The former pardon attorney for the US justice department, Elizabeth Oyer, filed a lawsuit on Thursday against the department and attorney general Todd Blanche, accusing them of “unlawfully” firing her last year after she said she refused to recommend restoring actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights. In the complaint, filed in the US district court for the District of Columbia, Oyer alleges that in early 2025, while she was serving as pardon attorney, she was asked to “disregard her duties and facilitate a political favor” for Gibson based on his “relationship with President Trump”. The lawsuit alleges that Oyer was “asked to make it seem like an independent review had concluded that Mr Gibson, who was convicted of a domestic violence offense, should have his gun rights restored”.
Oyer says she declined, and that “shortly after, she was fired by then deputy attorney general Todd Blanche”. The justice department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Guardian about the lawsuit and its allegations. Following Oyer’s dismissal in March last year, a justice department official told the New York Times that the disagreement over Gibson played no role in the decision to dismiss her.
Gibson, a prominent support of Donald Trump, had lost his gun rights following a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor conviction, according to the newspaper. However, it reported in April 2025 that the justice department was set to restore Gibson’s gun rights. Oyer previously told the Times in an interview last year that she was dismissed a day after refusing to recommend restoring Gibson’s gun rights.
The newspaper reported that two people familiar with the events confirmed Oyer’s account of justice department discussions about guns, domestic violence and star power. According to the lawsuit, Oyer served as the pardon attorney from April 2022 until March 2025, and before that she was an assistant federal public defender and a senior litigation counsel in the office of the federal public defender for the district of Maryland. Oyer argues in the lawsuit that her removal was “unlawful” and that it “violated” her “constitutional due process rights and her rights under the Civil Service Reform Act” as well as her first amendment rights.
The lawsuit also argues that her removal violated “core separation of power principles”. Oyer is asking the court to declare her removal unlawful, reinstate her to federal service, and restore the pay and benefits she says she is owed. She is also seeking an order to prohibit the justice department from taking any “further adverse personnel action” against her “without the protections required by law”.
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