Pam Bondi launched multi-agency task force in February 2025
WASHINGTON — A former Justice Department lawyer has alleged in a whistleblower disclosure that a Trump administration task force created to combat antisemitism pushed Ivy League universities toward settlements despite government investigations that were rushed, incomplete, or failed to establish legal violations by the schools.
The Associated Press obtained the disclosure, in which the former attorney alleges the investigations into some of the nation’s most prestigious academic institutions were designed to strong-arm the schools into cutting deals for political purposes.
The complaint says the outcomes of the investigations were “predetermined, without regard to the evidence.” It characterizes the multi-agency effort as a “politically mandated effort” to extract money from schools through settlement demands and funding freezes, under what it describes as the pretext of rooting out antisemitism.
The Justice Department launched the task force in February 2025 under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. Lawyers for the former government attorney wrote that the task force’s work was “marked by extraordinary procedural irregularities, predetermined outcomes without factual or legal support” and disregard for the law and Constitution, in seeking watchdog investigations into their client’s complaints.