Liz Oyer served as Pardon Attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice from April 2022 to March 2025.
Throughout American history and regardless of presidential politics, the mission of the Department of Justice has been to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights. All Americans should be concerned that the politically appointed leaders of the Department are now waging an aggressive campaign to rid the institution of nonpartisan experts in favor of political loyalists willing to place the president’s personal interests ahead of these shared values. My recent firing by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche is just one example, but it bears examination if we are going to reverse this dangerous and destructive trajectory before it is too late.
On March 7, Blanche sent me a three-sentence memo ending my tenure as the Justice Department’s Pardon Attorney. Blanche didn’t deliver the termination memo to me personally. Instead, he sent two security officers — who looked positively ill over the task — to execute his orders. I’ve never met Blanche. He’s never said why he fired me. But he swears it had nothing to do with the fact that I refused to facilitate a political favor for a friend of his boss and biggest client, President Donald Trump.
The top three officials in the Department of Justice — Blanche, Attorney General Pam Bondi, and Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove — all landed their powerful positions after serving as personal attorneys to President Trump. They were paid to do the president’s bidding and gained access and influence in the process. So perhaps it is not surprising that they view the department and its 115,000 employees as President Trump’s personal law firm. On her first day in office, Bondi issued a memo putting the entire DOJ workforce on notice that we are all now the president’s lawyers.
We have since been warned, both explicitly and by example, that if we do not “faithfully” and “zealously” do the president’s bidding, we will be “rooted out” and silenced. This is classic bullying, by a team who learned from the best. We have not, at any point, been asked for our input, valued for our expertise, or recognized for our service to the country. Instead, the Department’s leadership is running though the roster of career employees in search of those whose nonpolitical status can be exploited to wrap a veneer of legitimacy around decisions that are, in reality, political transactions.
No one has told me why I was fired. But the notice was delivered hours after I declined to recommend reinstating the gun rights of a famous friend of the president, the actor Mel Gibson, who has a history of violence against women. In 2011, Gibson pleaded guilty to battering his former romantic partner, who reported that he hit her while holding their baby and broke her teeth. Gibson is also known for a 2006 incident in which he unleashed an antisemitic tirade on a police officer who arrested him for drunken driving. Shortly after I informed the deputy attorney general’s staff that I could not recommend rearming this particular bully, I received my termination notice.
I chose to share this story publicly because it is part of a pervasive and dangerous phenomenon happening throughout the Department of Justice. Through unchecked bullying, the political leaders of the department are forcing out career staff, ripping away ethical guardrails, and offering priority access to government benefits to loyalists and friends. I am deeply concerned that the institution created to uphold our laws and protect our civil rights is being destroyed from within by those entrusted to protect it.
When I went public, Blanche clapped back with just the type of response you would expect from someone who has no principled position to rest on.
He said, “Former employees who violate their ethical duties by making false accusations on press tours will not be tolerated. This former employee’s version of events is false — her decision to voice this erroneous accusation about her dismissal is in direct violation of her ethical duties as an attorney and is a shameful distraction from our critical mission to prosecute violent crime, enforce our nation’s immigration laws, and make America safe again.”
This is a classic bully’s response. It has three elements: He lies (calling my story “false” though he knows otherwise). He threatens (using the vague but ominous language “will not be tolerated”). And then he dresses me down by asserting the moral high ground (calling my conduct “a shameful distraction” from the principled and important matters he claims to be working on). What a guy.
Bizarrely, Blanche accuses me of lying despite the fact that DOJ possesses the memos and emails telling the whole story. Two of Blanche’s senior aides have their fingerprints all over these exchanges. I, on the other hand, have access to nothing to defend myself — a convenient result of my firing. This is yet another bullying tactic: eliminate defenses by cutting off access to resources (which, here, are just the facts).
Perhaps because lies and threats have become standard fare of the current DOJ, the last piece of Blanche’s statement is the most shocking. Blanche is chillingly dismissive of the concern that the department is moving too quickly to put guns into the hands of convicted domestic abusers, calling it a “distraction.” This is hard to reconcile with Blanche’s purported concerns about violent crime and public safety. Nearly half of all women murdered in the United States are killed by an intimate partner, and more than 50 percent of those killings are by firearm. An abuser’s access to a gun makes it five times more likely that a domestic violence victim will be killed.
I would say, Mr. Blanche, that what is shameful is using the justice system to do political favors for celebrities and friends. I would say that what is shameful is marginalizing the career employees who are working in earnest to keep our country safe and to protect our civil rights. I would say, Mr. Blanche, that the shame is on you.
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