Bulwark Takes - Trump Fired Her For Not Giving Mel Gibson His Guns Back!

Episode Date: May 19, 2025

Former U.S. pardon attorney Liz Oyer was fired after refusing to recommend restoring Mel Gibson’s gun rights. She speaks out about Trump’s abuse of the pardon system to reward allies and donors, DOJ intimidation tactics, and her fight to bring transparency to a secretive and corrupt process. Liz Oyer Substack https://substack.com/@lizoyer

Hey guys, it's me, Sam Stein, Managing Editor at The Bullwark, and I am joined today by Liz Oyer, a former U.S. Pardon Attorney, now author of the Substack, get this, Lawyer Oyer. How did you come up with that one? That's right. Honestly, since childhood, people have been calling me things like Liz Lawyer because of my tendency to advocate vociferously for things that I believe in. So it came naturally. It was destiny in a way. Okay. Welcome to the podcast and then welcome to the Substack world. I hope you're enjoying the newsletter writing. I know this is not the path you thought you would be taking to this type of venture, but you're here now. So it's good to have you. Subscribe to Liz's Substack. I'm sure she would appreciate it as well. All right. So, um, yes, let's start, uh, with a basic biography here. Um, there's a reason we're talking, which is you were fired,

uh, fairly early in the Trump administration, uh, involving, uh, pressures that you felt around a certain pardon involving, uh, the actor Mel Gibson. But before we get even into that, tell us a little bit about sort of how you got to public service and became a pardon attorney. Sure. Yeah, I actually came to DOJ from being a federal public defender for 10 years. So I sort of consider myself a public defender for life, but I was most recently at the Department of Justice for three years in the role of pardon attorney, which was just this tremendous opportunity to bring the perspective of a defense attorney to the endeavor of clemency, which is all about providing second chances to people who've really earned and deserve them. Or at least that's

what it was all about. What does a pardon attorney do like day in and day out? Yeah. So as pardon attorney, I reviewed applications for clemency that are coming in from around the country. About 80% of them are coming from people who are incarcerated, who are seeking a reduction in their sentence of imprisonment. Many of these people are serving life sentences under mandatory minimums, some of which have now been scaled back by changes in law, like the First Step Act. So people who are looking for a second chance at freedom. And then the other 20% or so are people who are seeking full pardons, which is essentially forgiveness for an offense you've been convicted of. And most of those applications are coming from ordinary people in the communities whose convictions are for minor offenses, very dated, and they're really looking to be able to move past the

collateral consequences of those convictions. How do those cases get on your radar, right? I mean, like, obviously, someone who's an attorney for someone seeking a pardon or clemency will send you stuff. But certainly, it feels like there's obviously politics that's always been involved, putting aside how bad it's gotten. But how often is politics involved in this where there's someone who's got friends in high places, maybe it's a member of Senate,

Congress, whatever? Yeah, that's a really good question. So the important role that the pardon attorney plays is to ensure that it's not all about politics. Anybody who's got direct connections to the White House or political connections can just go straight through those channels and try to advocate for clemency. My job as pardon attorney was to really make sure that the people who don't have those connections, which is the overwhelming majority of people who are incarcerated in this country or have been through the criminal justice system, can also have their cases heard. So we had a team of about 40 staff who looked at these cases day in and day out and tried to ensure that people who do not have access to the White House through the front door can still have a shot

at second chances through clemency. But how much are you a stopgap from bad things happening versus a advocate for good pardons happening? Well, really, candidly, it's much more the latter. The president ultimately has the prerogative to do whatever he chooses with the clemency power. And there are always going to be decisions that the president makes that don't involve consultation with the pardon attorney. My job as pardon attorney was really to ensure that other people also had the opportunity to be. All right, let's get to Mel Gibson, because this was the sort of, I don't know if I want to call it a breaking point,

but it's certainly what precipitated all of this, which is you get word that Donald Trump wants to consider, what is the correct technical phrase here? Because they want to restore his gun rights. Would that have been an act of clemency? What would that have been? Well, one of the things that's so unusual about this is that my office really had nothing to do with this whole endeavor of restoring gun rights. Historically, what we do is just pardons and commutations. So this was a totally new initiative that was launched by the leadership of the department. There is actually a federal

statute that allows the attorney general to restore firearm rights to people who've lost the right to possess a firearm due to a criminal conviction. But that statute had essentially been defunct since the 1990s because there was no funding for that endeavor. And this new initiative to start doing that again was something that was tasked to me when the new administration came in the office. And it was frankly not something that I had ever worked on before. Did you have to like familiarize yourself with the law? Well, I don't want to get too in the weeds of what exactly that was involved, but suffice it to say that there was a request made that my office

