By The former U.S. pardon attorney, Elizabeth G. Oyer, was terminated Friday after she opposed restoring actor Mel Gibson’s rights to carry a gun, her spokesperson and two Justice Department officials familiar with the matter told NBC News.
A spokesperson for Oyer said that she was not told why she was terminated but that because of the sequence of events she believes her refusal to carry out a request from officials in the deputy attorney general’s office to add Gibson’s name to a list of people to have their gun rights restored may have played a role.
Gibson, a supporter of President Donald Trump, lost his gun rights after a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor conviction.
In a statement to NBC News, Oyer described a climate of fear within the Justice Department.
“Unfortunately, experienced professionals throughout the Department are afraid to voice their opinions because dissent is being punished,” she said. “Decisions are being made based on relationships and loyalty, not based on facts or expertise or sound analysis, which is very alarming given that what is at stake is our public safety.”
The New York Times first reported the apparent reason for Oyer’s termination.
A Justice Department official familiar with the matter told NBC News that Oyer’s firing was not related to the Gibson case. “The Mel Gibson decision did not play a role in termination decision,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “The paperwork was done before the Mel Gibson email went out.”
But a second senior Justice Department official, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Oyer’s ouster “is part of a very concerning set of personnel moves across the federal government and at DOJ” in which officials who might act as checks on abuses of power were being ousted.
“I don’t know how much of what happened to Liz was a failure to toe the line about a specific thing,” the Justice Department official said. “But, systematically, the political leadership of this administration is doing their best to take away the institutional guardrails.”
Shortly after Trump took office, the new leadership at the Justice Department — including the offices of the solicitor general and the deputy attorney general — indicated that restoring gun rights to previously convicted felons was a top priority. Federal law bars people convicted of crimes, including misdemeanor state domestic violence, from owning or purchasing handguns.
A senior Justice Department official questioned the decision. “The fact that this was the No. 1 thing they wanted to address was bizarre,” said the official, who asked not to be named.
Multiple sources familiar with the matter said there have been ongoing meetings with senior Justice Department attorneys from the deputy attorney general’s office; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the Criminal Division; and the pardon attorney’s office in recent weeks about the issue.
Oyer was one of the people assigned to the working group. It was led by Paul Perkins of the deputy attorney general’s office and James McHenry, the acting attorney general, two sources familiar with the effort said.
Since the early 1990s, an appropriations restriction has prohibited ATF from exercising its authority to restore gun rights.
A DOJ official told NBC News that restoring convicted criminals’ gun rights endangers people.
“For thirty years since then, Congress has kept that restriction because individuals who had their firearms rights restored would use firearms in crimes,” the official said. “Now, the Administration sees this statute as a way to effectively usurp the Gun Control Act and give guns back to people who they like, or to whoever else is politically expedient.”
No system has been set up to review and approve gun rights restoration applications, but there have been talks to have the attorney general immediately begin restoring rights to a pre-set list of people in the meantime, two law enforcement officials familiar with the matter said.
Elizabeth G. OyerMatthew Nichols / Justice Department
Multiple sources said they were instructed to find a way to restore gun rights to entire classes of previously convicted people. Because ATF is technically prohibited from processing such requests, the plan was to give the authority to the pardon attorney and for there to be a semi-automated process. That was in stark contrast to how the pardon office normally works, which is by evaluating each application case by case and making recommendations.
At some point, there was a debate among the group about domestic violence offenders. Oyer expressed “real concerns” about authorizing access to offenders with histories of domestic violence, including misdemeanor domestic violence, sources said.
Oyer’s office submitted to the offices of the attorney general and the deputy attorney general a list of 95 people who had already been vetted for potential clemency whom she recommended for possible gun rights restoration because the risk of recidivism appeared low. All of them had been convicted of nonviolent crimes and had not committed additional crimes since.
Officials in the office of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche cut the number from 95 to nine. Oyer was then asked to submit a draft memo recommending that those nine people get their gun rights back, which she submitted Thursday, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
After she submitted the draft, Oyer was asked to add Gibson’s name to the list, according to her spokesperson and another person familiar with the events. Oyer was also sent a letter that Gibson’s attorney had sent asking Justice Department officials for his gun rights to be restored.
Oyer responded to the request by email, saying she could not recommend to the attorney general that Gibson’s gun rights be restored based on the available information, Oyer’s spokesperson told NBC News.
Within a few hours, she got a call from an official working in the deputy attorney general’s office who had been involved in the working group.
She was asked whether her position was flexible, to which she responded it was not. Oyer was then, according to her spokesperson, told that “Mel Gibson is a friend of the president and that should be justification enough.”
Over the 15-minute conversation, the official quickly became very aggressive, and the tone “approached the line of bullying,” the spokesperson said, adding that no specific threats were made.
On Friday morning, Oyer submitted a second draft memo — one that sought to summarize the available information and not make any recommendation to the attorney general. She relayed the sequence of events to colleagues, telling one, “I really think Mel Gibson is going to be my downfall.”
Within a few hours, Oyer got a call from her staff informing her that security was at her office. She was handed her termination letter and escorted out of the building by two security guards, multiple sources told NBC News.
A Justice Department official said Oyer’s termination reflects “how scared people are to speak up within DOJ right now. If you even dissent, you’re out.”
