This is a preview of this week’s episode of “The Signal Sitdown.” Don’t miss politics editor Bradley Devlin’s interview with Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon by turning on YouTube notifications for the premiere at 6:30 a.m. EST on Sept. 25.
There are few, if any, more qualified to talk about America’s scourge of left-wing violence and the organizations that commit it than Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon who heads the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
In the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk at Utah Valley University two weeks ago, President Donald Trump has activated his administration to confront these anarchists head on, going so far as to designate Antifa a “domestic terrorist organization.”
For more than a decade prior to taking her post at the Department of Justice, Dhillon was suing Antifa members and institutions that suppressed free speech due to the threat of left-wing violence on behalf of clients across the country. Dhillon joins “The Signal Sitdown” this week to discuss how the Trump Justice Department is restoring law and order in the public square.
Dhillon’s relationship with Kirk dates back to the early days of Turning Point USA. At times, Dhillon would come to the aid of conservative students and activists when Kirk would flag potential violations of free speech and other constitutional rights.
“It’s even still hard to believe such a huge but young life snatched away and what it means for all of us,” Dhillon told The Daily Signal of Kirk’s assassination.
“It’s very sobering,” she later added.
At the DOJ, “we will honor [Kirk] best, I think, by continuing to fight for those principles that he held so dear,” Dhillon continued.
Because of their friendship, carrying on that fight is personal for the assistant attorney general. “We used to text and talk regularly,” she recalled. “I was a guest on a show many times. And he came to visit us in the DOJ just a few weeks before he passed away to talk about some important issues that his organizations are working on.”
In the wake of Kirk’s death, the president is directing his administration to take action against organized and violent elements of the Left, particularly Antifa.
Antifa and organizations like it often quash speech through the threat of violence, Dhillon said. These threats then become “the excuse that [the University of California] Berkeley gave and other schools have given for charging conservative student groups much higher security fees.”
This amounts to a “heckler’s veto,” she explained. “They were immediately able to basically shut down conservative speech on campus by rioting a little.”
Dhillon described the ideologies that animate these groups as “European-centric, Marxist, violent ideologies that have come to the United States.”
Taking legal action against Antifa and organizations like it will be difficult because “Antifa is a shadowy criminal organization.” Antifa operates using a decentralized network of cells, which makes prosecuting leaders or tracking down perpetrators of violent crimes carried out during an Antifa riot difficult.
“They’re shadowy on purpose,” Dhillon said. “They operate in tiny cells like a terrorist organization. They use burner phones. I think they actually prey on and recruit disillusioned, disaffected young people in our society.”
“For too long in this country, law enforcement hasn’t done anything about it,” Dhillon said of left-wing violence perpetrated by Antifa and other organizations. “And now the president has announced [he will] focus on it.”
The stakes could not be higher.
“We have to get to the bottom of this because nobody is free if there are cities in the United States with terror networks and cells plotting disruption of our transit or blocking our way to our courthouses or ICE or the police or journalists,” Dhillon explained. Antifa is “literally attacking the heart of truth in our society.”