make a recommendation to the attorney general to restore the gun rights of the actor Mel Gibson. And the information that I had available to me was not adequate to justify making that recommendation. And so I didn't make it and I got fired. And when you were fired, it was obviously, or not obviously, it was pretty abrupt. You were, you received an email, you had very little time to get back to your desk. I think you said you put your belongings in a shopping bag of some sort. People were weeping. You know, it sounds pretty bad. Did I miss any details? And can you add sort of an element of color to this? Like, you know, how abrupt are we talking about? Yeah, well, you know, I actually thought that I was not going to be fired because I was not among the people in the beginning of

the administration who were fired. And in fact, someone said to me a couple of weeks in, congratulations on surviving. You survived the purge? Yeah. People were literally talking in terms of bloodlettings because so many people were fired. And I kind of thought I got over that hurdle. And my view was that my work was not partisan and it's not political and there should be a path forward for it in any administration. So I really intended to be able to work with this current administration to continue that work. But yeah, out of the blue on a Friday afternoon, I was in a meeting with people from a whole bunch of other DOJ offices. And I was pulled out of that meeting and informed that there were security officers in my office waiting to watch me pack up my things and escort me out of the building. I got a three sentence memo from the

deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, who I had never even met before, telling me that I was fired under article two of the constitution, whatever that means. That was the only explanation I ever got. And this of course happened hours after I had declined to make this recommendation about the gun rights of Mel Gibson. So yeah, I packed up my stuff. They say the two are unrelated, right? Yeah. That's what the attorney, the deputy attorney general has said that that's not why I was fired, but he's not provided any explanation for why I was fired. Article two.

Article two. That's right. Yeah. Which encompasses the entire executive branch of government. Did it ever not occur to you, but did you ever think about on the Mel Gibson thing when it was handed down to you? Did you, did the thought cross your mind? Well, this is, you know, maybe this is the president's prerogative and I, and I should just let it happen. Or did that never occur to you? Yeah. So the attorney general has discretion to restore these gun rights of anybody that she chooses. So she didn't need me to make this recommendation. And in fact, after I was fired, she went ahead and did it anyway. So why did they ask? That's a really good question. That's a really important question. What's happening now in the department is that career experts like myself are being used to provide a veneer of legitimacy to decisions

that are truly political in nature. And I think that's why I was being asked to make this recommendation was so that it would appear that it was a legitimate recommendation. So you were the sheep's clothing here? Something like that. Yeah. I mean, I think I was asked to do this so that it looked like it wasn't purely a political favor for a friend of the president, which in fact it was. And sorry, just to get back to the point of the question, you couldn't, you didn't want to do that. You, you, you, even though you knew it was within the attorney general's purview, you felt like that was a step too far? For me to recommend it, certainly. I mean, my recommendations as a career Department of Justice official had to be grounded in public

safety. I mean, public safety, first and foremost, above everything. And there was no information that I had in front of me that would allow me to conclude that the firearm rights of someone with a history of domestic violence could be safely restored. No, that makes sense. You don't want your name on that. You were fired. Then you decided to do something which not many people have done. There's been many people fired, but not many people have decided to actually speak out. Certainly fewer have decided to launch a sub stack, but you also went and testified before Congress, but that wasn't so smooth because you were on the receiving end of some threats from

the administration for deciding to do so. Can you talk about that? And can I get a little clarity? Did they send us marshals to your house or did you circumvent or prevent it by saying, Hey, I got your note on email. You don't need to deliver it. Yeah. So what happened was I was leaving a show that my husband and I had taken my parents to on a Friday night, and it was about 9.15 in the evening. And I got a call from someone at the Department of Justice who was really just doing me a favor out of the goodness of their heart to tell me that there were two armed special deputy U.S. Marshals on their way to my home

to deliver me a letter. The letter was a warning about testifying in front of Congress. And this person, I told them that my child, my teenager was at home alone and that it would be very upsetting to my child to see two armed law enforcement officers show up at the door when, you know, my husband and I were not home. I think my child probably would have thought that we were dead. So it was obviously the potential to be a very traumatic and upsetting situation. And it was upsetting. And the person that I spoke with was able to make some arrangements so that these officers turned around and did not come to my home, for which I'm just incredibly

grateful. You did testify before Congress. I did, yeah. I mean, after that experience, realizing the lengths that the leadership of the department were willing to go to to silence me, it just made me understand the importance of going forward with the testimony. I did not want to set the precedent that these types of intimidation tactics can work in silencing people who are simply telling the truth about what's really going on in the department currently. I don't want you to like, everyone has their own hurdles and everyone has their own pressure points and everyone has their own willingness to speak out. And I'm not trying to disparage anyone for that because it's tough and it's very

threatening, obviously, as you just articulated. But I am curious, as someone who chose to speak out and do what you've done, why do you think, or can you speak a little bit about why others have decided to stay somewhat more muted? Yeah. So the people who are in the department currently are very limited just by rules that are in place about speaking to the media. So it's really on those of us who have left to speak up to the extent that we can about what's going on there. And I think that DOJ folks aren't really wired or trained to speak up in that way. Generally, they're trained to let their work speak for itself. So, you know, it doesn't come naturally.

