Ep 1289 | 'Civil Rights' Were Weaponized to Crush Christians. Now the Trump Admin Is Fighting Back | Harmeet Dhillon

Our white Christian Americans and pro-lifers being unfairly discriminated against in blue states. My guest today says in many cases the answer is yes. Hermit Dillon is the assistant attorney general for the civil rights division in the Trump administration and she is doing so much work to ensure that our elections have integrity to make sure that no one is being unfairly treated under the law for their faith, for their skin color, for their sex. There is so much going on in the DOJ. She is going to give us some answers today for how everything works and how justice is actually served. You're going to end this conversation feeling very educated about what's going on but also very encouraged by the happenings in our highest level of government. Without further ado, here is our friend, Hermit Dillon. Well, thanks so much for taking the time to join us. I followed you forever but if there's anyone out there who doesn't know, can you tell us who you are and what you do? Sure. Well, I'm Hermit Dillon and I'm the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the United States Department of Justice and been practicing law for 33 years and before I came to the DOJ I have been doing civil rights law for most of my life. Tell us exactly what civil rights law is. What cases are you typically taking? In the DOJ context, the Civil Rights Division was started in the 1950s and it has expanded to cover just about every existing civil rights law that we have on the federal level and also new laws. When the Americans with Disabilities Act was passed, we got that. When the FACE Act was passed, we got that. We investigate incidents of police brutality and excessive force. We protect the rights of prisoners, of employees, of public institutions throughout the country. A big part of our work and this dates back to the Civil War is going after state officials who violate federal civil rights. And so throughout the United States, we're looking at voting issues. I administer several federal voting rights statutes. The diversity, equity, and inclusion dismantling of the federal government's agenda is under our purview and we go after that all over the country and I'm happy to get into detail. When there's somebody being discriminated against just about anywhere, someone brings it to my attention and we decide does it fit under one of the federal statutes and if so, do we have the bandwidth and do we then look at it? So it's a very broad purview. I have 12 sections and we added to the sections, a second amendment section for the first time. So it's an expanding portfolio. Yeah. Aside from that last one, the second amendment section, I imagine that say, Biden's head of the Civil Rights Division might have said all of the same things that you said that we're making sure that justice is carried out, that we're looking at police brutality, that we're looking at voting issues, but you mean something very different than what your predecessors, many of them have met. So how would you say the differences between say how Biden's Civil Rights Division functioned and what you're doing? Well, that's a great question and you can see exactly what the left thinks about that from the commentary about what I'm doing. And their commentary is a lot of pearl clutching about how I've radically changed the mission of the department. And that is because I think a lot of the lawyers who were attracted to doing this job over the years were left-wing activists and they viewed their job as protecting a very small slice of Americans at the expense of other Americans. So they were favored groups and disfavored groups. And this is the classic concept of DEI. And so the idea, for example, where I've gone out and said that under students for fair admissions and Ames versus Ohio and other recent Supreme Court precedents, all Americans are protected by our civil rights laws, not just some. That is a radical departure from what the Civil Rights Division's jurisprudence has typically been. Now, every time a new administration comes in, corrections and course corrections are made, but historically in a Republican administration that has meant taking the extremely radical left-wing bent of the division and sort of toning that down slightly, it's usually still the same personnel, mutinous and resentful during those four years or eight years. And they just wait like a dormant virus for their opportunity to resurface and propagate what they were doing. And I just made it very clear in my second week in office in April of last year that we were going to be enforcing our federal civil rights laws, check, check, check. But the focus was going to be on the president's agenda that he was elected to carry out. And to that cause more than half of the lawyers in the division to put in their resignations and then quite a few more have resigned since then, including this last week. And so it has really been a radical personnel change at the division, but a radical reframing of civil rights for all Americans, which seems natural to me and consistent with my career and what I've been doing my life, particularly the last 25 years in radical left California, but it is different. You know, just like so many things, sometimes we're saying the same words, the left and the right, but we mean totally different things. So how do you define a civil right? Well, I look at the statutes first and before that, the constitution and even before that, a concept of natural law. And you date back to the founding of this country and it was founded on religious liberty and religious freedom. And then you look at the constitution and what the framers enshrined as our fundamental rights, including in particular, the Bill of Rights, which I think has been, you know, really important. Some concepts imported from traditional English jurisprudence that the English and the British have now completely abandoned. So really America is the cornerstone of these fundamental liberties that date from the enlightenment. And we still follow them and believe them. And until the law changes, that's our guide. But then you have statutes that are passed. We had a number of statutes passed. One of the most important of which that I look at in the criminal context is portions of the Klan Act, where after we had slavery abolished in this country, a lot of state officials, sheriffs, governors, they refuse to follow the law and treat blacks as equal human beings. So we had to pass statutes that penalize them for doing that. Those same statutes are still used today. And we still have, ironically, a number of state officials, including governors, attorneys general, they refuse to follow the law. They refuse to go along with Supreme Court precedent relating to voting laws, relating