The DOJ fired lawyer allegation is at the center of a new federal lawsuit filed by former pardon attorney Elizabeth Oyer, who says she was terminated after refusing to recommend restoring gun rights for actor Mel Gibson despite concerns about his domestic violence history.
According to the complaint filed Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, Oyer names Attorney General Todd Blanche and the U.S. Department of Justice as defendants. The Democracy Forward Foundation filed the suit on her behalf.
DOJ fired lawyer claim tied to Mel Gibson request
In court papers, Oyer alleges that shortly after President Donald Trump took office she was told to facilitate what she describes as a political favor for Gibson because of the actor’s relationship with the president. The complaint says she was pressed to make it appear that an independent review supported restoring Gibson’s gun rights. Gibson previously pleaded no contest to misdemeanor spousal battery, and his conviction was vacated in 2014 after he completed his sentence, according to reporting cited in the lawsuit.
Oyer asserts she declined to endorse the restoration and was subsequently fired by Blanche, who the suit says was then serving as deputy attorney general. The lawsuit contends her dismissal violated her due process and First Amendment rights, the Appointments Clause, the Administrative Procedure Act, and due process protections under the Civil Service Reform Act.
Internal working group and recommendation list
The filing states that after Trump’s inauguration, Oyer joined a working group tasked with identifying individuals who had lost gun rights due to criminal convictions but might warrant restoration. The list, according to the complaint, focused on people convicted of nonviolent offenses, who were older, had applied through the pardons process, and posed a low risk of reoffending.
Blanche’s office narrowed the list to nine candidates and asked Oyer to prepare a memorandum recommending them for restoration. After she complied, the complaint says Blanche’s staff asked her to add Mel Gibson. Oyer raised concerns based on the domestic violence case and emailed those concerns to Blanche’s staff, according to the filing.
The complaint alleges a senior official then called Oyer and urged her to recommend reinstating Gibson’s gun rights because of his personal relationship with Trump, using a bullying tone and suggesting she should make the recommendation. Instead, Oyer sent a memo stating she lacked details about Gibson’s case and left the decision to the attorney general. She was terminated hours later, the suit says.
Public statements and subsequent actions
“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,” Oyer said in a Sept. 3 statement quoted in the filing. The DOJ did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In March 2025, a DOJ official told reporters that Gibson’s pardon was unrelated to Oyer’s firing. The following month, the department restored Gibson’s gun rights, according to published reports.
Oyer served as the DOJ’s pardon attorney from April 2022 to March 2025. Before that, she worked as an assistant public defender and as senior litigation counsel with the Maryland federal public defender’s office. In July, she testified before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee urging senators not to confirm Blanche as attorney general.
Earlier in Trump’s tenure, the administration also sought high court review in other contentious policy areas, including its effort to maintain a ban on transgender service members, as covered in Trump administration asks Supreme Court to review transgender military ban.