I think for me, you know, as a former public defender, what comes naturally to me is standing up to bullies and fighting against injustice. And so I've been willing to do that. And I hope that by doing that, maybe I will be able to encourage some others to. What's your experience been since you've done that? Have you felt differently about it all? I mean, has it been frightening? What are your main emotions about it?

I mean, candidly, I have felt very exposed. myself publicly in a lot of ways that I know make me very vulnerable to criticism, scrutiny, and retaliation. And that's, it's very uncomfortable. And I don't know, you know, who is really going to be in my corner if I need help or when when push comes to shove, and that is a very disconcerting feeling. But I'm doing what I feel like my fellow citizens deserve. I feel like I'm standing up for what is right. And I owe it to my fellow citizens to do that, even if it comes at the cost of some great discomfort and risk to myself and my family. And I'm just very appreciative that my family has been supportive of me doing this. I have a couple more questions. The replacement in the office of the pardon attorney is Ed Martin, who did not have enough political support to be a D.C. U.S. attorney.

He's wild. I think that's an objective analysis of his record. And he's politically vindictive. I think that's also pretty objective. He famously went after Chuck Schumer while interim U.S. attorney for D.C. He called himself Trump's lawyer in a memorandum or I believe, what is your fear? The biggest one that you have, because he's not just the U S he's not just a partner in turn. Now he's heading the weaponization,

the weaponization subdivision of the DOJ, which I didn't know existed. Maybe it's just created for him, but what is your biggest fear about him in this role? In many ways, he has more power in this role than he did in the role of U.S. attorney, because he's got this totally made up discretionary portfolio where he appears to have license to investigate whatever he wants using the resources of the Department of Justice. The weaponization piece of it is sort of one side of the coin and the pardon portfolio is the other

side of the coin. It suggests that he's going to be using one side of the coin and the pardon portfolio is the other side of the coin. It suggests that he's going to be using the resources of the department to investigate enemies and he's going to be using the pardon power or continuing to use the pardon power to do favors to political allies and donors of the president, which is a very frightening combination and a total misuse of the resources of the Department of Justice. You're suing the Department of Justice. I am. Yeah. Yeah. I actually, so I have an administrative appeal of my termination, which has been pending for some time. And the Department of Justice has really been stonewalling in moving that forward. They're seeking to

consolidate my case with cases of dozens of other employees who've been terminated and to avoid having to produce any discovery or documents in that case. So I decided to go forward with filing a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act to try to seek information that the department has refused to disclose to me about my termination. The deputy attorney general has stated publicly that I'm lying when I talk about the events leading up to my termination. And that's all he said. He hasn't said what the truth is. He hasn't said why he fired me. His name is on the memo firing me, but I never had a conversation with the man. Yeah. Yeah. So he

said nothing about the reasons I have made document requests and the department has refused to respond to those requests. So I am now pursuing the relief to which I am legally entitled through the courts. Again, though, this is another case where it's like you need to have the resources in addition to the thick skin to do what you're doing. And I just you know, I just want to emphasize, it's not a question, just want to emphasize that like, this is not something that everyone who leaves the government or is fired from the government has the capacity to do, which is why some people can't speak up. This is just for my viewers. Finally, let me just say about that. Like, I've just made a decision that I'm going all in on this,

and it's coming at some real expense to myself and my family, but I have decided that it's important enough. No, it's yeah. It's an incredible decision. People ask me what my life is like now and it's full time. You know, you went from being like a public defender and like a, and like a public servant to now operating entirely in the public domain in front of people.

It's got to be a little bit disconcerting. It is very disconcerting, but I feel like it's important to do it. And, you know, I think that people should think about doing things like this. I don't think that, you know, people should write it off because it's time consuming. It's scary. It takes an investment of sometimes your own personal resources. Right. But this is the collective action issue, right? Like if you're the only one doing it, it's a lot more scary. Well, I could use some company. I do feel like I'm kind of singing in

the wind often. So I'm trying to make a pitch for others who are thinking about standing up, speaking out and taking action to join me in doing this. It is a scary place to be. I will not lie, but it feels like this is not the time to stay quiet. This is the time to be brave and to speak up. Let me just shift a little bit because I actually do want to talk about the issue of pardon power. Because I think at this point, everyone has sort of come to the conclusion that it's kind of a grotesque power and it's,

it's been abused by both parties. Obviously I would argue that, you know, pardoning 1500 J six riders is, you know, a bit of a step further than, than most, but the Hunter Biden pardon was problematic for a variety of reasons.