to gun rights, relating to the dismantling of so-called DEI, which is discrimination and drag and other problems. And so we have modern day Dixie Crats who are refusing to follow the law. And the federal government's job is to police that and enforce all of our federal civil rights laws. Okay. I can't let you just say that DEI is discrimination and drag without breaking that down. Tell us what you mean. Well, it is a principle that we're going to fix discrimination in the past by discriminating today. That's what it is. And so to me, discrimination is wrong and our civil rights laws have a principle and concept of non-discrimination. And literally, when you look at Martin Luther King Jr. and many of his speeches, he talks exactly about that. We're taking color. We should have a colorblind society, not a society where you get extra points if you're certain colors. And that's wrong either way. It's wrong to prefer white people in employment and protected areas and it's wrong to prefer black people. And other people of color, say immigrants are more entitled to jobs than citizens are. And so, I mean, that's one of the radical changes as we have laws on the books that say it's illegal to discriminate on the basis of national origin. Well, American is a national origin. And so when I see ads out there saying that certain jobs are reserved for H-1B visa holders and people from foreign countries, that's illegal. And we've already reached many settlements in the Civil Rights Division against companies that are doing exactly that. Yeah. Can you give me some more examples of how there are state officials who are defining the law when it comes to non-discrimination against whites or Americans? Well, I have a lawsuit I just signed off on today. So it hasn't been filed yet. So I can't talk about that one. But let's say a state or a city has a policy where they're going to prefer non-whites for city or state jobs. That's illegal. And every time I see a policy like that, I open an investigation and once the facts are in, we will pursue that either with a settlement or if necessary, a lawsuit. That in the race context. And there are many other contexts. There's gender discrimination. We filed a lawsuit recently in Loudoun County, Virginia. And that's actually religious discrimination where Christian boys were penalized because they protested against a girl identifying as transgender coming into the locker room and filming them. Boys have rights too. And boys have a right to modesty and to say, whoa, I don't want a girl and when I'm undressing filming me in the locker room. Yeah. And for there were two Christian boys and one Muslim boy. There was a complaint against all of them. The Muslim boys parents stood up for the Muslim boy and said, wait a minute, we're not going to tolerate this. And for, I think for politically correct reasons, the school didn't go after the Muslim boy, went after the two Christian boys. And, you know, that's discrimination both in that particular choice as well as in punishing them for having a modesty objection to their rights being invaded and refusing to comply with these transgender dictates. And so people don't understand that students don't lose all of their rights when they go to school. And so we're standing up for these issues all over the country. First sponsor for the day is Legacy Box. So if you're anything like me or you're like my mom, you have all of these pictures and all of these different files, maybe CDs and tapes that you want to save. They're all in these boxes somewhere because you don't want to throw them away, but you don't really know how to preserve them. Most people don't have a cassette player to play a tape or a VHS player to play a video or even a DVD player to play a DVD. You have pictures on a CD. You can't put it in the computer. Technology has changed so much, but how we have stored these pictures in these memories really hasn't until Legacy Box. Legacy Box allows you to digitize all of these things and they do it really efficiently. 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Like why do civil rights attract that kind of perversion of what true equality should look like? Yeah, that's a great question. And I'll answer it with a question of my own or pointing out a defect on one side, if you will, which is when I went to law school quite a long time ago, there really was no career available to a conservative lawyer and I'm a lifelong conservative to make their career earn a salary, pay your mortgage, doing conservative civil rights work. And what I mean by civil rights is where a corporation isn't paying you to do it. You're doing it for a greater public good. You may be relying on what's called a fee shifting statute, so a statute where if you win, you get paid. So you're taking an economic risk. But when I graduated from law school, there are immediately job opportunities and available pro bono work at my big corporate law firms I worked at with the American Civil Liberties Union, with the National Abortion Federation, with, you know, National Organization of Women. So there is a very well established liberal edifice using facially neutral laws, but only in one direction and no countervailing pressure from the other side. Now, it is different today. I started a civil rights organization in addition to my law firm that did a lot of civil rights work. And quite a few others have sprung up in the last decade or so, initially only in the Christian or religious liberty context, but now going well beyond that, you have a lot of organizations now. And so now a young lawyer can make their career, but we're decades behind. And so only one side has invested in advancing a ideological or political agenda using our federal civil rights laws. And so, you know, and what's interesting also is like you look at the American Civil Liberties Union, when I was in college, ACLU lawyers stood up for my rights to be able to have conservative speech on campus. Not so today. They stopped doing that about 20 years ago. And so, you know, again, they have also retreated from the concept of, well, occasionally we can agree with somebody we disagree with. That's not the case anymore. So there's been a vacuum. Now, what I've found in building up the civil rights division is we've attracted quite a few young lawyers who are interested in feeling good about what they do. I mean, it's great to make a lot of money representing one corporation, suing another corporation and fighting over people's money. I mean, I did that for a decade. I found it to be quite soulless at some point because I, you know, have my beliefs and I feel like doing good during the day, not just with writing checks at tax time. And so, you know, I built what I wanted as a civil rights career and I attracted a lot of lawyers to do it with me in private practice. But we're behind. And so