US Justice Department denies whistleblower claims on anti-Semitism probes

What the report says

The US Justice Department has rejected a whistleblower complaint alleging that Trump administration anti-Semitism investigations at elite universities were politically driven and predetermined. According to Al Jazeera, the complaint was filed by former DOJ civil rights lawyer Haley Van Erem and sent to inspectors general at the Justice Department and Health and Human Services, as well as the Office of Special Counsel. Her lawyers say she was later pushed out after objecting to what she viewed as investigations unsupported by facts and law.

The allegations focus on the Trump administration’s Joint Task Force to Combat Anti-Semitism, created in February 2025 after campus protests over Israel’s war in Gaza. The complaint says the task force and political appointees overruled career staff, targeted professors based on religion or ethnicity, and pressured Ivy League universities into costly settlements despite what the filing describes as a lack of evidence of civil rights violations. The DOJ said Van Erem did not work on the university cases and said it stands by the integrity of the investigations.

Representative Jamie Raskin has also opened a congressional inquiry into the claims, arguing that the probes were used to intimidate universities and suppress protected speech. Al Jazeera noted that Brown and Columbia reached settlements, while Harvard successfully fought back in court over frozen research funding. The developments add to a broader debate over how the administration handled campus antisemitism complaints and whether those efforts were aimed at enforcement or political leverage.