DOJ Civil Rights Chief Scrolls Social Media for Anti-DEI Targets

The Justice Department’s top civil rights enforcer is using social media to single out anti-DEI targets, an approach former division lawyers say is at odds with career attorneys’ responsibility to carefully vet discrimination claims.

Harmeet Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Civil Rights Division, this week promoted DOJ’s interest in allegations shared in a series of viral X posts by a Tennessee musician alleging he was denied a role at the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra due to DEI initiatives. One of the posts Dhillon shared listed the email and phone number of the symphony’s CEO, Rachel Ford.

“Rachel, we have questions,” Dhillon wrote.

The post is the latest example of Dhillon turning to her personal and government social media accounts to amplify users alleging discrimination as the division reorients its focus to cases that advance the Trump administration’s anti-DEI emphasis.

The use of social media to set DOJ priorities opens individuals up to public scrutiny in a way that could undermine potential DOJ investigations, former DOJ lawyers said.

“The Civil Rights Division has a clear process that it goes through before it makes a public accusation of wrongdoing,” including ensuring “it has the facts and investigation to back up that accusation,” said Regan Rush, former chief of the division’s special litigation section who left the department in May 2025.

“Suggesting a violation of the law has occurred—through social media or press—before a full investigation risks vilifying the target before all the facts are known,” and “undermines the credibility of the department,” Rush said.

Dhillon, a political appointee and prolific social media user with more than 1.5 million X followers, frequently targets county and city officials, along with local police departments and authorities for actions that individuals allege promote DEI or target White people.

Dhillon’s past engagement has also included a December post promoting a local news story on a school bus driver fired after displaying a sign telling students to not speak Spanish. Dhillon called the story “deeply concerning,” and said she had directed her division to “open an investigation into this situation implicating DEI wokeness.”

The Justice Department declined to comment.

‘Valuable Tool’

Unlike her predecessors, Dhillon regularly engages with social media users, which she said in a recent conservative talk show interview is a “very valuable tool” for the division.

“We do open up investigations based on internet leads, and I’m proud of that,” Dhillon said in December on the Hugh Hewitt Show, citing the Libs of TikTok account as “a great source for some of our issues involving schools or employment.” Libs of TikTok, with 4.5 million followers on X, frequently postsconservative commentary on political and cultural issues.

Dhillon, a former Republican Party official and campaign lawyer for Trump, in September reposted Libs of TikTok’s criticism of a North Carolina county’s program for expectant Black mothers. She announced that DOJ sent a letter to local leaders threatening an investigation into what Dhillon called “an illegal, race-based program.”

In Dhillon’s posts targeting the Knoxville Symphony Orchestra and its CEO, Dhillon thanked the musician alleging discrimination for “bringing this to the public’s attention.”

“Ending government DEI is a big part of our work,” Dhillon wrote.

The orchestra said in an emailed statement that the decision not to hire clarinet player James Zimmermann “was never about politics or viewpoints,” but “due to legitimate safety concerns as confirmed by the Nashville Symphony.” The statement cited two restraining orders the Nashville Symphony said local judges issued against Zimmermann related to his time with that orchestra.

In an email, Zimmermann said the “safety concerns are not legitimate, as those restraining orders were based on boldface lies.”

‘Complete Reversal’

Mikael Rojas, a former senior counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights during the Biden administration, described Dhillon’s postings as “very abnormal in terms of how the Justice Department really works to have the head of a component tweeting publicly about a potential target of an investigation.”

“It’s one thing for a line level staff attorney to post something online that could implicate their work, but obviously something more significant and more problematic when the head of a division is engaging in conduct that jeopardizes at least the perception of impartiality from the department,” Rojas said.

DOJ’s manual governing social media engagement for department employees prohibits interactions “that may cause the public to perceive that their ability to be apolitical and impartial in the performance of their official duties is tainted.”

The manual goes on to say DOJ’s social media policies aren’t meant to restrict assistant attorneys general or other department leaders “from engaging in public communications on social media to promote the Department’s work and further valid community engagement objectives.”

Making early judgments on complaints could also damage the department’s reputation within the judiciary, noted Rush, who said “one of the Department’s most important assets in court is credibility and integrity.”

“Pre-judging facts, politicizing enforcement, all erode that credibility, which judges notice,” Rush said.

Dhillon’s decisions to open probes based on social media posts or engaging directly with the claims departs from the typical fact-finding process used to decide whether to launch an investigation, said Dena Robinson, who worked as a senior trial attorney in the division’s employment litigation section during the Biden administration.

Dhillon’s approach, Robinson said, “seems to be a complete reversal of the way that the DOJ used to operate.”