we're building it. And so it's just a process and more lawyers just taking the law context need to know that that's available to them. And you can feel good about what you do and help your country and help your fellow Americans. What do you think about the suggestion that I've seen some conservatives make over the years that we need to repeal this civil rights act altogether? Well, I mean, I think that's crazy. I've been using it to benefit Americans. And that's not a serious suggestion, in my opinion. What needs to be done is to develop the law in a positive way. And for that, you bring cases. I mean, some of the concepts in the civil rights laws, many laws, are being used today by the Civil Rights Division to equalize discrimination of the past. When I go into court and I say, when I look at Zoran Mamdani's, you know, tenant activist person, say, white people are going to have a different relationship to property in the future. That is directly at odds with the Fair Housing Act. You can't do that in America. And so I'd like there to be a federal vehicle because if I had to rely solely on New York law, I couldn't do anything about that then. And as a federal government. So I do think we have a role for federal civil rights laws. I mean, you look at the discrimination that American universities have been perpetuating on college applicants. And I've reached with the, you know, with my partner, if you will, Linda McMahon and with the Attorney General's blessing, half a billion dollars of settlements so far in the first few months of this administration. That's because we have federal civil rights laws and Title Six and Title Nine and others that protect our federal civil rights. Title Nine protects the rights of girls. And we view that as girls having an equal shot in sports. And Title Nine is being violated when boys are allowed to take girls' trophies. That's going to the Supreme Court this week. That's going to the Supreme Court this week, albeit the oral arguments tomorrow. Watching that argument, we authored briefs in that case. And if I had to rely on state law, first of all, the federal government couldn't do anything about it. California, New York, Illinois, these states are not going to stand up for these rights. That's the role of the federal government. When state officials defy federal law, we have to have a vehicle to challenge it. And you have to then put personnel in place who are willing to do that and perhaps be extremely unpopular with a certain portion of the media and the vocal left. Yeah, that's a good point. A lot of people in 2020, very discouraged by what they saw as widespread voting fraud. We're at least irregularities that made them wonder how fair the process is. And the prevailing notion was, you know, it doesn't, all these other issues, it's not that they don't matter, but they almost matter less if we don't get election integrity right. If we want to make our voices heard, it's obviously very important that that process is impartial and transparent and fair. And that's one of the things that you said that you're working on when it comes to what's going on as far as voting regulations and actual practices go in states. So what's happening there? So let me break that down. So in 2020, I was one of the lawyers for, I was active, both a member of the Republican National Committee and also a lawyer for the campaign at various levels. The vast majority of our election laws and how the Constitution is set up is that state legislatures pass most of the election laws. There's some certain federal laws that I'll get to in a minute. And so the hard work that has to be done is hand to hand combat at the state level. Now, again, there's a disproportionate disarmament here because the left has actively invested in lawyers like Mark Elias and others. They can count on a revenue stream of tens of millions of dollars to fund their law firms to bring frivolous, maybe facially valid challenges. But in any event, who's fighting that on the other side? And one of the reasons I ended up talking about politics for a minute, which I don't do now, but like telling you how we got to this point. You know, I was frustrated with the Republican National Committee for not being active enough in funding and fighting these frivolous challenges. And so that's one of the reasons I picked up the torch and ran to challenge the leadership there, which did not work out eventually. But I think it raised a lot of awareness at what could and should have been done. What happened in 2020 is lawyers in the battleground states, including my own law firm, went to Pennsylvania and some other states. And we did challenge these cases and we filed briefs and we went all the way up to the Supreme Court of those states. And occasionally to the United States Supreme Court, the United States Supreme Court whiffed and refused to take up the challenge of Pennsylvania, for example, simply ignoring its own election laws. Right. Many, the left very wisely used COVID as an excuse to abrogate election law. So Wisconsin has a law that says you can't have an absentee ballot unless you're effectively in a nursing home or in your deathbed. They just ignored that and it's, oh, you know, COVID. People were not allowed to observe the counting of the ballots in Pennsylvania. My law partners were there on the ground or in Detroit or other areas because of COVID. Of course, you know, that's a really great excuse to just ignore laws and nobody held these people accountable. So there was a real failure by the judiciary and sort of a little bit too little too late approach in 2020. And I think that some people, many people learned lessons from that and there was certainly a better job done on these issues in 2024. I mean, the president faced the unprecedented challenge of state officials starting with Colorado and Colorado versus Anderson saying he wasn't entitled to be on the ballot because of this fake insurrection narrative. And again, my old law firm led the way for the campaign and filed or responded to over 100 challenges in the country. And that one effort winning at the United States Supreme Court made the difference in the fact that I'm sitting here talking to you today instead of a different fact pattern. But what people don't understand is there is no substitute for doing that work in the States. First of all, electing good leaders in your states who aren't going to do crazy things. Second, pressing for legislation that creates good law, voter ID laws that don't allow ballots to be counted for weeks before or after the election. Why are we doing that? That doesn't make a lot of sense. Early voting in person is one thing or a short period perhaps, but election day is election day, not election month or year. And so these are some of the things that I think need to be done in the States. Now at the federal government