And the Clinton era pardons were certainly problematic and things like that. You know, now we see where more or less this is a pardon for the highest bidder. You have people like Trevor Milton, for instance, who donated millions to Trump causes looking for a pardon and hiring lobbyists and all that stuff. And you know all this, but what can and should be done? I mean, obviously this is in the constitution, but surely there's got to be reforms that you think might work to bring some sense in ethics to this process in a way that just doesn't exist right now. Yeah. Sam, it makes me really sad to hear you ask and to hear others asking me, you know, why do we even have pardon power? Well, you must

have gotten this question a million times, right? Because, you know, I came into the role of pardon attorney with the idea that the pardon power just has this tremendous ability to do good. And that was largely based on how it was used by President Obama, who used it almost exclusively to grant clemency to people who were serving outdated and overly lengthy mandatory minimum sentences, who had demonstrated exemplary rehabilitation, and who had shown that they were deserving, truly deserving of second chances. So he really set the model for how the clemency power can be used to do good. But you are absolutely right that there are many presidents throughout history who have used it in ways that range from questionable to really just awful. And, you know, I agree with you that the pardon of Hunter Biden

was an extremely low moment for the use of the clemency power. And what has happened under President Trump is really just beyond the pale. I mean, the pardon after pardon of wealthy millionaires and billionaires who really haven't served any of their sentences and who have defrauded individual victims who they owe a debt to and are getting those debts forgiven through pardons. That is a totally new use of the pardon power, not something that we have ever seen before. And, you know, I've studied these pardons that Trump has done thus far closely, and he has forgiven over a billion dollars of debts owed by millionaires and billionaires through his use of the pardon power, which is really just shocking. It's a lot of money. Well, what can be done? What should be done?

Well, there's very little accountability in the pardon process itself. So I think that one thing that we should be having conversations about is, are there reforms that are needed to the underlying constitutional authority to grant pardons without any oversight. I mean, that's a legitimate and important discussion to be having right now. And two is, I think that this president should really be called out by the media and the public to explain the decisions that he is making in the pardon realm. Even in his first administration, Trump was providing some explanation of his reasoning for the pardons that he was issuing. And he was generally announcing them with some sort of press release. Now it's all happening in secret. We're not even seeing press releases about these pardons.

So how many, do you think he's been pardoning people and we just don't know about it? I think it's entirely possible that there are more pardons that we don't know about. Some of these are just coming to light because other things are happening. For example, lawyers are having to file some of the documents in court to be able to get relief. For example, in the case of Carlos Watson, who received a full, well, he received a commutation as well as forgiveness of his restitution from Trump. His lawyer filed the pardon paperwork on the court docket because he was seeking to cash in on the $1 million bond that Watson had posted,

which apparently had been promised to the lawyer as payment if he was able to secure the pardon, which he did. And we learn about it on the public docket because the lawyer's got to get the money. So you think there's a high probability, I don't want to say high probability. You think there's a probability that there's been pardons or commutations issued that we just don't know about but we will if we at some point potentially know about because they're in some legal filing. I certainly can't say that there's a high probability or a probability. I'm just saying that it's certainly possible because these things aren't being announced and they're being negotiated in secret. We don't even know who's calling the shots in this realm.

There are these secret backroom negotiations. What are your other fears about how they will use the pardon power? I fear that the people who are really deserving will be left behind. That is my biggest fear as a former pardon attorney and somebody who saw how many deserving people there are who have applied through the ordinary process and who are simply waiting their turn to be considered. It is very upsetting and demoralizing to think that those people who truly have earned it may be passed over in favor of a parade of billionaires who've done nothing but make donations and pull political levers to

get their clemency. No doubt. And I don't want to come across as the one who doesn't care for these people because I think that's a legitimate fear. But I am curious if you think there's some sort of Nixonian-like potential out here where Trump says to someone, hey, look, this may be a dubious political act I want you to do on my behalf. I'm not saying bug the DNC, but something. But look, if it goes awry, I will pardon you. Do you think that is that something that keeps you up at night, that type of possibility? I don't even know that I am creative enough to think of all the sinister possibilities for how this could be used. But honestly, the thing that keeps me up at night is the people whose cases I vetted,

my colleagues vetted, who are sitting there waiting their turn and who are likely to die in prison if Trump does not look at their applications in the same manner in which he is vetting the applications of billionaire political donors. I did a long expose on one of those people looking for commutation for the Daily Beast and then political guy named Rufus Rochelle. I'd encourage people to read that. It's true. They live for months, years waiting for some relief. And oftentimes it just never comes and it's horrible. All right, Liz Oyer, thank you so much for doing this. I really do appreciate it. You should check out her sub stack, Lawyer Oyer, subscribe to it. Liz,

thanks so much for joining us. Appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Sam.