Justice Department pardon lawyer who says she was fired in dispute over Mel Gibson's gun rights sues

WASHINGTON (AP) — A former Justice Department pardon attorney who says she was fired after she refused to recommend the restoration of actor Mel Gibson's gun rights sued Thursday over her termination, calling it illegal punishment for her unwillingness to grant a “political favor” to a friend of President Donald Trump.

Liz Oyer's March 2025 firing came after she says she declined a request from the staff of then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to add Gibson to a list of individuals for whom the Justice Department would recommend the reinstatement of their gun rights. Oyer says she objected for public safety reasons given Gibson's prior domestic violence conviction that had resulted in the loss of his gun privileges.

Blanche has denied Oyer's account, saying at his Senate confirmation hearing last month for the attorney general position that he now holds: “I didn’t even know of that. I had known nothing about Mel Gibson or that letter when I fired her. Nothing.”

Oyer's lawsuit, the latest in a series by Justice Department staffers challenging Trump administration terminations that they deem unlawful, was filed after she says the Merit Systems Protection Board — which handles personnel claims — has left her case in “prolonged limbo” and declined to take action on her complaint.

She said in a statement that her lawsuit, which was filed in federal court in Washington and seeks a court order declaring her firing unlawful and reinstating her to federal service, was not only about her but about the ability of all civil servants “to uphold the law without fear or favor.”

“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. I cannot accept that,” she said.

Oyer maintains in her lawsuit that her firing violated civil service protections for career employees as well as her First Amendment free speech rights “because the removal was taken, in part, based on Ms. Oyer’s perceived political affiliation.”

“Indeed, when Ms. Oyer declined to disregard her duties in order to perform a favor for her politically-appointed superiors and President Trump, she was summarily terminated,” the lawsuit says.

In denying her claims, Blanche has said that Oyer was fired “for a number of reasons,”

“The decisions that she had made as pardon attorney in the weeks and months leading up to the end of President Biden’s term were completely inconsistent with President Trump’s authority, including recommending commuting every single individual on death row, which even President Biden didn’t do,” Blanche said at his confirmation hearing.

Before leaving office, Biden announced that he was commuting the sentences of 37 of the 40 people who were on federal death row, converting their punishments to life imprisonment. He left in place the death sentences of Dylann Roof, who carried out the 2015 racist slayings of nine Black members of Mother Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina; 2013 Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev ; and Robert Bowers, who fatally shot 11 congregants at Pittsburgh’s Tree of life Synagogue in 2018 , the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S history.

Oyer testified in opposition to Blanche's nomination, where Republican senators pressed her on her recommendations.

She told senators that Blanche's comments marked the first time that she had ever heard the explanation that she was fired because of recommendations on sentence commutations. She said Blanche's statement that her firing was unrelated to Mel Gibson “materialized out of thin air and has never been stated before.”