A Department of Justice pardon attorney who was among multiple high ranking DoJ officials fired on Friday said Monday her termination appears to be connected to her recommendation the day before that Mel Gibson’s gun ownership rights not be restored.
Gibson, a staunch conservative and Trump ally, lost his gun rights in 2011 after being convicted of a misdemeanor charge of domestic violence. (Federal law revokes such rights for people convicted of certain crimes.) He pled no contest to the charges as part of a settlement in which he avoided jail time.
Liz Oyer was part of a DoJ committee reviewing applications to restore gun rights filed by people who lost them after being convicted of a relevant crime. Speaking to the New York Times, Oyer said she recommended that Gibson request be denied due to uncertainty about his conviction, insisting it was about “safety” and not Gibson’s politics.
“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 told the paper.
Hours after sending her recommendation, Oyer says she was contacted by an unnamed senior DoJ official who asked if her position was “flexible.” According to Oyer, the official then “essentially 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.”
She ultimately did not change her recommendation, though she says repeatedly reminded superiors the Attorney General has the ultimate decision-making power. She was fired the next morning.
NYT spoke to multiple people who confirmed the sequence of events, the paper said. According to Oyer, officials at the Department of Justice are also saying, behind the scenes, that the process of restoring gun rights to convicted criminals should be “automated” instead of reviewed on the merits.
Gibson, along with Jon Voight and Sylvester Stallone have been named by Trump as “special envoys” to Hollywood, though their actual duties have not been explained and it’s unclear what Trump expects them to do other than make Hollywood “great.”
The post DoJ Lawyer Says She Was Fired After She Opposed Restoring Mel Gibson’s Gun Rights appeared first on TheWrap.