Liz Oyer, the former Department of Justice lawyer who was fired last week, apparently because she opposed restoring Mel Gibson’s gun rights, had a stark message for Americans during an appearance on “All In With Chris Hayes.”
Americans should be “terrified,” she told the MSNBC host, “about the current situation at the Department of Justice” under the second Donald Trump administration.
Oyer was until last week was a pardon attorney for DoJ. She had recently been put on a committee tasked with reviewing applications to restore the gun rights revoked from people who were convicted of relevant crime, and last Thursday was asked outright by a superior to add Mel Gibson to the list of approved restorations.
Oyer recommended Gibson not have those rights restored, she says, because he hadn’t even applied for this through the DoJ process and because she had too many questions about his 2011 conviction on domestic violence charges. Oyer says she was then contacted by an unnamed senior DoJ official who essentially tried to strongarm her into changing her recommendation by citing Gibson’s relationship with Trump, along with a veiled threat to her job.
She declined to change her mind, and the next morning — March 7 — she was fired. She went public with her story on Monday in an interview with the New York Times,” and explained this again while speaking to Hayes on Tuesday.
Hayes then asked Oyer about the response from Department of Justice official Todd Blanche, who accused Oyer of violating ethical guidelines by going public, and vaguely said this would “not be tolerated.”
“The reason that I’m here talking about this tonight is because what’s going on inside the Department of Justice, in terms of silencing dissent, is so frightening that I felt like I needed to share this story after I was fired,” Oyer said. And frankly, I think Mr. Blanche’s statement really just proves my point.”
“My ethical duty as a Department of Justice employee, and now a former one, is to the laws of the United States and the people that I was entrusted to serve. It is not to the bullies who are currently running the Department of Justice,” she continuted. “We take an oath of office as Department of Justice employees, and that oath says nothing about loyalty to the political administration or to the political leadership of the department.”
“And frankly,” she concluded, “I think that the position that Mr. Blanche is taking in his statement really just proves how terrified we should be about the current situation at the Department of Justice.”
Watch the whole interview below:
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