On Saturday, a home belonging to a South Carolina Circuit judge burned to the ground. Three people, including the judge’s husband and son, were hospitalized with serious injuries.
The cause of the fire was not immediately clear. An investigation is underway.
Obviously, the harm and destruction were terrible things. But what turned that particular tragedy into something more frightful and ominous is the fact the judge had been targeted with death threats, after ruling against the Trump administration in a lawsuit involving the state’s voter files.
Last month, the judge, Diane Goodstein, temporarily blocked South Carolina from releasing data to the U.S. Department of Retribution, er, Justice, which is turning over tables in search of “facts” to bolster President Trump’s lies about a stolen 2020 election.
Among those who criticized the decision, which was reversed by South Carolina’s Supreme Court, was Harmeet Dhillon, the San Francisco attorney who now heads the Justice Department’s beleaguered Civil Rights Division.
Here’s a short quiz. Using professional norms and human decency as your guide, can you guess what Dhillon did in the aftermath of the fire?
A) Publicly consoled Goodstein and said the Justice Department would throw its full weight behind an urgent investigation into the fire.
B) Drew herself up in righteous anger and issued a ringing statement that denounced political violence, whatever its form, whether perpetrated by those on the left, right or center.
C) Took to social media to troll a political adversary who raised concerns about the targeting of judges and incendiary rhetoric emanating from the Trump administration.
If you selected anything other than “C,” you obviously aren’t familiar with Dhillon. Or perhaps you’ve spent the last many months in a coma, or cut off from the world in the frozen tundra of Antarctica.
The cause of the fire could very well turn out to be something unfortunate and distinctly nonpolitical. Faulty wiring, say, or an unattended pot left on the stove. South Carolina’s top law enforcement official said a preliminary inquiry had so far turned up no evidence that the fire was deliberately set.
What matters, however, is Dhillon’s response.
Not as someone with a shred of sympathy, or as a dogged and scrupulous seeker of truth and justice. But as a fists-up political combatant.
The timing of the blaze, the threats Goodstein received and the country’s hair-trigger political atmosphere all offered more than a little reason for pause and reflection. At the least, Goodstein’s loss and the suffering of her husband and child called for compassion.
Dhillon, however, is a someone who reacted to the 2022 hammer attack on former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband not with concern but rather cruel and baseless conspiracy claims.
By then, Dhillon — a critic of Trump before he won the 2016 Republican nomination — had shape-shifted into one of his most vocal backers, a regular mouthpiece on Fox News and other right-wing media. Her pandering paid off with her appointment to the Justice Department, where Dhillon is supposed to be protecting the civil and constitutional rights of all Americans — not just those in Trump’s good graces.
There’s plenty of tit-for-tat going around in today’s sulfurous climate. Indeed, the jabbing of fingers and laying of blame have become something of a national pastime.
The administration asserts left-wing radicals are responsible for the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk and a sniper attack on the ICE field office in Dallas. Those on the left blame Trump and his venomous vassal, Stephen Miller, for the incineration of Goodstein’s home.
When Neera Tanden, a liberal think-tank leader and prolific presence on social media, suggested there might be a connection between the blaze and Miller’s hate-filled rhetoric, Dhillon responded like a juvenile in a flame war. “Clown … grow up, girl,” Dhillon wrote on X.
When a spokesman for Gov. Gavin Newsom pointed a finger at Dhillon and her criticism of the South Carolina judge, Dhillon seized on some over-the-top responses and called in the U.S. Marshals Service. “We will tolerate no such threats by woke idiots, including those who work for @GavinNewsom,” Dhillon said.
All around, a sad display of more haste than good judgment.
That said, there is a huge difference between a press staffer getting his jollies on social media and the assistant attorney general of the United States playing politics with personal calamity.
And, really, doesn’t Dhillon have better things to do — and better ways of earning her pay — than constantly curating her social media feed, like a mean girl obsessing over likes and followers?
Worse, though, than such puerile behavior is what Dhillon embodies: an us-vs.-them attitude that permeates the administration and treats those who didn’t vote for Trump — which is more than half the country — as a target.
It’s evident in the talk of shuttering “Democrat” agencies, as if federal programs serve only members of one party. It’s manifest in the federal militarization of Democratic-run cities and the cutting off of funding to blue states, but not red ones, during the current government shutdown.
It’s revealed in the briefings — on military plans, on operations during the shutdown — given to Republican lawmakers but denied to Democrats serving on Capitol Hill.
Dhillon is just one cog in Trump’s malevolent, weaponization of Washington. But her reflexively partisan response to the razing of Judge Goodstein’s home is telling.
When the person in charge of the nation’s civil rights enforcement can’t muster even a modicum of civility, we’re living in some very dark times indeed.
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