US Assistant Attorney General visits Berkeley following unrest, school agrees to cooperate with investigation
The US assistant AG visited UC Berkeley and met with the TPUSA chapter president to discuss a DOJ investigation into mass chaos at a recent event hosted by the group.
The university released a statement saying it ‘is conducting its own investigation and cooperating with federal officials.’
A California university has announced that it will cooperate with a federal investigation following a visit by a top DOJ official to its campus.
US Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon recently visited the University of California, Berkeley following the unrest at a recent event hosted by the school’s Turning Point USA chapter.
Protesters gathered outside of the “This is the Turning Point” tour stop and engaged in a number of violent activities, including setting off a flare, throwing “poop and glass” at and assaulting attendees, and attempting to push through barriers, Campus Reform reported.
”We have a lot of threads to follow up,” Dhillon asserted. “This is a top priority, this incident that occurred here, for the Department of Justice and for the Trump administration.”
Dhillon had previously stated on X that the federal government will be investigating the incident, writing that the administration, the Justice Department, and the DOJ Civil Rights Division “will be doing a deep dive into all the potential criminal and civil aspects of this horrific situation, including our concerns about UC Berkeley’s history of not protecting conservative speakers on its campus.”
The school announced in a statement that it “is conducting its own investigation and cooperating with federal officials, including with today’s visit by Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights Harmeet Dhillon.”
It also defended security measures it took leading up to the event, saying “UCPD enlisted numerous law enforcement agencies to assist with the security and management of the event.”
“UC Berkeley is committed to continuing to host speakers and events representing a variety of viewpoints in a safe and respectful manner,” the statement read. “We will continue to evaluate our policies and practices to ensure that open dialogue and the rule of law continue to be upheld on our campus.”
Dhillon, however, noted the history of anti-conservative bias and violence at the school, saying in a separate post, “UC Berkeley has a history of treating conservative speakers unfairly, raising First Amendment and equal protection concerns.”
In 2018, the Dhillon Law Group Inc. settled a lawsuit against the university, which it said “impeded a conservative group’s ability to invite Ann Coulter and Milo Yiannopoulos to campus to speak.”
“Under the settlement, UC Berkeley will stop charging security fees to student and off-campus groups for speaking events,” the group wrote in a statement on its website.
Berkeley has also been home to violence against conservative activists. In 2019, Hayden Williams, a Leadership Institute field representative, was physically assaulted and called a “racist b****” while tabling on the university’s campus, Campus Reform previously reported.
All relevant parties have been contacted for comment. This article will be updated accordingly.
