in front of an abortion clinic, and they were convicted and
00:45:51.080
thrown in prison, in federal prison under the FACE Act. Can you break down what that is and what y'all
00:45:56.680
think about it as a division? Absolutely. It's something I'm very passionate about. So the FACE Act
00:46:01.260
was passed in 1994. Bill Clinton signed it into law, and it was designed to effectively protect abortion
00:46:11.420
clinics. But it wasn't going to pass with any Republican support without a corollary aspect to it,
00:46:19.060
which was to protect houses of worship from blockages and obstruction. So in all these years, up until
00:46:27.300
I was the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, nobody ever used that houses of worship part to
00:46:33.020
prosecute protesters or criminals blocking access to a house of worship. So we started to do that. Let's set
00:46:40.140
that aside for a minute. The Biden administration was extremely active in persecuting people of faith
00:46:45.820
protesting outside abortion clinics. I've represented many pro-life organizations and protesters in court
00:46:54.560
and journalists like David Daleiden and others. And so I've seen how the government and the judges
00:47:01.720
weaponize this. I mean, judges refuse to recuse themselves when their wives are actively involved in
00:47:06.820
abortion clinics. So there's a real problem there. The president pardoned the protesters of the nature
00:47:18.740
that you described. So there were some who had quite lengthy sentences, and he pardoned all of those at
00:47:24.600
the beginning of his term. I went to court to defend a conviction. I think they brought one set of
00:47:32.440
convictions really in the Biden administration for a pro-life pregnancy center that was attacked by a
00:47:39.500
group called Jane's Revenge. Jane's Revenge is this violent code pinkish Antifa type organization that
00:47:47.400
had a string of attacks on pro-life clinics, crisis pregnancy centers in Florida, all over Florida.
00:47:56.900
And they prosecuted four of these folks. Three of them pled guilty. One of them decided to roll the dice and go to
00:48:04.180
trial. We used a law I mentioned earlier in our discussion here, the Klan Act conspiracy statute to accuse that
00:48:15.560
protester of conspiring to attack multiple houses of worship. And they spray painted the houses of not worship, but of
00:48:23.940
these healthcare facilities. They spray painted them. They terrorized the staff. The staff had to close down
00:48:32.660
these crisis pregnancy, religiously based counseling centers, and higher extra security, and, you know,
00:48:41.260
effectively shut down for a period of time because of this terror attempt. And so the Biden DOJ got a
00:48:50.540
conviction, 120-day sentence for what pro-life protesters got years in prison for, and not even,
00:48:58.660
some of them were just praying, not spray painting or blocking entrances. They weren't being violent.
00:49:04.000
They weren't even blocking. They were praying. They were invoking God. Very different fact pattern than
00:49:08.960
these, you know, crazed people. Biden administration really put pro-lifers in prison who were simply
00:49:15.040
praying. Simply praying. In front of pregnancy centers using the FACE Act. Correct. And these
00:49:20.720
Jane's Revenge groups who, after Roe was overturned, went to these pregnancy centers. You're saying only
00:49:27.080
one time did they get convicted and got 120 days in prison, some of these people? But there were a lot
00:49:32.420
of instances of this happening. It wasn't just like... There are a lot of instances that haven't been
00:49:35.780
prosecuted yet. I mean, I've asked people who've mentioned this to me in conversation. I said,
00:49:41.520
well, bring me the facts. I will open up a case and look at it. Because if it's within the statute
00:49:45.560
of limitations, I'm very interested in that. Because everyone should be allowed to go under
00:49:50.620
this law to a health care facility or a religiously based health care facility and get counseling or
00:49:58.120
get information. And so I went to court in the 11th Circuit to defend that conviction. And, you know,
00:50:03.740
these types of folks never have a shortage of lawyers to stand up for their rights. And so we did
00:50:08.780
win. And that case is called Oropesa versus United States. And Oropesa had her 120-day sentence.
00:50:15.740
And it was upheld under the 11th Circuit. And so we will continue to use that law. And now
00:50:24.080
we are opening up FACE Act investigations involving blockages of houses of worship.