level, I administer several federal statutes that are narrow and tailored in scope, but they cover some real estate. One of the most activist areas of the Civil Rights Division in history has been the use of the Voting Rights Act to effectively change outcomes. And Georgia passed a very good package of laws after the really shambolic performance in the 2020 election and administering their own voting laws. And what's the first thing that the Merrick Garland DOJ did in my predecessor is challenge Georgia for trying to clean up and approve its voting laws. And so that's one of the lawsuits that we ended when we came into office. So Voting Rights Act is an important part of our work. The Help America Vote Act, which requires states to maintain clean and up-to-date voter rolls and some verifiable computerized mechanism for maintaining their voter rolls. That's a very active area. There's the National Voter Registration Act, so-called motor voter law. And then there's the UOCAVA, which is Uniform Overseas and Military Voters, which is another kind of widely abused law, if you ask me, on both sides. Not enough military get their right to vote. And way too many people who don't live in the United States claim residency in a jurisdiction, which they really don't have any ties to, to affect the outcome of an election. These are problems on both sides that Congress, frankly, needs to get in there and fix. But under the Help America Vote Act, this Department of Justice has now sued or threatened to sue most of the states in the United States. First, I asked for the voter rolls of every state and jurisdiction. I'm now suing 23 states and the District of Columbia for refusing to comply. I have current compliance from seven jurisdictions. I have negotiations that are close to finalize with a number more, and they'll be announced recently. And I'm about to sue a few more states in the next literally few days. And that only leaves a handful of states. So within nine months, we have put our money where our mouth is and insisted that states turn over their data so that the federal government can help them do what they're not doing. And that's red states and blue states. And I sued Georgia. I'm going to be suing another couple of red states shortly that are refusing to comply. And what they're claiming is, oh, Ms. Dillon, A.G. Dillon, we have state privacy laws. Well, this is a fundamental concept of law that every attorney general who's saying that to me or Secretary of State, they know very well, that's not true. The federal government has supremacy over certain areas, and our federal civil rights laws preempt their privacy statutes. And when you say to me, I can't give you the social security number of a voter because of privacy laws or their date of birth with a straight face. Who do you think hands out the social security number? Yes. Like we hand them out in the federal government. There's no privacy there, folks. You're literally handing it out on the phone when you're doing banking relationships or many other relationships. You're handing over your driver's license at the airport to check into a hotel. I had to do that three times in the last two days. And so what are we talking about here? That's an excuse. And I think the fact that so many election officials, red and blue states, are fighting so hard against the federal government simply comparing the voter rolls against our federal databases of who's a citizen. Are they dead? Yeah. Are they registered in multiple states? That is very telling. Because you would think they'd be like, yeah, okay, we are kind of our housekeeping is behind, but you're offering me a free cleaning and I'm not taking it. What's up with that? So we're going to go and finish this job pretty soon. But we're also looking at states that are continuing to engage in racial gerrymandering, which is, in our view, illegal. And we're waiting for the Supreme Court's ruling in Louisiana versus Calais, important voting rights act case, which again, my team co-authored the amicus brief on, should come out any minute now, frankly. And the Supreme Court will settle this question forever, but I think it's very clear under the Voting Rights Act. The use of race as a proxy for how people are going to vote is impermissible and outdated. Next sponsor is Fellowship Home Loans. 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I saw a story and you can tell me it's veracity, but that in Minnesota that there has been like this process of basically someone saying that they can vouch for someone else or a group of people when it comes to voting. So I guess not having to show their ideas just saying, yeah, I know these people there with me. What's going on there? Yeah, that's crazy. So I'm already suing Minnesota for its refusal to turn over its voter rolls to us. And that's before it became fashionable to dunk on Minnesota in the last couple of weeks. But that story is accurate. So Scott Pressler, who's a friend of mine, brought this to my attention and I immediately opened up a federal civil rights investigation into this because under Minnesota law, and this law dates back over 50 years, an individual can vouch for up to eight people. So if you're a registered voter, you can say Bob and Susie and Dave and Doug, they're with me, they're my neighbors. And trust me, they live in my neighborhood. So they're entitled to vote in this county. That's it. No ID shown. I mean, even in California, I think when I registered to vote, I had to show my, you know, my, my utility bills or my rent bill or whatever mortgage statement. Not in Minnesota, but even worse. If you're an employee of a residential facility, like a nursing home or an adult disability center, you can vouch for the entire population of that facility with no evidence of where these people live. So that is one of the reasons why Democrats don't want to disrupt what's going on there with these fake daycares. Of course. That really just kind of represent these small-income communities that I guess go there, they take the taxpayer money, million dollars every year or more. I don't know what they do there all day, sit, eat, whatever. But the Democrats are getting voters from that. Look, we're investigating it. That would be it. That would be a fair inference to the shady practices that we're seeing in Minnesota. And Minnesota is, there's one other state that has that practice, but it's, it's, it's a state that doesn't have voter rolls. So they have a kind of, that's North Dakota. Interesting. So they don't have maintained sort of voter registration and voter rolls as such by, by jurisdiction, by either by political or otherwise. So there is a vouching process there and it's very different. There's not a huge influx of, you know, immigrant voters there and it's a much smaller population. So I think it, it's a quaint practice. We'll