Fired Justice Dept. Official Speaks about Her Ouster and Mel Gibson

The Washington Post

11:14 JST, March 13, 2025

A senior Justice Department attorney who was fired Friday is questioning the integrity and direction of the Justice Department under President Donald Trump, accusing law enforcement leaders of pushing her out for political reasons.

Elizabeth Oyer said she was fired after refusing to back the restoration of gun ownership rights to actor Mel Gibson, a Trump supporter convicted on misdemeanor domestic-violence charges in 2011. Oyer headed the office of the pardon attorney, which works with the White House to decide who should be granted clemency.

In interviews with The Washington Post and other outlets, Oyer said Trump appointees at the Justice Department are ignoring the advice of longtime career officials and expect everyone to agree with the president and his allies.

“The only reason I am speaking out about this is because I think it is important to shed some light on what is going on in the Department of Justice,” Oyer told The Post. “It is incredibly difficult for people who are still there to speak up, and people who are still there fear retaliation from the current administration.”

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche denied her account and said in a statement that “former employees who violate their ethical duties by making false accusations on press tours will not be tolerated.”

“This former employee’s version of events is false,” Blanche’s statement said. “Her decision to voice this erroneous accusation about her dismissal is in direct violation of her ethical duties as an attorney and is a shameful distraction from our critical mission to prosecute violent crime, enforce our nation’s immigration laws, and make America safe again.”

Oyer was one of several career Justice officials removed from their positions Friday afternoon – the latest wave of experienced lawyers pushed out by the Trump administration. No other fired Justice Department official has spoken so publicly about their ouster. Potentially, the removals would allow the president to put people aligned ideologically with his administration into the traditionally nonpartisan positions.

Oyer, whose account was first reported by the New York Times, says she was not given a reason for her firing.

“My ethical duty as a Department of Justice employee – and now a former one – is to the laws of the United States and the people that I was entrusted to serve,” she told MSNBC. “It is not to the bullies who are currently running the Department of Justice.”

She said she had recently been assigned to a department working group looking to restore gun rights to some people who had committed crimes, which she called a priority of Attorney General Pam Bondi.

Oyer was asked to devise an automated system to determine who would qualify, she said. In response, she urged Justice Department leaders to be extremely careful about restoring the rights of people who have committed domestic violence.

“It is exactly the type of thing the Department of Justice should be concerned about as a matter of public safety,” Oyer told The Post.

Her office was then asked to identify suitable candidates to have their gun rights restored, Oyer said. She sifted through people who had applied for pardons with her office and been carefully vetted, then crafted a list of 95 individuals who had committed relatively nonviolent crimes at least 20 years ago and had demonstrated exemplary conduct since serving their sentences.

Justice Department leaders whittled that list down to nine people, Oyer said, and she was asked to send a memo to Bondi explaining why those people should have their gun rights restored.

But after Oyer drafted the memo, an official asked her to add Gibson to the list. She said that Gibson had not applied for a pardon or been vetted through her office, and that she did not believe that the actor, as someone with a history of domestic abuse, met the criteria to have his gun rights restored.

Oyer said she was escorted from her office by security hours after she refused to add Gibson’s name.

She noted that there are 6,000 people waiting for their applications for clemency to be reviewed, with around two-thirds of those applicants currently serving a prison sentence. Oyer said these people do not have access to the White House and the vast majority do not have an attorney.

“I became increasingly concerned as weeks passed that there was not any interest [in the Trump administration] in going through the thousands of applications,” Oyer said.

The department last week transferred at least three senior officials out of the highly sensitive National Security Division, which works with the FBI and other intelligence agencies to protect the nation from threats.

It is unclear whether the national security officials were provided a reason for their removals. They were technically not fired, with at least some of them being transferred to other parts of the Justice Department in less desirable positions, according to people familiar with the transfers.

The officials must now decide if they will accept those new assignments or resign.

In Oyer’s case, department officials cited Article II of the Constitution to justify her removal in her termination notice, which she posted online.

The Trump administration has cited in other termination notices this constitutional provision that establishes the powers of the executive branch, even though some federal workforce experts say it does not legally justify the removal of career employees.