Leo Terrell, who leads President Donald Trump’s antisemitism task force, threatened to choke a Jewish intern with a computer charger, according to a newly published Harvard Crimson investigation.
The student newspaper’s report, published this week, relies on accounts from Tejas Billa, a Harvard student and former Crimson editor, and three other interns who spoke anonymously, all four of whom are Jewish.
They said Terrell isolated them, berated them, and repeatedly threatened their jobs or careers. Terrell’s task force, created in early 2025, was charged with rooting out “antisemitic harassment in schools and on college campuses,” the Crimson reported.
The interns describing his conduct are Jewish college students, the people that mission was meant to protect.
On Sept. 16, Terrell spent nearly an hour demanding to know why Billa had left his charger at home, accusing him of lying and threatening to fire him, Billa and another intern said.
Then, they said, Terrell told Billa he would choke him with the charger if he brought it to work the next day.
That afternoon, Billa called Stacy Harwood, an office manager in the Office of the Associate Attorney General, to report it, according to a recording he shared with the Crimson.
“He’s been terrible, hasn’t he?” Harwood asked before Billa could explain.
“He’s threatened me, career-wise, physically, whatnot,” Billa told her. “I don’t really take it as a joke given the sort of power.”
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Harwood replied. “This unfortunately has been a pattern.”
Terrell denied threatening to fire or choke Billa, telling the Crimson he had simply told Billa the charger was government property that had to be brought to work. Harwood declined to comment. Billa resigned nine days later.
The interns said Terrell also warned he would fire them if they spoke with department employees outside their team.
“‘I’ll destroy your career’ was another one of the lines he used if we were caught talking to anyone outside of the office or going anywhere that he did not specify,” Billa said.
By early October, all four interns Terrell had offered jobs beyond the summer had stopped working for him or left, Billa and two interns said. None received the pay he had promised them starting Sept. 1, they said.
Terrell’s staff is now a single special assistant, he told the Crimson. Those exits cleared out an office that, since his chief of staff left early in the summer, had consisted of Terrell and seven student interns, the report said.
Through the summer, the interns said, Terrell focused on a planned 15-city national tour, picturing packed arenas and stars such as Justin Bieber and Nicki Minaj.
He also told the interns to ignore a steady stream of emails from Jewish people reporting antisemitic hate crimes because they were too busy with the tour, according to Billa and two interns.
So far, the tour has held one event, an Oct. 14 gathering at a synagogue in Southfield, Michigan, the Crimson reported. The official charged with fighting antisemitism had his staff pass over reports of antisemitic hate crimes to work on that tour.
Terrell told the Crimson the interns were hired only for the tour and that hate crime matters belong to the Civil Rights Division.
The interns said Terrell called Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, his former boss and his rival in a public feud, “the world’s largest Jew-hater.” He told the Crimson he used the term only about conservative commentator Tucker Carlson.
Last year, Terrell reposted a former white nationalist leader’s post saying Trump could revoke someone’s “Jew card,” Raw Story reported.
“He couldn’t achieve much given his limited power within DOJ, and he took that out by abusing and threatening and harassing a group of college-age staff,” Billa said.
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