Elizabeth G. Oyer, the former pardon attorney at the US Justice Department, was fired on Friday (March 7th) along with several other high-ranking officials. In an interview with The New York Times, she said the dismissal took place one day after she pushed back against restoring Mel Gibson’s gun rights.
Gibson, who lost his gun rights due to a 2011 misdemeanor domestic violence conviction, was appointed by President Trump as a special ambassador to the “great but very troubled place” Hollywood in January. According to Oyer, Gibson’s lawyer wrote a letter shortly afterward to senior Justice Department officials James R. McHenry III and Emil Bove III, requesting the actor’s gun rights be restored
Fast forward to two weeks ago, when Oyer was put in a group to restore gun rights to people convicted of crimes in what’s described as an unusual assignment for the pardon attorney’s office. Typically, it handles clemency requests and helps those who can’t hire powerful lawyers to plead their cases.
Though federal law bars those convicted of crimes from purchasing or owning a handgun, the Justice Department technically has had authority to restore gun ownership rights on a case by case basis. However, Oyer told The Times that Congress has imposed significant limits on that power.
Oyer said her working group was instructed to create a list of candidates who would get their gun rights back as part of a long-term initiative. She recently submitted 95 people, with the deputy attorney general cutting down her list to nine.
After submitting a draft memo for those candidates, she received a request to add Gibson with the aforementioned letter from his attorney attached. In comparison to the other nine, which were scrutinized about the likelihood of committing another crime, Oyer had her concerns.
“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.
As a result, Oyer told her superiors at the Justice Department she couldn’t follow their request. In response, a senior official “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.”
On Friday, Oyer wrote a draft memo to the attorney general’s office reiterating her position and clarifying her reasoning. Just hours later, she was escorted out of the building by two security officers.
A source at the Justice Department told The Times that Oyer’s pushback over Gibson’s gun rights did not play a role in her dismissal.
In Trump’s statement pronouncing Gibson, Jon Voight, and Sylvester Stallone as special ambassadors, he tasked them with “the purpose of bringing Hollywood, which has lost much business over the last four years to Foreign Countries, BACK—BIGGER, BETTER, AND STRONGER THAN EVER BEFORE!”
Gibson recently directed the Mark Wahlberg-starring thriller Flight Risk. Earlier this year, he confirmed that he’s completed the script for The Passion of the Christ sequel The Resurrection of the Christ and confirmed Jim Caviezel’s return as Jesus with the use of de-aging techniques.