see. We'll, you know, maybe that needs to be stopped as well. But for now, my focus is on Minnesota where the entire state's management. It seems to be rampant and ripe with fraud. Yeah. And what is the involvement of the DOJ and your division in what is going on there with the daycare? We can talk about a lot that's going on there with ICE and everything, but let's start with the daycares and the fraud. Do you all have involvement in that? Not the civil rights division as such, but certainly the United States Department of Justice is investigating that. And so the United States attorney in Minnesota has already brought numerous charges. Even the Biden administration opened up investigations into fraud there. So far, if I recall correctly, and I hope I'm not inaccurate, but I think there have been 62 convictions already of people with fraud. Many new investigations opened up. I think 90, they're 90 plus investigations ongoing that were opened up by the Department of Justice. And I'm sure in the last couple of weeks, that's accelerated. And so I spoke to the U.S. attorney there just yesterday by message and he's got his hands full with so many issues going on there in Minnesota. And one of the positive things that's come out of Minnesota is citizen journalists have begun to investigate this in other states. So DOJ is getting reports in Ohio and other jurisdictions of similar rings of fraud that are happening systematically. And I can only imagine that California is also a target rich environment based on their bogus, homeless, industrial complex and other government grant programs that are ripe for abuse. Are sanctuary city or state policies where a state or a local jurisdiction refuses to comply with ICE, like a detainment order or they refuse to release an illegal alien to ICE? Is that legal? And does that fall under your purview? Not in the civil rights division, but the sanctuary city policies are being used by other parts of the government. And there are some DOJ investigations involving active obstruction of our law enforcement efforts. That is illegal under federal law. But I think ICE, Homeland Security, have been active in that area as well. And challenging jurisdictions that are refusing to comply with federal law when it comes to that. But yeah, there are many different parts of the government focused on that particular issue. It seems to me that if you're an open defiance of federal law, now we do have supremacy in the United States over immigration. You can't under certain federal opinions, force states to do your work for you, to do the compliance work. And there have been some rulings in California and other jurisdictions where you can't sort of deputize or expect them to comply. But at the same time, every state in the United States is a welfare queen. They get a ton of federal money from the federal government. And if they're openly defying federal law, why is that? And so I think there's definitely the power of the purse and spending power that can be deployed to put pressure on states to do that. That's a policy matter for the White House. You mentioned earlier the rights of prisoners and a story, a persistent story that we have, you know, covered, talked about on this show. For many years is in places like California, Washington, other blue states, you have men who believe they're women many times with a violent past, sometimes sexually violent past, transferring into women's prisons. And sometimes women are assaulted. I just saw a story, I think, I think it was maybe Massachusetts where a woman said, hey, I've been raped multiple times by this guy who says he's trans. And very often the woman is actually chastised. Yes. So I assume that does fall under your purview. What's going on there? Yes. I saw the news story about Massachusetts and we've opened up a federal civil rights investigation into that fact pattern. We have an active civil rights investigation under our prison reform laws into Colorado for prisoner conditions ranging from transgender violence to abuse of the elderly prisoners and heating and cooling conditions and others. And, you know, and there's some horrific stories out there. And like, look, it's my perhaps bleeding heart view that you, no one should be raped in an American prison, male or female. Like you are serving your time for a crime you committed. That should not include unreasonable violations of cruel and unusual punishment, which certainly would include being violently assaulted or raped. Which is such a traumatic thing. Or being forced to share an intimate space with a man. Same. That is cruel and unusual. You don't lose your religious rights in a prison. Right. You know, there are certain restrictions on your liberty. But I've opened up investigations into houses of incarceration that are refusing to allow prisoners to pray according to their faith. And there are some great religious organizations that Christian, Jewish and others seek and others that stand up for the rights of these prisoners. And they should, they should come out of prison able to integrate into society and faith is such an important part of coming to grips with our shortcomings as human beings. And so depriving that is illegal. And we are certainly going after that. Yeah. Yeah. I'm very concerned about the transgender issue and in prisons. And, you know, he's got a lot of people, people who identify as Christian, obviously a lot of progressives who, you know, they feel like they're taking up the cause of the most vulnerable. And they're the first to speak up about, you know, the dangers of ICE and this is Nazi Germany. But when it comes to very vulnerable populations, whether it's unborn children inside the womb or who are literally the least, you know, the least powerful and have the least political capital. Or when it comes to these vulnerable women who can't offer anything, they certainly don't have any political capital. It's not invoked to defend them. Like I just don't see them sticking up for them and saying, yeah, they have a right not to be raped or they have a right not to change in front of a man in prison. And it really disturbs me. And so I'm glad to hear that you care so much about that and that y'all are doing something about that as much as you can anyway. Cause it is, it's a justice issue. It is. I mean, the progressives are total hypocrites and you've seen some voices on the left break from that progressive movement. J.K. Rowling is a great example of that in the UK where she's, I think said in the last 24 hours that I saw online that, you know, you shouldn't be raped in a prison or forced to, you know, sub subordinate your human dignity. Yeah. Of course, that would seem obvious. And yet there's this total hypocrisy on the left on this issue. And it's as if the feminist movement has completely abandoned its original premise. I mean, title