Top DOJ lawyer warns feds could face criminal civil rights charges for weaponization

A top Justice Department lawyer is warning that federal agents and intelligence officers who weaponized their government powers for political purposes could face criminal charges under civil rights laws created to fight injustices during the Jim Crow era more than a half-century ago.

Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon cautioned in an interview with Just the News that she could not discuss any specific investigations or potential suspect.

But she said recent reports that one or more grand juries were probing the weaponization of government powers against President Trump and his associates or followers might have given good reason for current and former FBI and CIA officials to hire lawyers.

“This, again, goes back to those Reconstruction Era statutes that sought to remedy the vestiges of racism, and we had some terrible incidents in our country's history of law enforcement officials conspiring to deprive African Americans of their civil rights,“ she said in a wide-ranging interview with the "Just the News, No Noise" television show. “And that is where some of these laws stem from."

Dhillon: Government officials wrongly think they are immune from civil rights laws

“But they're broader than that, and so it can be a crime for government officials, either together or in conspiring with non-government officials, to violate people's civil rights,” she explained. “That's also a civil violation. I've actually sued over that in California for pro-life activists. And you know, we have long-standing cases involving these issues, and so I think, you know, government officials may think, because nobody ever bothers to enforce these statutes, that they're immune, and they can do whatever they want."

“Not so, and I think that's why you're seeing some people tongue-in-cheek saying that in DC, every lawyer is being retained …. as these investigations have begun to hit the newswires,” she added.

Dhillon's comments come as FBI Director Kash Patel has opened at least one criminal conspiracy case looking at whether DOJ, FBI, and intelligence community officers were engaged in a long-running conspiracy to violate the rights of Donald Trump and his followers from the Russiagate scandal to the raid on Mar-a-Lago.

In addition, CIA Director John Ratcliffe and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard have referred current and former officials to the Justice Department for possible prosecution for alleged abuses.

Last week, the Justice Department issued subpoenas to New York Attorney General Leticia James seeking any evidence of whether she sought to violate the civil rights of President Trump when she filed a civil lawsuit against his company for alleged fraud.

Section 241 of Title 18 of the U.S. Code makes it "unlawful for two or more persons to conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person of any state, territory or district in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him/her by the Constitution or the laws of the United States."

Such conspiracy statutes are derived from the Civil Rights Acts of 1960 and 1964, which were enacted to protect black citizens from police abuses in the South and from prohibitions in public places. Those laws were complemented by a series of voting rights laws as well.

Recent implementation of the civil rights laws

The laws were seldom successfully used against police officers during the 1960's, but have been more commonly used against police misconduct over the last three decades, starting most notably with the infamous 1993 Rodney King case where four LAPD officers involved were captured on videotape beating King.

The four were initially acquitted on state charges in May of that year, which led to five days of rioting. Fifty-three people (including 28 African-Americans, 19 Hispanics, 14 whites, and 2 Asians) were killed: the greatest death toll in any American civil disturbance since the 1863 Draft Riots in New York City. Looting and fires had inflicted more than one billion dollars in property damage. 

The four officers were retried under federal civil rights laws in February 1993, with two of them being acquitted, and the remaining two found guilty and sentenced to two and a half years in prison. In a civil lawsuit, King won a $3.8 million verdict from the City of Los Angeles.  

More recently, former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was convicted of violating George Floyd's civil rights in 2020 by kneeling on his neck and suffocating Floyd. The Justice Department said in a press release that Chauvin pleaded guilty to willfully depriving Mr. Floyd of his constitutional right to be free from the use of unreasonable force by a police officer, resulting in Mr. Floyd’s bodily injury and death. 

In the plea documents, Chauvin agreed that the sentencing for this crime should be based on the sentence for second-degree murder because he acted willfully and in callous and wanton disregard of the consequences on Floyd’s life. He was sentenced to a term in prison of more than 20 years.

Elsewhere, a law enforcement officer was tried and convicted on similar charges related to violating the civil rights of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky during the execution of a search warrant in March 2020 that, according to the Justice Department, led to the death of Taylor in her home.

Although his shots did not strike Taylor, the use of deadly force was unjustified. Taylor was killed during the botched raid when police rammed the door open and Taylor’s boyfriend, believing that intruders were breaking in, fired his handgun one time at officers, two of whom fired back, hitting and killing Taylor.

A federal judge dismissed the felony charges against the other police officers in August of last year, although the other officers are still facing ongoing criminal litigation, according to a local TV station.