By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff
WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – The former U.S. pardon attorney has sued the Justice Department over what she calls an unlawful firing after she said she declined to recommend restoring gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, a vocal supporter of President Donald Trump.
The suit is the latest by a senior government official against the Trump administration over alleged wrongful termination.
Elizabeth Oyer, who served as pardon attorney from 2022-2025 and has become an outspoken critic of the administration and Attorney General Todd Blanche, alleged she was asked to ignore her concerns about Gibson’s history of domestic violence, among other issues, and recommend he regain firearm access, according to the suit filed on Thursday.
After she refused, and refused another request from a staff member of Blanche, then the deputy attorney general, Oyer received termination papers from security officers. She was told she was being fired under Trump’s Article 2 authority, a section of the Constitution that establishes the presidency.
“This case is about much more than what happened to me,” Oyer said in a statement. “If career officials like me can be fired for refusing to bend the rules to serve the president’s friends, then the message to every public servant is clear: loyalty to a politician matters more than loyalty to the Constitution.”
The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Oyer’s suit, filed in federal court in Washington, D.C., is seeking an order that declares her removal was unlawful, reinstates her federal service and restores her pay. She originally appealed her firing to the Merit Systems Protection Board in April 2025, after which an administrative judge dismissed her appeal.
Democratic lawmakers called Oyer to give testimony in July in opposition to Blanche’s nomination for attorney general. During that hearing, Oyer repeated her wrongful termination allegations. The day prior, Blanche said Oyer had been fired for reasons unrelated to Gibson.
“I didn’t even know of that. I had known nothing about Mel Gibson or that letter when I fired her. Nothing,” he told lawmakers.
He said it was instead in part related to commutation recommendations she had provided to former President Joe Biden. Oyer told lawmakers the next day that was the first time she heard her firing related to those recommendations.
(Reporting by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff; Editing by Michael Learmonth and Stephen Coates)
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