'Someone's going to get hurt': Top Trump DOJ official blames Gov. Newsom's office for threats
Harmeet Dhillon, the Assistant Attorney General for the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, has accused Gov. Gavin Newsom's office of inciting threats against her, leading to the involvement of the U.S. Marshals Service. Dhillon said she was targeted by Newsom's communications director, Izzy Gardon, on social media after a liberal South Carolina judge's home caught fire following an explosion, which is under investigation. Gardon has been disputing her claim. It started over the weekend, when Gardon on X posted a picture of a previous post on Dhillon's official X account in which she stated, "I will allow nothing to stand in the way of our mandate to maintain clean voter rolls," in response to the judge's decision. "A few weeks ago, one of Trump’s top DOJ officials publicly targeted this judge. Today, the judge’s home is on fire," Gardon wrote in the post. In an interview with KCRA 3 on Tuesday, Dhillon explained. "Several weeks ago, I had, without naming the judge, mentioned the judge as having wrongly issued an injunction against some work that I'm doing to try to clean up the voter rolls in South Carolina," Dhillon said. "By the way, the judge's ruling was overturned weeks ago. I've never mentioned her name. Don't know anything about her. It is common for lawyers to criticize judges' decisions." Investigators on Tuesday stated there was no evidence that the fire was intentionally set, which Dhillon pointed out in the interview. "For the governor of the most populous state to have his press people falsely accuse the government officials of causing a crime that ends up to not have been a crime, according to South Carolina, it wasn't a crime. It wasn't... probably an accident. And putting a target on my back in an inflamed situation where people are being targeted and assassinated is absolutely outrageous."Dhillon said she received several online threats under Gardon's tweet, with people suggesting they could easily find out where she lives. ""This is all very scary. My family and my coworkers are very worried about it. So we activated our security at the DOJ, called the Marshals Service, the local police department, and made sure that additional security measures were taken," she said. Dhillon added that she now has extra security when she is in court due to the public nature of her appearances.When asked if she had any direct conversations with the governor's office, Dhillon said, "I don't think that would be productive, because the flippant response from the governor's office yesterday was that I owed them an apology. So, he and his staff can go pound sand and they can just stop, you know, endangering people's lives the way they are."Dhillon criticized the behavior of Newsom and his staff. "This isn't a video game. They aren't children and they need to act like adults. And yes, it is heady and fine to have followers on social media," she said. "I don't think they're going to be deterred. They're going to put targets on the backs of some other people, innocent people next, probably the way they're going and someone's going to get hurt."Gardon on Tuesday maintained Dhillon should apologize to the governor's office. "Ms. Dhillon owes us a full apology for her blatantly false implications," Gardon said in a statement. "Our office never threatened her, in contrast to the Trump Administration’s vile rhetoric against sitting judges. In recent weeks, Trump officials have referred to judges as ‘terrorists’ and ‘legal insurrectionists.’ She and her associates own that dangerous, disgraceful, and un-American rhetoric, and she should apologize for that, too." In response to Dhillon's assertions that the governor's office social media strategy could target other people or hurt other people, Gardon pointed to social media posts Dhillon has reposted on her official account, including one that called Gardon a "woke douche bag." See more coverage of top California stories here | Download our app | Subscribe to our morning newsletter | Find us on YouTube here and subscribe to our channel
