Judge: DOJ Undid Its Attempt To Bully Portland Police Because AG Harmeet Dhillon Tweeted Thru It

from the every-button-a-self-destruct-button dept

There are several layers of bullshit in operation here, so we’ll walk through it all. But keep in mind the only reason this is all being exposed is because Trump administration officials feel they’re more obligated to “own the libs” than actually do their damn jobs.

Last October, “conservative influencer” Nick Sortor was arrested by Portland (Oregon) police after an altercation with anti-ICE protesters. Sortor received preferential treatment from the Trump administration. He was allowed to stand on the roof of the ICE detention center and film protesters during then-DHS head Kristi Noem’s visit to the site.

The DOJ decided to intervene on Sortor’s behalf. It went after the Portland Police Bureau (PPB), demanding it turn over thousands of documents it claimed were evidence of the PPB’s desire to punish certain people for certain kinds of speech.

To do this, it cited a DOJ settlement reached with the PPB back in 2013 — one that said nothing about any PPB attempts to shut down speech the PPB didn’t like. The paragraph cited in its demand for documents said this:

Too frequently, persons who have or are perceived to have mental illness and are in crisis are subjected to unnecessary or excessive force by police officers. The Portland Police Bureau lacks adequate policies to guide officers in these circumstances, or training, supervision and accountability measures necessary to ensure that officers comply with the constitutional rights of people in mental health crisis.

That’s the first layer of bullshit. The DOJ isn’t going after the PPB because it has any genuine concerns about its treatment of people with mental health issues. It’s going after the PPB because it arrested one of theirs and is located in a “liberal” city this administration desires to punish however it can, whenever it can.

The next layer of bullshit is the DOJ pretending any previous settlement over excessive force by local law enforcement is worthy of recognizing. Since Trump’s return to office, the DOJ Civil Rights Division solely exists to further the goals of the administration’s white Christian nationalists. It has already made moves to dissolve or suspend court-ordered consent decrees affecting local law enforcement agencies successfully sued/investigated for pattern-and-practice rights violations because it feels law enforcement shouldn’t have to answer to anyone.

So, it’s entirely hypocritical for this administration to cite a consent decree it would have sought to have removed if it affected a Red State agency in hopes of punishing Portland and its police department for anti-ICE protests.

The government claimed the settlement entitled it to whatever documents it wanted from the PPB. But Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon decided to shit the bed by being exactly the sort of person you’d expect her to be, given her subservience to Donald Trump. From the ruling [PDF] handed down by federal judge Michael Simon rejecting the government’s bad faith effort to leverage a PPB civil rights settlement for its own vindictive purposes (h/t Gabriel Malor):

On October 3, 2025, the same day that Judge Immergut was holding the hearing on the motion for temporary restraining order requested by the State of Oregon and the City, the Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division of the United States Department of Justice, Ms. Harmeet Dhillon, publicly stated that DOJ would conduct a “full investigation” of policing of the protests at the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (“ICE”) facility in Portland, Oregon.

She announced this by reposting a social media post from social media personality Nick Sortor, who wrote: “BREAKING: Attorney General Pam Bondi has ORDERED a full investigation, led by Asst. AG Harmeet Dhillon, of the Portland Police Bureau, following my wrongful arrest last night, Bondi confirmed to me. FAFO, @PortlandPolice….” Assistant Attorney General Dhillon also attached to her repost her own comment, which read: “Portland: It’s FO time. Buckle up.” Id. (emphasis added).

This gloating has turned out to be premature. The court says the administration has presented no evidence the PPB is failing to follow the terms of the 2013 settlement. Furthermore, that settlement was tied to the abuse of people with mental health illnesses. There were no allegations in the settlement that the PPB regularly punished people for engaging in protected speech.

This is the first of three indications the government has “unclean hands.” This is a legal term of art that basically means the government’s intentions are impure and enough impurity is on the public record to support this finding. Part of that is Dhillon’s tweet above, which makes it clear the targeting of the PPB was directly related to the arrest of Nick Sortor, rather than anything the administration claimed in its legal filings.

As the court notes here, the government is cheating when it uses a completely unrelated enforcement effort in order to induce compliance.

[T]he United States asserts that it is purporting to investigate whether the Portland Police Bureau has engaged in political viewpoint discrimination in violation of the Agreement in this case. This case, however, has never been about viewpoint discrimination, or even any issues arising under the First Amendment.

Second, there’s the timing. This action was pursued by the administration only after it was sued by the city and state over its commandeering of Oregon’s National Guard units.

Finally, there’s Dhillon’s tweet, which can’t even be charitably be referred to as “ill-advised.”

As noted, Assistant Attorney General Dhillon preceded her reposting of a Nick Sortor comment with Dhillon’s own comment: “Portland: It’s FO time. Buckle up.” (emphasis added). That is neither language nor tone of a good faith investigation by the United States Department of Justice. Instead, it exhibits all the hallmarks of a threat and attempted intimidation.

And that’s not even the totality of the intimidation tactics engaged in by AAG Dhillon. A footnote points out Dhillon also decided to tweet out a threat targeting the judge that had originally blocked the government from obtaining these documents from the PPB.

In addition, on the same day that Judge Immergut issued her temporary restraining order, relying in part on the testimony of two high-ranking officials from the Portland Police Bureau, Assistant Attorney General Dhillon reposted a comment from another social media personality that read, in part, “Judge Immergut must be impeached.” (emphasis added). This too is threatening conduct by Assistant Attorney General Dhillon.

This is not how a federal agency — especially the one expected to fight for justice, rather than just act like extensions of Trump’s id — is supposed to behave. But Trump himself expressly encourages this behavior and anyone with the least bit of personal/professional restraint has likely been fired and replaced by brainstem operators like AAG Dhillon.

What this means is that the courts no longer trust the DOJ, which makes it all the more difficult for it to secure the wins Trump demands from his underlings. This is a blueprint for perpetual failure. Unfortunately, no one in the administration is willing to learn anything from these experiences because doing so just means educating yourself out of a job.

Filed Under: dhs, doj, harmeet dhillon, ice, nick sortor, portland, trump administration