WASHINGTON – The Senate cleared two of President Donald Trump’s Justice Department candidates on Thursday, setting up another lawyer who defended Trump last year, and set up a new lead on civil rights that has been heavily criticized by advocates.

The Senate confirmed California lawyer Hermeet Dillon. 52-45 votes He leads the Civil Rights Office, one of the biggest directors of justice, in the role of the Attorney General’s aide. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski was the only Republican opposed to the nomination.

According to a biographies on her company’s website, Dillon, Trump’s legal counsel for Dillon Law Group in San Francisco and managing partner for Dillon Law Group in San Francisco, specializes in issues of commercial litigation, employment law, first amendment and election law.

Dillon also said that he is CEO and founder of the Center for American Freedom, “protecting the civil liberties of Americans left behind by civil rights heritage organizations.”

Dillon previously sat on the ACLU Northern California board of directors and defended members of the Sikh community to which her family belonged, from attacks after 9/11. Report From San Francisco-based KQED-FM.

But Dillon also has a path of controversy that involves repeated repetition. Negation Results of the 2020 presidential election Fuel supply conspiracy Democrats following the 2022 attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of then-speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Civil rights advocates also point to vote and trans rights that challenge her recent legal work.

“She’s not there to protect all of us rights, and that’s what her records show,” Lena Zwarenstein of the Private and Human Rights Leadership Conference told the state newsroom Thursday.

A coalition signed by dozens of advocacy groups in an eight-page letter to the Senator, led by a leadership meeting. I wrote it Dillon “relentlessly tried to limit access to the ballot box, “being denied, reduced and erased” the presence of transgender youth.

The state newsroom reached the White House for comment.

Former Missouri AG has been promoted

The Senate also confirmed Party Line votes, 52-45, Former Missouri Attorney General and Trump’s defense attorney Dean Sauer will lead the government case.

After representing President Trump’s immunity debate last year before the US Supreme Court, Sauer will discuss it on the high bench on behalf of the DOJ.

Sauer made the headline in January 2024 Proposed To a panel of three judges in the DC Circuit Court of Appeals, the president may be shield By presidential immunity for ordering Seal Team 6 to assassinate his rival.

Last updated at 7:13pm, April 3, 2025