nine is about equalizing girls opportunity in, in sports really and education. Where's the hue and cry when boys take the girls trophies? What does that do the self-esteem of girls? We've all been girls and that was a tough time. And, you know, you really needed that extra boost and opportunity to be able to win trophies and compete and have scholarship opportunities. Compete fairly. They're being taken away and, and we are being victimized as a sex yet again by this woke movement. Yeah. All right. You guys know good ranchers. This is the American family Christian owned meat company that supports American farms and ranchers by giving you all American meat right to your friend, Dora and dry ice. We've been using good ranchers for five years now. So thankful for them. Right now they're doing something awesome. They're donating a portion of their sales to paralyzed veterans of America. So we are headed into a year right now. We are in a year where we are celebrating 250 years of American liberty. And we want to honor those who have fought and sacrificed for those liberties and good ranchers is doing that every time you buy a box of good ranchers, especially when you subscribe. You are helping support the veterans of America who have been paralyzed in fighting for our freedom. When you subscribe and get that box of meat to your front door on dry ice every month, you save $500 rather than just ordering a box whenever you feel like it. Plus, when you use my code alley, you save $25 on your first order. Good ranchers.com code alley. We were talking off fair just about kind of the demands that you and then other people in the administration and in the DOJ get. Hey, we want this person arrested. When are the arrests going to happen? And of course, all of us, we have an instinct. We want the bad guy to get what's coming, you know, and we want goodness to win. But what does that process actually actually look like? And why are some of those demands maybe misguided? So just starting with myself, the vast majority of the work that I do in the civil rights division is civil in nature, meaning I can go after people, punish them. I can get fines. I can get injunctions. I can stop bad practices. I can get consent decrees. But that doesn't typically involve arresting people. Where I will arrest people is hate crimes, attacks on houses of worship, synagogues, murders. We're investigating numerous hate crimes involving race, religion, sex and otherwise. And those are some headlines in the news, so I can't really talk about those cases. And when people are talking about, I want to see members of Congress perp walked or I want to see election officials perp walked. What you have to first understand is that's mostly the purview of other people in the government. And they face the following challenge. Much of the evidence involving what I believe is a systematic violation of federal civil rights and due process and Fourth Amendment and search and seizure laws by the prior administration was also actively hidden by the prior administration. I think we've all seen the stories of documents being uncovered from burn bags that are stuffed in safes and in rooms in the FBI building across the street from me at the United States Department of Justice. So some of that is still coming to light. Some of that will never come to light. And some of that is come to light and we're processing it in the DOJ. There is a deep state in the FBI and the DOJ. So while there's a leadership that the president called to service and we have a layer of leadership under us, the rank and file in FBI, DOJ, some of them, that's why they quit in my department. They didn't quit in some other department. They're just like slow rolling things that they ought to be looking at. And so we're getting our hands around that and forcing the issue. But I think you are going to see these things eventually come to grand juries and result in indictments. We haven't even been in office for a year as yet. The head of the criminal division of the United States Department of Justice was just sworn in last month. That there are senators on our side who don't particularly find the needs of the Department of Justice and the president's administration to get people confirmed so they can do their jobs. That may be less important than having fundraisers back in their districts. OK, some of us are working around the clock. I mean, I was on a panel last week with Tyson Duva, the head of the criminal division. He's got a huge force of people under him. And with the Epstein files, he was working on Christmas Day and New Year's Eve, redacting, reviewing and, you know, heading up a team to do that. So we are understaffed and working extremely hard at the DOJ. And I'm hiring and, you know, frankly, there are not enough not enough lawyers out there who want to step up and serve their country with us. So if anyone's watching this and wants to make a difference, you could do it in any of the 94 United States attorney's offices. They all have needs all over the country or in Maine justice in a number of different areas. And so it's really rewarding work and we need more people to do it. But this attorney general could not be more conservative and loyal to the president, both and principled. And so we are not the other side where we come up with an endpoint. And then we work backwards to find some crime and get the person who you don't like. That's not how justice works. It's the Department of Justice, not the Department of Perp Walks and Convictions. And so what you do is you build the case, you find the violation, then you have a law enforcement process. Law enforcement includes getting people's communications. You have to go to a federal judge and get a warrant for that. You do your investigation. You then build the case and you then figure out, if I bring this case in this district, am I going to get a setback from the court of appeals that bars this road for me or where do I bring this case? And so there's just like a number of different things that we look at when we decide which case to bring first, where to bring it, when to bring it, and how to bring it in such a way that we get the conviction or the outcome that we are seeking in the course of justice. Yeah. What about something like the FACE Act? There have been pro-lifers that have been put in prison. I mean, we're talking elderly Christian women who were trying to protest, maybe stand in front of an abortion clinic and they were convicted and thrown in prison, in federal prison under the FACE Act. Can you break down what that is and what y'all think about it as a division? Absolutely. It's something I'm very passionate about. So the FACE Act was passed in 1994. Bill Clinton signed it into law. And it was designed to effectively protect abortion clinics. But it wasn't going to pass with any Republican support