Harmeet Dhillon, the Trump administration's Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, resigned Thursday after 18 turbulent months remaking one of the Justice Department's most closely watched divisions. Attorney General Todd Blanche announced and accepted her resignation, praising what he called her "dedicated public service" and saying she had "defended the civil liberties of every American and enforced the law without fear or favor."

Dhillon told Fox News Digital she made the decision weeks before Tuesday's midterm results, which handed Democrats control of both chambers of Congress, and that she plans to return to her California-based firm, Dhillon Law Group. In her resignation letter, she said she had told White House chief of staff Susie Wiles in early October that she intended to leave after the election.

A tenure that reshaped the division

That account is complicated by reporting from CNN and Bloomberg Law, which cited multiple sources saying Trump had wanted Dhillon fired after an October 18 "60 Minutes" interview he felt was insufficiently forceful in defending his administration's election-integrity efforts, and that DOJ officials delayed any move until after the election. CNN separately reported Dhillon had grown increasingly sidelined from the department's voting-rights work as the midterms approached.

SHE HAS DEFENDED THE CIVIL LIBERTIES OF EVERY AMERICAN AND ENFORCED THE LAW WITHOUT FEAR OR FAVOR.

Dhillon's tenure was among the most consequential, and contested, in the division's history. More than 75% of its career staff left on her watch, according to department figures, as she shifted the office's priorities toward gun-owner rights, curbing diversity programs at universities and opposing transgender civil rights protections, while closing a number of long-running cases involving discrimination against Black Americans. The department dismissed more than 50 decades-old school desegregation consent decrees and withdrew from consent decrees governing the Minneapolis and Louisville police departments.

Praise and condemnation in equal measure

Reaction split sharply along the same lines that defined her time in office. A White House spokesperson said Dhillon did a "fantastic job," while Dhillon herself cited her work ending diversity, equity and inclusion practices and defending women's sports as among her proudest accomplishments, vowing to keep "fighting for our country." Stacey Young, a former division attorney who now runs the advocacy group Justice Connection, took the opposite view, calling Dhillon "the most destructive, lawless, and hateful head of the Civil Rights Division in DOJ history."

Her departure makes her the first senior Justice Department official to step down since Tuesday's election rout, and it leaves unresolved several high-profile matters, including the division's handling of a fatal shooting of a US citizen by an immigration agent in Minneapolis, for which no charges have been filed. No successor has yet been named.