By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON, Dec 9 (Reuters) – More than 200 former employees of the U.S. Justice Department on Tuesday criticized what they called the ongoing “destruction” of its Civil Rights Division, saying President Donald Trump’s administration has abandoned its mission of protecting vulnerable Americans.
In an open letter on the 68th anniversary of the division’s creation, they alleged that Attorney General Pam Bondi and Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon have killed important cases intended to protect people from sexual harassment and assault, police brutality and voting inequities. They also accused leadership of changing how civil rights investigations are conducted by demanding they “find facts to fit the Administration’s pre-determined outcomes.”
“Most of us planned to stay at the division following the 2024 election. But after witnessing this Administration destroy much of our work, we made the heartbreaking decision to leave,” they wrote in the letter, which was published by Justice Connection – an advocacy group for DOJ employees founded by a former division attorney. “Now, we must sound the alarm about the near destruction of DOJ’s once-revered crown jewel.”
The Civil Rights Division was established by the 1957 Civil Rights Act. The law was originally enacted to help undo discriminatory Jim Crow segregation and protect the voting rights of Black people.
The Justice Department has said it is carrying out the agenda that Trump was elected to perform. A spokesperson in September said that the Civil Rights Division has been “restored to its original mission of protecting the constitutional rights of all Americans, instead of pursuing a targeted political agenda against administration opponents.”
‘WE WANT THE PUBLIC TO KNOW’
Tuesday marked the first time that many former division attorneys have publicly spoken out since leaving the department.
Robyn Bitner, one of the letter’s organizers, said the group hopes it will educate Americans about what is happening and inspire them to take action.
“We want the American people to be our first audience,” said Bitner, a former trial attorney who handled civil rights investigations involving discrimination against juveniles. “They are the people whose rights we are protecting. We want the public to know what is happening.”
Dhillon has upended the division’s traditional enforcement priorities and refocused them on Trump’s executive directives.
The division has nixed consent decrees that were in place to protect against police abuses such as excessive use of force and segregation in public schools.
“The weaponization of consent decrees ended when I took over the Civil Rights Division,” Dhillon said in a December 6 post on X.
Since January, the division has lost about 75% of its attorneys, which the letter says was part of a “coordinated effort” to drive people out.
“The new priorities of the division are really rooted in partisan politics, and not protecting the rights of all,” said Regan Rush, the former chief of the section that led civil rights investigations into police abuses.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch in Washington; Editing by Scott Malone and Matthew Lewis)
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