WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will promote Harmeet Dhillon to one of the top slots in the Department of Justice, The Daily Wire can first report, a next step in the shake-up that began with the ousting of Pam Bondi as attorney general.
The president plans to nominate Dhillon to be associate attorney general, a move up from her position as the head of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, a source familiar said on Saturday evening. Stanley Woodward, who held the leadership position, resigned from the department earlier on Saturday, the source said.
The move marks a major move up the Justice Department ranks for Dhillon, who was sworn in as Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division in April 2025.
The news comes amid reshuffling of top DOJ officials following the president’s decision to remove Bondi. Trump met Bondi before his Wednesday evening speech and told her that she was being replaced, The Daily Wire reported earlier this week.
Todd Blanche is serving as the acting attorney general, and could remain in that role for quite some time, a source familiar with the president’s thinking shared on Saturday, noting that the president has no plans to nominate anyone else right at this time.
Trump has been said to be ruminating over appointing Lee Zeldin to the role, and conservatives close to the president have floated the likes of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Utah Sen. Mike Lee, and Dhillon herself.
Pam Bondi, US attorney general, during a swearing-in ceremony in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Tuesday, March 24, 2026. Photographer: Graeme Sloan/Bloomberg via Getty Images
The president made the decision to remove Bondi in part because he was frustrated with the lack of criminal prosecutions of Democrats who committed lawfare against him, a second federal source shared.
Another federal source familiar with the Bondi firing pushed back on this characterization, telling The Daily Wire: “Attorney General Bondi’s outside enemies knew that she had no lack of zeal or skill in prosecuting cases of weaponization. They just stood to benefit from a changing of the guard.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Daily Wire.
Prior to the time at the Justice Department, Dhillon made a name for herself in the conservative movement through her work at her legal firm, Dhillon Law Group, where she represented Americans like pro-life undercover journalist David Daleiden and detransitioner Chloe Cole in free speech and civil rights cases. She was also a major force in Republican campaign and election law.
“Among her many notable cases, Ms. Dhillon brought legal challenges against the University of California, Berkeley over its free speech policy, against an Antifa organization for an assault on a conservative journalist, against several states for their restrictive responses to Covid-19, and against various large tech companies for a host of civil rights issues,” her DOJ bio states.
