Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon Talks DOJ/Trump

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
Bloomberg Audio Studios, Podcasts, Radio, News.

**Joe Mathieu** (0:07)
Turning back to one of the big stories of the day and one of the big questions that people are asking, conceptually speaking here, what should be the relationship between the White House and the Department of Justice? Todd Blanche was asked about this on Meet the Press yesterday, of course, the now formal Attorney General of the United States, whether he would pledge independence from the White House.

**Todd Blanche** (0:29)
There's a big difference between saying we will always do our job and investigate any case and act independently of the White House. No, I'm not going to pledge that and no attorney general should ever pledge that.

**Kailey Leinz** (0:43)
And I'm pleased to say we have another voice from the DOJ joining us now in our Washington DC studio, the Assistant US Attorney General for Civil Rights, Harmeet Dhillon is with us now on Bloomberg TV and radio. Thank you so much for joining us. I'm curious how you would answer the very same question Mr. Blanch posed, which is should the DOJ be independent from the White House, not necessarily act in counter of the White House, but not feel obligated to do a president's bidding?

**Harmeet Dhillon** (1:10)
No, I think the way Todd answered that question is exactly correct. I would have answered it the same way.
And it is the law. And in fact, every president is entitled to have a Department of Justice that is part of the executive branch and answers to the president. The president appoints that person, and the president's priorities are our priorities. And it is ludicrous to suggest that the DOJ should be independent somehow. And in addition to that, I would point out as recently as President Obama's Attorney General described himself as his wingman. And so it hasn't even historically been the case on the left that there was a pretense that the DOJ was independent of the executive branch somehow.

**Joe Mathieu** (1:51)
Well, the first example that everyone brings up is JFK, right? You put his brother in charge of the DOJ. But I'm curious to just explore this with a little bit more detail with you, because Todd Blanch called it an extraordinarily narrative, that the president says go prosecute X and Y and he does it. Give us a sense of what we're missing here in this conversation.

**Harmeet Dhillon** (2:12)
Well, I think he's talking about the accusation that the president himself specifically directs certain prosecutions.

**Joe Mathieu** (2:16)
Well, that's right, cuz a lot of people assume that. So tell us how different it is.

**Harmeet Dhillon** (2:19)
I think what we have is media narratives that have been very negative for the president dating back to when he ran in 2016 I've been a supporter of his for a while, so I've been following it closely. And every president has their priorities. And in the way, for example, the Civil Rights Division I announced on my first week, we're going to be following the president's executive orders and enforcing them. And that itself caused a human cry as if somehow we're not supposed to do that. But those are the policy prerogatives. I think the president's policy priorities and prerogatives are extremely clear.
He puts out executive orders, makes statements, and we have our law enforcement priorities of the Department of Justice going after crime. It is the attorney general and all of the subordinate officers, our job to do our best to effectuate both our statutory duties as well as policy priorities. Both of those things go hand in hand.

**Kailey Leinz** (3:12)
Well, when you talk about policy priorities and going after crime, how does that pertain to the 2026 midterms? The cycle that we are in now is we've obviously seen resources deployed to polling sites for monitoring as recently as last week's primaries. There is obviously an effort surrounding voter rolls. What more should we be expecting of the DOJ when it comes to election security and perceived vulnerabilities?

**Harmeet Dhillon** (3:36)
So we began our election security work almost as soon as I was sworn in last April. This is an ongoing duty and obligation. And by the way, it is no different than in Democrat administrations. In and out since 1957, the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division has sent monitors to election hotspots, polling places to increase voter confidence, to troubleshoot problems. And we are doing that now. We just did it in the primary. We're going to do it to the tune of approximately 1,000 election monitors in the November election. And this is just something that DOJ does, nothing different about it.
Well, we are still formulating our final list, but the places where there may be language issues, places where there may have been access of disability rights issues, places where there may be voter fraud issues that we've seen. We've had some prosecutions. I think you've seen some of those. There'll be some prosecutions in the pipeline of people who voted illegally who should not have. And we see a problem, frankly, with some election officials refusing to clean up their voter rolls and knowingly allowing non-citizens, for example, to stay on the voter rolls. This is a federal crime. And so we reminded people of that. But overall, the goal is not so much going after one voter here or there. It is increasing all American citizens' confidence in our elections, and that requires us to enforce our laws.