without a corollary aspect to it, which was to protect houses of worship from blockages and obstruction. So in all these years up until I was the assistant attorney general for civil rights, nobody ever used that houses of worship part to prosecute protesters or criminals blocking access to a house of worship. So we started to do that. Let's set that aside for a minute. The Biden administration was extremely active in persecuting people of faith protesting outside abortion clinics. I've represented many pro-life organizations and protesters in court and journalists like David DeLyden and others. And so I've seen how the government and judges weaponized this. I mean, judges refused to recuse themselves when their wives are actively involved in abortion clinics. You know, so there's a real problem there. The president pardoned the protesters of the nature that you described. So there were some who had quite lengthy sentences and he pardoned all of those at the beginning of his term. I went to court to defend a conviction. I think they brought one set of convictions really in the Biden administration for a pro-life pregnancy center that was attacked by a group called Janes Revenge. Janes Revenge is this violent code pinkish antifa type organization that had a string of attacks on pro-life clinics, crisis pregnancy centers in Florida. All over Florida. And they prosecuted four of these folks, three of them pled guilty. One of them decided to roll a dice and go to trial. We use a law I mentioned earlier in our discussion here, the Klan Act, conspiracy statute to accuse that protester of conspiring to attack multiple houses of worship. And they spray painted the houses of not worship, but of these health care facilities. They spray painted them. They terrorize the staff. The staff had to close down these crisis pregnancy religiously based counseling centers and higher extra security and, you know, effectively shut down for a period of time because of this terror attempt. And so the, the vitamin DOJ got a conviction, 120 day sentence for what pro-life protesters got years in prison for and not even some of them are just praying, not spray painting or blocking entrances. They weren't being violent. They weren't even blocking. They were praying. They were invoking God. Very different fact pattern than these, you know, crazed people. Biden administration really put pro-lifers in prison who were simply praying. Simply praying. In front of pregnancy centers using the face act. Correct. And these James revenge groups who after row was overturned, went to these pregnancy centers, you're saying only one time did they get convicted and got 120 days in prison. Some of these people, but there were a lot of instances of this happening. It wasn't just like, there are a lot of instances that haven't been prosecuted yet. I mean, I've asked people who've mentioned this to me in conversation, I said, bring me the facts. I will, I will open up a case and look at it because if it's within the statute of limitations, I'm very interested in that because everyone should be allowed to go under this law to a healthcare facility or a religiously based healthcare facility and get counseling or get information. And so I went to court in the 11th circuit to defend that conviction. And, you know, these, these types of folks never have a shortage of lawyers to stand up for their rights. And so we did win. And that case is called or a PASA versus a United States and the or a PASA had 120 day sentence and it, it was upheld under, um, under the 11th circuit. And so we will continue to use that law. And now we are opening up face act investigations involving blockages of houses of worship. Um, I opened up a investigation, the first of its kind, a civil case, which, you know, may, um, be expanded in West Orange, New Jersey, where a pro-Palestinian group attacked a congregation, uh, holding a religious service at a synagogue. And they not only blocked access to it. They also use these, um, soccer fan toys, Vuvuzela's, very, which make a very loud noise to drown out the religious service. We're seeing this use of these noise makers all over the country. Um, I have been actively investigating attacks on the, uh, the, um, uh, Parky synagogue in, um, Midtown, Manhattan, Lenox Hill, Manhattan, uh, the Wilshire Boulevard historic synagogue in Los Angeles, one other synagogue in Los Angeles. There was an arson over the weekend in Jackson, Mississippi. We were investigating that, uh, and, and others. We have other statutes in our playbook, which we've used to convict numerous attackers of churches in the last several months. There are, there was a, um, bad guy planting bombs with, in his backpack, um, in houses of worship in Colorado, California and Arizona. He's been convicted. There, there was a bad person who beheaded a statue of, um, Mary and Jesus, uh, recently reached a conviction in that case. And so any attack on a house of worship or a religious service in this country is under our jurisdiction and we have a zero tolerance policy towards that. Um, beyond just attacks, we have hostility to faith in so many zoning commissions and city planning departments, including in blue states and red states. There is a situation that we are investigating in Alabama where a particular jurisdiction decided that they didn't want a Christian, um, drug recovery center to be able to operate there. That's a violation of the religious land use and institutionalized persons act, which I, um, administer. And so we're, we've opened up an investigation there where zoning commissions say they don't want a church or a synagogue in their neighborhood. Um, that's a violation of federal law. So I would say proudly that this is the most pro faith department of justice in American history. Wow. This is just all evidence, this entire conversation, everything that y'all are, that you're talking about. I'm like, y'all are so busy. Y'all do need more lawyers. I'm sure it matters who you vote for. People like to say, Oh, you know, politics is too divisive. I want to live above the fray. I always say politics matter because policy matters because people matter. Politics affects policy, policy affects people. People matter. People don't think that they're not just voting for Trump. They're voting for him to put in people like you that care about faith, that care about the sanctity of life, that care about the definition of men and women. All of that has a real effect on vulnerable people who would otherwise be powerless without the defense of people like you and good lawyers. So who you vote for matters. Elections absolutely matter. In addition to all the election integrity stuff that you're doing. Last sponsor for the day is pre-born. And so we're talking about the importance of protecting those who are trying to protect the sanctity of life. And one of