A former Justice Department official is suing the government after she was allegedly fired for refusing to restore gun rights to Trumpy actor and convicted domestic abuser Mel Gibson as a political favor to the president.
Elizabeth Oyer, a longtime government lawyer, had been working as a pardon attorney for about three years when she was assigned in early 2025 to help identify people convicted of crimes whose gun rights the DOJ should consider restoring, according to her lawsuit.
She compiled a list of about 95 people who were convicted a long time ago of nonviolent offenses and had been thoroughly investigated and vetted by the department, which concluded their risk of recidivism was low.
The list was then given to the office of Attorney General Todd Blanche—who at the time was serving as deputy attorney general—which cut the number of names to nine and asked Oyer to draft a memo recommending the candidates have their gun rights restored.
Blanche’s staff then came back to Oyer and asked her to add Gibson, who was convicted of domestic abuse in 2011.
Oyer refused, given that domestic abusers in general have a high rate of recidivism, and Gibson had not been investigated by the DOJ like the other people on her list.
Later that day, a senior official on Blanche’s staff called Oyer and urged her to recommend reinstating Gibson’s gun rights anyway because the actor had a personal relationship with President Donald Trump.
“The official employed a bullying tone and suggested to Ms. Oyer that she would be wise to make the recommendation,” her complaint alleges.
Doing so would have made it seem like an independent review had concluded Gibson should have his gun rights restored, when in fact it would have just been a political favor, according to the complaint.
The next day, Oyer submitted a draft memo saying she declined to make the recommendation because she didn’t know the details of Gibson’s case.
Just a few hours later, she was pulled out of an unrelated meeting and fired on the spot, without being provided any written notice or an opportunity to respond, as required by law, her complaint alleges.
Her suit argues she was fired in violation of her due process and First Amendment rights, based on the administration’s perception that she was not politically aligned with the president.
The Department of Justice declined to comment on the suit.
After Oyer’s firing, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi agreed in April 2025 to restore Gibson’s gun rights.
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 most recently came under fire for mocking an ASL translator—has spoken at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida.
In January 2025, he received the dubious honor of being declared one of Trump’s “Special Ambassadors to Hollywood.”
In a statement provided by her lawyers, Oyer said she was fired for refusing to put politics ahead of her duty to the American people.
“This case is about much more than what happened to me,” she said. “My firing violated my constitutional and statutory rights, and it also jeopardized public safety.”