00:50:29.880
I opened up an investigation, the first of its kind, a civil case, which, you know, may be expanded
00:50:37.160
in West Orange, New Jersey, where a pro-Palestinian group attacked a congregation
00:50:45.140
holding a religious service at a synagogue. And they not only blocked access to it,
00:50:52.480
they also use these soccer fan toys, Vuvuzelas, which make a very loud noise to drown out the
00:51:01.480
religious service. We're seeing this use of these noisemakers all over the country. I have
00:51:07.560
been actively investigating attacks on the Parkey Synagogue in Midtown Manhattan, Lenox Hill,
00:51:18.120
Manhattan, the Wilshire Boulevard Historic Synagogue in Los Angeles, one other synagogue in Los Angeles.
00:51:27.680
There was an arson over the weekend in Jackson, Mississippi. We were investigating that and others.
00:51:36.480
We have other statutes in our playbook, which we've used to convict numerous attackers of churches
00:51:43.760
in the last several months. There was a bad guy planting bombs in his backpack in houses of worship
00:51:54.160
in Colorado, California, and Arizona. He's been convicted. There was a bad person who beheaded a statue
00:52:02.820
of Mary and Jesus recently. We've reached a conviction in that case. And so any attack on a house of
00:52:13.600
worship or a religious service in this country is under our jurisdiction, and we have a zero-tolerance
00:52:20.760
policy towards that. Beyond just attacks, we have hostility to faith in so many zoning commissions and
00:52:29.640
city planning departments, including in blue states and red states. There is a situation that we are
00:52:36.840
investigating in Alabama where a particular jurisdiction decided that they didn't want a
00:52:43.180
Christian drug recovery center to be able to operate there. That's a violation of the Religious Land
00:52:49.600
Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which I administer. And so we've opened up an investigation
00:52:54.980
there, where zoning commissions say they don't want a church or a synagogue in their neighborhood.
00:53:00.000
Um, that's a violation of federal law. So I would say proudly that this is the most pro-faith
00:53:06.240
department of justice in American history. Wow. This is just all evidence. This entire conversation,
00:53:11.840
everything that y'all are, that you're talking about, I'm like, y'all are so busy. Y'all do need
00:53:15.720
more lawyers, I'm sure. It matters who you vote for. People like to say, oh, you know, politics is too
00:53:22.660
divisive. I want to live above the fray. I always say politics matter because policy matters because
00:53:27.940
people matter. Politics affects policy. Policy affects people. People matter. People don't
00:53:32.760
think that they're not just voting for Trump. They're voting for him to put in people like you
00:53:37.840
that care about faith, that care about the sanctity of life, that care about the definition of men and
00:53:42.880
women. All of that has a real effect on vulnerable people who would otherwise be powerless without the
00:53:48.620
defense of people like you and good lawyers. So who you vote for matters. Elections absolutely matter.
00:53:55.080
In addition to all the election integrity stuff that you're doing.
00:54:02.620
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life. That's preborn.com slash Allie. Okay. As we end, a couple of things. What is it like living in DC
00:55:12.880
and being a part of an administration that I know you're really proud of, but it's, it might be
00:55:18.200
really different than kind of your life before you're living in California. Now you're living in
00:55:23.780
DC. Um, how do you feel just like on a personal level? Well, it's so different. Um, so California is
00:55:31.840
a crazy place. Everyone loves to hate on it, but it is really beautiful. Of course. And it's redeeming,
00:55:36.860
redeeming quality. And it's got some great people. Great people. People are chill. No one,
00:55:43.220
you know, you walk into a restaurant in San Francisco and no one really cares if you're a
00:55:47.620
barista or a federal judge, you're treated the same. I really love that about California. And I
00:55:52.060
could see the ocean every day from my homes in California. And in DC, it's very, you know,
00:55:58.200
what do you do? Who do you work for? What agency are you with? No chill. And it's always transactional.
00:56:04.080
Even you go to a conservative cocktail party and everyone's immediately trying to figure out how
00:56:08.520
they can use you to obtain their end. So I find that very disturbing, but, um, but, um,
00:56:15.420
this administration has a very strong vibe and president Trump, who I've supported three times
00:56:23.040
has really changed, you know, I think the culture in many ways and people are willing to fight
00:56:29.320
where they were more just willing to sort of further their careers in the past. And so he's
00:56:33.720
really picked those fighters in this administration. I'm surrounded by people in my
00:56:39.140
building, including people who work for me and people who are my peers, Senate confirmed who are
00:56:44.340
fighters. And that's, that feels good. Um, I haven't had enough time to knit. I knit this sweater a
00:56:52.020
couple of years ago. That was going to be my next question. Please tell us about, okay, we got to
00:56:56.320
get a shot of the sweater, please. It's so beautiful.
