Leo Terrell, a former Democrat until the 2020 election cycle when he flipped to the Republican Party to support the candidacy of Donald Trump, has, until fairly recently, flown under the radar as one of the senior counselors in the Trump administration’s civil rights division.
Terrell recently courted the spotlight when he called for Jill Biden to potentially be charged with elder abuse for allegedly concealing the reported decline of former President Joe Biden’s mental acuity through his social media account on May 18, and in a report, The New Republic highlighted his standing as a senior counselor to the assistant attorney general, Harmeet K. Dhillon, insinuating that Terrell’s musings could eventually become a reality by virtue of his position.
A new report from Politico sheds light on the role former Fox News contributor Terrell is playing within the Trump administration, identifying him as the lead figure in its efforts to investigate academic institutions. The administration has stated that this initiative is a response to concerns about antisemitism at Harvard University and nine other schools, citing recent campus protests related to the conflict in Gaza.
According to the report, the May 21 shooting of two workers at the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., has given Terrell additional justification to reinforce his stance on the administration’s investigation into academic institutions.
Per his comments to the Jewish News Syndicate, Terrell plans to “magnify” and “multiply” the efforts of the Trump administration as it relates to alleged antisemitism on college campuses.
He continued his Israeli press tour, telling the Israeli press network N12, “We will chase after the campus inciters, and those that are here with a student visa — goodbye. You are here by grace, if you create a mess, crime or discrimination against Jews, you will find yourself outside. To the universities, expect more withdrawing of federal funding, or the withholding of all federal funding. All of it!”
Like Trump himself, Terrell has also engaged in antisemitism while alleging to be concerned about its spread, this was epitomized by his sharing of a post in March 2025 on X by the former head of the now-defunct American Identity Group, Patrick Casey, who said that “Trump has the ability to revoke someone’s Jew card,” and saying that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer is “a Palestinian,” and that “he’s not Jewish anymore,” for context, the American Identity Group is categorized as a white supremacist group by the Anti Defamation League.
As Amy Spitalnick, the CEO of the progressive Jewish Council for Public Affairs, who sued and successfully dismantled Casey’s organization, told The Guardian, “Trump’s antisemitism chief shared an antisemitic, white supremacist post from a neo-Nazi involved in Charlottesville. This administration doesn’t care about countering antisemitism. They care about exploiting it to attack democracy.”
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