those groups is pre-born. They equip pregnancy centers across the country with the equipment that they need to help save lives. For example, sonogram equipment. Sonograms show women what's really going on in their body. It's that this is a human being made in God's image. It's not just a clump of cells. It's not just pregnancy tissue. This is a little baby. And that baby is worth saving. And when a woman hears the heartbeat, sees that baby, she is so much more likely to choose life. So partner with pre-born and making sure that these women can get a free sonogram at these pregnancy centers that they can see and choose the life of their child. If you donate just $28 to pre-born, that covers the cost of a life saving ultrasound. Maybe you can donate more than that. Maybe you can only donate less. That's okay. Every bit counts. Just go to pre-born.com slash Ali. Make your donation today to help save a life. That's pre-born.com slash Ali. Okay. As we end a couple of things, what is it like living in DC and being a part of the administration that I know you're really proud of, but it's, it might be really different than kind of your life before you were living in California. Now you're living in DC. Um, how do you feel just like on a personal level? Well, it's so different. Um, so California is a crazy place. Everyone loves to hate on it, but it is really beautiful. And, uh, redeeming, redeeming quality. And it's got some great people. Great people. People were chill. No one, you know, you walk into a restaurant in San Francisco and no one really cares if you're a barista or a federal judge, you treated the same. I really love that about California. And I could see the ocean every day from my homes in California. And in DC, it's very, you know, what do you do? Who do you work for? What agency are you with? No chill. And it's always transactional. Even you go to a conservative cocktail party and everyone's immediately trying to figure out how they can use you to obtain their ends. I find that very disturbing, but, um, but, um, this administration has a very strong vibe and president Trump, who I've supported three times, has really changed. You know, I think the culture in many ways and people are willing to fight where they were more just willing to sort of further their careers in the past. And so he's really those fighters in this administration. I'm surrounded by people in my building, including people who work for me and people who are my peers, Senate confirmed who are fighters. And that's, that feels good. Um, I haven't had enough time to knit. I knit the sweater a couple of years ago. That was going to be my next question. Please tell us about, okay, we got to get a shot of the sweater. Please. It's so beautiful. And this is, this yarn is made by an American yarn manufacturer and this yarn is dyed by an American dye maker. I'm kind of very pro-American my yarn, but, um, but yeah, I don't have enough time. It's like seven days a week job, but people are saying, how could you have time for all these hats that you pump out? Well, first of all, I travel a lot for this job. And so hats are great for knitting on planes. And so I crank out hats and now, um, now they've become a high demand item. And I can't knit enough for the people who I work with. But, but, but overall, I would say that concept that I came of age in the Ronald Reagan era, I was a 1980s graduate of college. And that concept of being happy warriors is there. And I go to the White House frequently because I deal with a lot of high level policy matters. And so I'm constantly conferring with people in the White House. And when I'm in the White House, I run into my friends and other agencies who I've been in green rooms with and in, in, on news shows. And now they're running the government in Homeland Security or ICE or treasury or energy or a Department of War or, um, OMB or, you know, all of these folks, I feel like it's kind of a giant reunion in a way of all the people who made, who made this happen. And so that part is great. Now, people ask me the question, a little different question. How are you settling down in DC? I'm not settling down in DC. Yeah. I went there to do a job. I intend to do it to my fullest seven days a week, year round, very hard. And then I intend to go back to America when I'm done. And so that's kind of my mentality. Yeah. Well, I was going to ask you about your knitting, but you've already told us about that. Okay. Tell us on the final thing, if someone wants to learn how to knit, how would you recommend they start? Because I bought a little kit actually for my six year old and it was too hard for me, not even for her. Like the directions were just, I was like, uh, you lost me. Um, so what would you say? How should someone start? So there are what we call in the knitting world, L Y S's, the local yarn stores and everything is online, but there are ladies, usually ladies who have local yarn stores in most communities. And so find a local yarn store. The local yarn store will often have knitting classes or drop-ins on a particular evening and you can go there and there's nothing that a grandma or a auntie loves more than to show somebody who doesn't know how to knit, but wants to how to knit. And there's some good kits out there. There's a company called Pearl Soho that sells really easy scarf kits. I've taught many people in my family how to knit and they don't stick with it, but it's just like any other skill. Yeah. This is a 10,000 hour skill to be able to crank the sweater out and 40 hours, you know, but you can still do a scarf with just a couple of hours of trial and error if you're not too fussy about it. And so I do encourage it. It is, it really takes, particularly if you're in a high stress job, like I have always been in my whole life, it really takes your blood pressure down. It helps you focus. You're not constantly droom scrolling and scanning your phone. Yeah. I listen to hours of podcasts, murder mysteries, um, and travel logs on my headphones while I'm knitting or watching TV or what have you. And so I highly recommend it. Yeah. That's awesome. Well, Harmy, thank you so much for taking the time to join us. And thanks for what you all are doing. I'm very grateful for it. Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it. Okay, guys, thanks so much for listening. If you have not subscribed to Blaze TV, you should go ahead and do so. blaze tv.com slash alley gets you a discount on that subscription. You get access to not only, um, behind the paywall content that I make, but all the hosts make and it's like really good investigations, interesting documentaries, you also get access to share the arrows, both years of share the arrows with awesome teaching and worship. You can watch those if you subscribe to blaze TV blaze TV.com slash alley. All right, we'll be back on Monday.