00:57:00.100
Thank you. And this is, this yarn is made by an American yarn manufacturer. And this yarn is dyed
00:57:04.800
by an American dye maker. I'm kind of very pro American, my yarn, but, um, but yeah, I don't
00:57:10.000
have enough time. It's like seven days a week job, but people are saying, how can you have time for all
00:57:14.660
these hats that you pump out? Well, first of all, I travel a lot for this job. And so hats are great
00:57:20.080
for knitting on planes. And so I crank out hats and now, um, now they've become a high demand item
00:57:26.800
and I can't knit enough for the people who I work with, but, but, but overall, I would say that
00:57:32.060
concept that I came of age in the Ronald Reagan era. I was a 1980s graduate of college. And that
00:57:39.880
concept of being happy warriors is there. And I go to the white house frequently because I deal with a
00:57:45.360
lot of high level policy matters. And so I'm constantly conferring with people in the white
00:57:50.360
house. And when I'm in the white house, I run into my friends and other agencies who I've been in
00:57:56.040
green rooms with and in, in, on news shows. And now they're running the government in homeland
00:58:03.160
security or ice or treasury or energy or a department of war or, um, OMB or, you know, all of these folks,
00:58:13.100
I feel like it's kind of a giant reunion in a way of all the people who made, who made this happen.
00:58:19.880
And so that part is great. Now people ask me the question, a little different question.
00:58:23.620
How are you settling down in DC? I'm not settling down in DC. I went there to do a job. I intend to
00:58:30.280
do it to my fullest seven days a week, year round, very hard. And then I intend to go back to America
00:58:36.640
when I'm done. So that's kind of my mentality. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you about your
00:58:41.280
knitting, but you've already told us about that. Okay. Tell us on the final thing, if someone wants
00:58:46.820
to learn how to knit, how would you recommend they start? Because I bought a little kit actually for
00:58:52.620
my six-year-old and it was too hard for me, not even for her. Like the directions were just, I was
00:58:58.940
like, you lost me. Um, so what would you say? How should someone start? So there are what we call in
00:59:05.800
the knitting world, LYSs, local yarn stores, and everything is online, but there are ladies,
00:59:12.120
usually ladies who have local yarn stores in most communities. And so find a local yarn store.
00:59:17.640
The local yarn store will often have knitting classes or drop-ins on a particular evening.
00:59:23.500
That's what I need to do. And you can go there and there's nothing that a grandma or a auntie
00:59:28.460
loves more than to show somebody who doesn't know how to knit, but wants to, how to knit. And there's
00:59:33.680
some good kits out there. There's a company called Pearl Soho that sells really easy scarf kits.
00:59:38.300
I've taught many people in my family how to knit and they don't stick with it, but it's just like
00:59:42.320
any other skill. This is a 10,000 hour skill to be able to crank the sweater out in 40 hours,
00:59:48.360
you know, but you can still do a scarf with just a couple of hours of trial and error if you're not
00:59:52.960
too fussy about it. And so I do encourage it. It is, it really takes, particularly if you're in a high
00:59:58.140
stress job, like I have always been in my whole life, it really takes your blood pressure down.
01:00:02.940
It helps you focus. You're not constantly doom scrolling and scanning your phone.
01:00:07.900
Yeah. I listen to hours of podcasts, murder mysteries, and travelogues on my headphones
01:00:16.020
while I'm knitting or watching TV or what have you. And so I highly recommend it.
01:00:20.700
Yeah. That's awesome. Well, Harmi, thank you so much for taking the time to join us and thanks
01:00:24.700
for what y'all are doing. I'm very grateful for it.
01:00:26.660
Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it.
01:00:28.440
Okay, guys, thanks so much for listening. If you have not subscribed to Blaze TV,
01:00:37.400
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01:00:42.140
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01:00:57.000
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