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DOJ official cries to media she was ousted for refusing to recommend Mel Gibsons gun rights be restored

March 11, 2025 | | Print Article

A former Trump administration attorney has gone crying to the media after being fired for insubordination.

According to former Trump Justice Department pardon attorney Elizbeth G. Oyer, she was terminated after she refused to sign off on Hollywood actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights being restored.

The beginning of the end for her job in the administration began two weeks ago when she was assigned to a working group tasked with restoring the gun rights of convicted criminals who don’t necessarily deserve such a ban.

After the team had pieced together a list of 95 deserving candidates, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche cut the list down to just nine convicts and then added a special request.

“They sent [the list] back to me saying, ‘We would like you to add Mel Gibson to this memo,'” Oyer recalled to the New York Times.

Attached to the request was a letter Gibson’s attorney had written to DOJ officials arguing that his rights deserve to be restored.

“The letter said that Mr. Gibson had in recent years tried to buy a gun but was refused because of his prior domestic violence conviction,” the Times notes. “In 2011, Mr. Gibson pleaded no contest in Los Angeles Superior Court to a misdemeanor charge of battering his former girlfriend, as part of a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to avoid jail time.”‘

But despite the domestic violence having occurred over 10 years ago, Oyer refused to let it go.

“Giving guns back to domestic abusers is a serious matter that, in my view, is not something that I could recommend lightly, because there are real consequences that flow from people who have a history of domestic violence being in possession of firearms,” she said.

And so she replied to her DOJ bosses saying that she couldn’t and wouldn’t recommend that Gibson’s rights be restored. A few hours later, she received a call from an official in Blanche’s office.

“Is your position flexible?” the official asked her.

It wasn’t, she replied.

“He then essentially explained to me that Mel Gibson has a personal relationship with President Trump and that should be sufficient basis for me to make a recommendation and that I would be wise to make the recommendation,” Oyer continued.

This pushback didn’t please the official, who reportedly switched from being friendly to being somewhat nasty.

In response, Oyer told the official she’d “think about whether there was a way we could thread the needle.” She meant that too, for she spent the next night tossing and turning.

“I literally did not sleep a wink that night because I understood that the position I was in was one that was going to either require me to compromise my strongly held views and ethics or would likely result in me losing my ability to participate in these conversations going forward,” she said.

“I can’t believe this, but I really think Mel Gibson is going to be my downfall,” she recalled telling a trusted friend.

The next morning, she penned a letter to Blanche’s office doubling down on her refusal to recommend that Gibson’s gun rights be restored.

“Hours later, she was sitting in an unrelated meeting when she got a frantic call from a member of her staff, saying she had to come back to her office right away,” according to the Times.

“When she got there, two building security officers were waiting to hand her a letter from Mr. Blanche firing her. They watched as she packed up some of her belongings into boxes and escorted her out of the building,” the Times’ reporting continues.

Gibson recently attended an Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) event alongside FBI Director Kash Patel:

Vivek Saxena
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