At Wednesday's Senate Judiciary Committee hearing, Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO) spoke to Assistant AG Harmeet Dhillon about DOJ actions under the Biden Administration.
00:00Senator Hawley. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Ms. Dillon, good to see you. You're doing a great job. Thanks for being here. I want to ask you about discrimination of a somewhat different kind. That's discrimination on the basis of religion.
00:14In the last administration, I'm sure you remember, the FBI issued a memorandum in which it attempted to recruit informants, spies, into Catholic parishes and probably, frankly, other Christian churches on the basis of these churches' theology.
00:34They designated and they created a list, an actual list. The United States government created a list of Catholic parishes and groups it did not like, branded them as traditionalist Catholics, I guess that's now a slur, and tried to recruit spies into these churches, which is unbelievable to me.
00:55I mean, you were talking about a violation of one's civil rights. To my knowledge, that memo has never been formally withdrawn. The Attorney General of the United States at the time, Eric Garland, sat where you're sitting, first denied it, then attempted to defend it. It is, in fact, totally indefensible.
01:12My question to you is, what can be done about discrimination like this by our own governmental institutions?
01:18I think one of the things people voted for in electing the current president, who I was proud to support, is they voted to put a stop to that kind of discrimination, to that kind of abuse of our own citizens by our own government.
01:34And I just submit to you, of all the abuses of the Biden era, and there were a lot, there's nothing lower than trying to recruit spies into churches to inform on your countrymen because, what, you don't like what's being preached from the pulpit?
01:49I mean, this is insane stuff, and they were using the FBI to do it.
01:53Can something be done about this to hold accountable the people within the DOJ and the FBI who perpetrated what I frankly think are crimes?
02:01I mean, what can we do about this?
02:03Well, Senator, first, I want to assure you that the policy that you just described would appear to be a dead letter today.
02:09We are certainly not doing anything of that nature in the Civil Rights Division, or to my knowledge, throughout the United States Department of Justice.
02:15To the contrary, I would say, and I've been a civil liberties lawyer in favor of religious liberties for over three decades, this is the most religion-friendly Department of Justice in United States history.
02:27In the Civil Rights Division so far, we have taken action to side with a Catholic coach in the Rolovich case who was fired for refusing to take the COVID vaccine.
02:37We intervened in a lawsuit in Washington state, also where Rolovich is from, to challenge that state's discrimination against Catholic clergy enforcing and trying to pierce their priest penitent privilege.
02:50And that law was just enjoined this week by a federal judge in Washington state.
02:55We have opened up numerous, in just less than 100 days, Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, majority for the Christian community, but also for Jewish, Muslim, Buddhist, and other faiths as well.
03:08And we have opened up investigations into anti-Semitism throughout the United States, and I have been told by Jewish leaders who sat in my conference room that they had similar conversations with my predecessor, because this problem is not a new problem, unfortunately.
03:23It is a problem that has been going on for years.
03:25And while my predecessor kindly nodded and listened to their complaints, nothing happened.
03:30Things are happening in this administration, and our door is open to people of all faiths to come and tell us what is happening, zoning violations, discrimination.
03:39Certainly if the government is spying on them, that would be outrageous, and I would be interested to know names and dates, and we will begin an investigation into that, sir.
03:46Yeah, thank you.
03:46That's exactly what I think we need to find out.
03:48I mean, we need names and dates.
03:50We need to know who authored that memo.
03:52And those people, their names need to be made public.
03:55And if they are still employed, God forbid, at the FBI or the Department of Justice, they need to be fired.
04:01I mean, I just think we need some accountability, don't you?
04:04I mean, I think if we, if look, if you look at what's happened in the last four years, you look at how religious rights were trampled upon.
04:09Let's not forget, during COVID, who was shut down?
04:12Do you remember?
04:12Who was shut down during COVID?
04:14The churches, the synagogues.
04:16Who was open?
04:17Oh, well, the marijuana dispensaries, they were open.
04:21Democrat Party donors, you know, all the corporations that gave the Democrat Party, they were all open.
04:27But churches, closed.
04:28Synagogues, closed.
04:30And then to have our own FBI recruiting informants into our churches, it's outrageous.
04:36I think we need to know who wrote these memos, who approved them, where were they distributed, and I think people need to be fired for it.
04:45And then I think, if possible, they need to be prosecuted for it.
04:48Don't you think?
04:48I mean, don't you think it's time for some accountability?
04:51I think we've got to turn the page and do better, sure.
04:53But we've got to hold accountable the people who did this in the first instance, or they'll just do it again.
04:58They'll just do it again.
04:59Senator, I agree with you.
05:00I mean, I was privileged to win between my law firm and my nonprofit three cases at the United States Supreme Court during COVID to protect the rights of Christians, to be able to pray in my state of California.
05:10And the governor is still the governor, and there has been no accountability in that state for the gross violations of every person's right of faith.
05:18And so I hope that voters ultimately hold the elected leaders accountable, but certainly people who grossly violated the First Amendment, those are names I'd like to know, and we will look into that as a result of voting.
05:32This is my last name, Mr. Chairman, and I thank you for holding this hearing.
05:35I just think that you're right about voters, and voters did vote for—they voted for a change in November.
05:41They voted for accountability, and now we've got to give it to them.
05:43And I just want to—I know you're not in charge of the FBI, but I just want to send a clear message to everybody who is.
05:50There has got to be some accountability for what has happened with our government.
05:54There has got to be accountability for how it was abused.
05:57And religious believers were abused in the last four years, over and over and over.
06:04And we've talked about it, and we've held hearings on it, and now it's time to do something about it.
06:10And the people who perpetrated these outrageous abuses of our First Amendment rights, they need to be held accountable.
06:17They need to be held accountable, and they need to be held accountable as soon as possible.
