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Trump Goon’s F-Bomb Reaction to Mel Gibson Gun Dispute Revealed

Attorney General Todd Blanche apparently realized too late how the firing of a top DOJ lawyer would look.

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Attorney General Todd Blanche dropped the F-bomb after learning that he had fired an underling without knowing she was involved in an internal Justice Department dispute over Trumpy movie star Mel Gibson’s gun rights, it has been claimed.

The then-deputy AG dismissed pardon attorney Liz Oyer last March as part of a wider clear-out of career DOJ officials with links to the Biden administration.

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Blanche apparently did so without knowing Oyer had been involved in a private disagreement with one of his aides over whether the Lethal Weapon star—who is a convicted domestic abuser—should have his gun rights restored, multiple sources told the Daily Beast’s sister Substack, PunchUp.

When Blanche learned about the clash three days later, a source with direct knowledge of the conversation said he immediately realized how Oyer could interpret the timing.

“F---! She’s going to think that’s why I fired her,” Blanche said, according to one DOJ source speaking to PunchUp.

It is the latest twist in an extraordinary and increasingly bitter fallout at the heart of the DOJ, with department officials furiously disputing Oyer’s account of the events surrounding her removal.

A spokesperson for Oyer said she repeatedly asked the DOJ for an official explanation for her firing, but they repeatedly refused. “What they say at this point has zero credibility,” they added.

Oyer has maintained that she was fired because she refused to recommend that Gibson, 70, have his gun rights reinstated. The Braveheart actor lost that privilege after pleading no contest to misdemeanor spousal battery involving his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva in 2011.

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Oyer has said then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Paul Perkins instructed her to add Gibson to a shortlist of nine other candidates for firearms rights restoration and pressed her when she resisted, alleging that Perkins told her Gibson’s relationship with Donald Trump, 80, should be sufficient reason to recommend him.

The scandal-plagued actor—who was accused of homophobia throughout the 1990s, went on an antisemitic tirade after being arrested in 2006 for drunk driving, and in August came under fire for mocking an ASL translator—has spoken at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club. In January 2025, he received the dubious honor of being declared one of Trump’s “Special Ambassadors to Hollywood.”

Perkins, who has since left the DOJ to work in the private sector, previously told PunchUp that Oyer’s allegations were “categorically false” and denied ever saying the rules governing restoration needed to accommodate Gibson.

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Now multiple DOJ sources familiar with the dispute have offered up a markedly different chronology of Oyer’s March 7 firing. They claim that Perkins and Oyer spoke on March 6 after she submitted a memo containing nine proposed candidates but left Gibson out.

Rather than demanding that she recommend the actor, Perkins is said to have proposed the compromise that Oyer could include Gibson on the list without recommending that his rights be restored.

Oyer submitted a revised memo the next morning that included Gibson’s name but no recommendation that he receive relief, the sources said. Perkins considered the matter resolved and therefore did not raise the disagreement with Blanche, according to sources familiar with his thinking.

Hours later, Blanche fired Oyer, and her dismissal was announced the same day as the removal of several other career officials.

However, according to PunchUp’s sources, Perkins did not tell Blanche about the Gibson clash until the following Monday, March 10, prompting his expletive-laden realization that Oyer might connect her dismissal to the dispute.

If correct, that chronology would support Blanche’s longstanding denial that the Gibson disagreement played any part in Oyer’s firing. But it does not explain why Gibson was pushed into the initial group in the first place.

Perkins previously told PunchUp that DOJ leadership had already decided to include Gibson before he became the official overseeing the project, although he said he did not know who made the decision.

Gibson, a two-time Oscar winner, eventually had his federal gun rights restored under then-Attorney General Pam Bondi. The DOJ has since created a broader system allowing barred gun owners to seek restoration, with the first application stage now open to invited candidates.

The final rules generally require people convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence within the previous 10 years to demonstrate “extraordinary circumstances” to win relief.

Oyer is suing over her dismissal and has continued to argue that the Gibson dispute was behind it. Blanche, 52, is now attorney general after being sworn in in August, and denied under oath during his Senate confirmation hearing that the matter played any role in her departure.

A DOJ official said: “While the exact words used during that discussion may be different, one thing is for sure, Liz Oyer’s account of what happened is completely false.”

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A spokesperson for Oyer said, “The Justice Department has been twisting itself into knots trying to explain Ms. Oyer’s firing, which was clearly illegal. Initially, the DOJ admitted in litigation that the facts, as Ms. Oyer stated them, were not in dispute. That was their position for more than a year, until Ms. Oyer’s firing became a problem for Mr. Blanche in his confirmation hearing. Then they came up with a new story.

“The questions that should be asked at this point are why DOJ keeps changing its story a year and a half after Ms. Oyer’s firing; why they won’t provide documents to support any version of their story; and whether Mr. Blanche perjured himself before Congress.”

Perkins declined to comment further.

Tom Latchem exposes the secrets, scandals, and stories that powerful people and institutions want to keep under wraps. Follow all of his reporting at PunchUp on Substack.

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