A career Justice Department lawyer who spent 13 years in the federal pardon office says she was fired within hours of refusing to recommend that actor Mel Gibson get his gun rights back, and she is now taking the government to court over it.
Elizabeth Oyer filed a federal lawsuit challenging her March 2025 termination, alleging it was illegal retaliation for declining what she describes as a politically motivated request to restore Gibson's firearms rights as a favor to a friend of President Trump. The suit claims violations of civil service protections and First Amendment rights, and it seeks reinstatement and back pay.
Gibson lost his gun rights after pleading no contest to a misdemeanor domestic violence charge in 2011 for battering his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva, as Newsmax detailed. Under federal law, a domestic violence conviction strips a person of the legal right to possess firearms. Restoring those rights requires a formal recommendation through the Justice Department's pardon process.
Oyer's lawsuit lays out a sequence of events that she says proves the firing was retaliatory. A senior official on then-Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche's staff allegedly contacted Oyer and pressed her to add Gibson to a list of individuals recommended for gun rights reinstatement. The suit describes the official's tone as "bullying."
Oyer objected on public safety grounds, citing Gibson's domestic violence conviction. She then submitted a memo formally declining to recommend the restoration. Hours later, she was terminated.
In a statement included in her lawsuit filings, Oyer cast the dispute as something far larger than one actor's gun rights. She framed it as a direct challenge to the principle that career federal employees answer to the law, not to political patrons.
"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."
That language signals the legal theory driving the case. Oyer is not simply arguing she was wrongfully terminated under civil service rules. She is claiming her refusal to recommend Gibson constituted protected speech and protected conduct under the First Amendment and federal whistleblower frameworks. If a court agrees, the case could set a boundary around how political appointees interact with career staff on pardon and clemency matters.
Todd Blanche, who served as Deputy Attorney General before his Senate confirmation hearing for a subsequent role, directly contradicted Oyer's account under oath. When asked about the Gibson matter during that hearing, Blanche told senators he had no knowledge of the situation at the time he authorized her firing.
"I didn't even know of that. I had known nothing about Mel Gibson or that letter when I fired her. Nothing."
Blanche offered a different explanation for Oyer's termination. He claimed she was fired because of her role in recommending the commutation of every federal death row inmate's sentence during the final weeks of the Biden administration, the Associated Press reported.
That alternative rationale places the dispute squarely in the middle of one of the sharpest policy clashes between the Biden and Trump administrations: the handling of federal death row inmates.
Former President Biden commuted the death sentences of federal death row inmates in the final days of his presidency, a sweeping move that drew fierce criticism from conservatives and law enforcement groups. The Trump administration has treated those commutations as a provocation requiring a forceful institutional response.
Attorney General Pam Bondi has directed the Bureau of Prisons to transfer most of the remaining inmates whose death sentences Biden commuted to the U.S. Penitentiary Administrative Maximum Facility in Fremont County, Colorado. Known as ADX, it is the highest-security federal prison in the country, National Review reported exclusively. The planned transfers would mark the third such move of former death row inmates during Trump's second term.
If Blanche's stated reason for firing Oyer is accurate, her termination fits within this broader pattern of the Trump DOJ reversing or punishing actions taken by Biden-era officials on capital punishment. If Oyer's account is accurate, the death row explanation is a pretext designed to obscure a politically motivated firing tied to a celebrity friend of the president.
The lawsuit puts two competing narratives before a federal judge, and the factual gap between them is wide.
Oyer's version hinges on timing. She says the call from Blanche's staff, her refusal memo, and her termination all occurred in rapid sequence. If discovery produces emails, call logs, or testimony confirming that sequence, the retaliation theory gains traction. The "bullying tone" allegation, if supported by witnesses or recordings, could further undermine the government's position.
The government's defense, based on Blanche's testimony, rests on a clean separation: Oyer was fired for her Biden-era commutation recommendations, and the Gibson matter played no role. Investigators will need to determine whether anyone on Blanche's staff communicated with Gibson, Gibson's representatives, or White House contacts about the gun rights request before the call to Oyer.
Authorities have not publicly confirmed whether any internal review of the firing took place before Oyer filed suit. No public results have been released about any inspector general inquiry into the circumstances.
Federal pardon attorneys occupy a unique position in the Justice Department. They review clemency petitions, gun rights restoration requests, and other matters that sit at the intersection of law and executive grace. The office is supposed to function as a professional filter, applying legal standards before recommendations reach political decision-makers.
If Oyer prevails, the ruling could reinforce the firewall between career legal analysis and political pressure in the pardon process. If the government prevails on the theory that her Biden-era recommendations justified termination, it could give future administrations broader authority to remove career pardon staff whose policy judgments conflict with the incoming president's priorities.
Either outcome carries weight for how the federal civil service operates under political leadership. Breitbart noted the lawsuit alleges violations of both civil service protections and constitutional rights, a dual-track legal strategy that could keep the case alive even if one theory falters.
Gibson's 2011 no-contest plea to misdemeanor domestic violence for battering Grigorieva triggered a federal firearms disability under the Lautenberg Amendment, which bars anyone convicted of a misdemeanor crime of domestic violence from possessing guns. Unlike felony convictions, which can sometimes be expunged or pardoned to restore gun rights, misdemeanor domestic violence convictions carry a particularly durable firearms ban.
Restoring gun rights after a Lautenberg disqualification typically requires either a pardon or a formal determination that the conviction has been expunged or set aside under the law of the convicting jurisdiction. The pardon attorney's recommendation is a critical step in that process. Oyer's position was that Gibson's record did not support a favorable recommendation on public safety grounds.
Gibson has not publicly commented on the lawsuit or the gun rights request. Investigators have not said whether Gibson personally initiated the request or whether it originated through intermediaries.
Conservatives who support strong executive authority over the federal workforce may view Oyer's firing as a legitimate exercise of leadership over a bureaucrat who overstepped during the Biden administration's final days. Conservatives who prioritize Second Amendment process and the rule of law may find the allegation that gun rights restoration was treated as a political favor deeply troubling.
The tension is real, and the lawsuit will force a court to draw a line between lawful personnel decisions and unlawful retaliation. The facts that emerge in discovery will determine which side of that line this case falls on.
When career lawyers can be replaced for saying no to political favors, the pardon power stops being a constitutional tool and starts being a loyalty program. Courts exist to decide whether that line was crossed.
