Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon told Just the News on Wednesday  that federal and local officials involved in the prosecutions of President Donald Trump may face legal action if the Department of Justice identifies a conspiracy to deprive him or his followers of his civil rights.

"The Department of Justice is at the heart of considering these issues right now, so I can't really talk about the specifics, but in general terms, yes," she said on the Just the News, No Noise television show.

DOJ's jurisdiction over conspiracy to violate civil rights dates back decades

"The Civil Rights Division and the DOJ generally do have the tool of a criminal conspiracy statute for conspiracy against rights, and this dates back to the start of the Ku Klux Klan, and when the Klan and its predecessors used to go after people, and they could involve, sometimes local law enforcement to do that," she said. "And so we have the ability, if we can prove a conspiracy to violate someone's civil rights, that that could be a criminal matter."

Dhillon made the remarks in the wake of revelations that the FBI likely lacked probable cause to raid President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago estate in 2022. The revelations came in the form of declassified emails showing that the bureau repeatedly raised concerns about lack of probable cause to the Biden Department of Justice.

Just the News reported that emails turned over to Congress this week revealed that "the FBI’s Washington Field Office did not believe (and has articulated to DOJ CES), that we have established probable cause for the search warrant for classified records at Mar-a-Lago."

Many different arrows in the DOJ quiver

Dhillon further suggested that the DOJ could explore other methods to pursue state-level violators.

"And so these cases are rare and few and far between, but it has been something that we have been looking at in a few different fact patterns in this Department of Justice, including numerous instances of state officials violating federal rights," she said. "In this case, the allegation is that federal officials violated federal rights and the other tools that could include Office of Inspector General inspections here at the Department of Justice."

"That also goes for lawyers who leak and betray confidence as a breach of privilege, and for people who violate their oath as attorneys, they could also face bar sanctions if there's a bar referral after an investigation like that," Dhillon explained. 

"So, I would say all of those things are on the table for lawyers and DOJ officials and others who conspired with them at the state level, state prosecutors, state police and so forth, who conspired to violate civil rights. And it could also include executive branch officials from the first administration who knowingly conspired and orchestrated a violation of federal civil rights."

Ben Whedon is the Chief Political Correspondent at Just the News. Follow him on X.