On Saturday night, actor and Donald Trump Hollywood “ambassador” Mel Gibson sat next to FBI Director Kash Patel at a UFC event in Las Vegas. The pair fist bumped and posed together for photographs. Just a day before the encounter, a Justice Department pardon attorney was summarily fired after refusing to restore Gibson’s gun rights, which the actor lost in 2011 after being convicted of misdemeanor domestic violence.
According to a Tuesday report from The New York Times, Elizabeth G. Oyer was dismissed without explanation on Friday alongside several other high-ranking DOJ officials. The notice came hours after Oyer declined to add Gibson’s name to a memo listing individuals the DOJ would consider as candidates to have their gun rights restored.
Oyer said she had been pressured to include Gibson in the memo despite the actor not having undergone reviews other candidates had been subjected to. She recounted to the Times that an official in Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche’s office called her and “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.”
The conversation, which Oyer says turned condescending as she explained her position, led her to agonize over the decision. On Friday morning, she reaffirmed her opposition to the restoration of Gibson’s gun rights in a DOJ memo. Within hours, Oyer says she was called into her office, where two security officers handed her a termination notice and escorted her out of the building.
“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,” Oyer told the Times.
Oyer is not the only DOJ official who has found themselves holding a pink slip — or resigning themselves — after refusing to acquiesce to loyalty tests from Trump’s underlings. In one of the first acts of his administration, the president ordered the dismissal of dozens of prosecutors who worked cases against Jan. 6 rioters. In February, U.S. Attorney Danielle Sassoon chose to resign rather than acquiesce to an order that she drop criminal charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who has developed a cozy relationship with Trump.
It’s clear at this point that under the Trump administration, a refusal to pull strings for the president’s friends and political allies is a fast track to unemployment, laws and ethics be damned.
