Infighting among top officials at the Justice Department boiled over Tuesday when the head of President Donald Trump’s so-called antisemitism task force publicly called out Harmeet Dhillon, who leads the agency’s Civil Rights Division.
Task force head Leo Terrell, who has himself promoted antisemitic rhetoric himself, issued comments to Jewish Insider confirming a Monday report in The New York Times that spotlighted his feud with Dhillon, who has effectively perverted the Civil Rights Division into a tool for assaulting civil rights. The Times reported that Terrell accused Dhillon of seeking to punish him because he was getting more airtime on Fox News than she was — and that Dhillon said Terrell is unqualified for his role.
Terrell told Jewish Insider that the Times’ report on their feud is “accurate, 100 percent,” and said the media should “go beyond the headlines and learn the truth.” He also made other comments that seemed like a clear criticism of Dhillon, such as:
“The wrong people are in charge. The wrong people. Take that statement [with] one of the questions you asked me previously. When you’ve got people who consider Tucker Carlson a friend and a client, and want to make sure no one knows — give me a break. They’re in the government. Give me a break. I’m not putting two and two together. You’re smart enough, but those things are kept buried.”
Dhillon previously served as an attorney for Carlson.
Carlson, the far-right former Fox News host with a long history of bigoted rhetoric, has divided the conservative movement with his repeated platforming of Nazi sympathizers — such as Nick Fuentes.
In a statement, spokesperson Kiersten Pels said the DOJ has a “phenomenal record on civil rights” under Dhillon’s leadership. But Terrell’s comments alone qualify this dustup as yet another example of dysfunction metastasizing throughout Trump’s administration, where — as my colleague Steve Benen noted last year — infighting among officials hired to execute the president’s illiberal agenda has become commonplace.
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