Among the many problems that have emerged in federal law enforcement during Donald Trump’s second term is the campaign against key personnel. Indeed, there’s been an unsubtle campaign to purge federal law enforcement of prosecutors and FBI officials who worked on cases that the president didn’t like.
Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested last week that these efforts are ongoing — and likely to get worse. Evidently, the increasingly hyper-partisan Republican meant it.
Late last week, for example, Team Trump advanced its larger purge, ousting even more senior Justice Department officials. The New York Times reported, “The ouster of lawyers managing the Justice Department’s pardon work, bankruptcy litigation and other legal issues marks the latest move by the new administration to remove or reassign senior officials with many years of experience. The official overseeing the Office of Professional Responsibility, which handles internal ethics investigations, was also removed from that role, though he was placed on administrative leave.”
A day later, The Washington Post reported that the Justice Department also removed “at least three” top national security officials, which amounted to “a complete gutting of leadership in the highly sensitive National Security Division, which is charged with working with the FBI and other intelligence agencies to protect the nation from threats.”
NBC News is now shedding additional light on the Justice Department’s former pardon attorney, Elizabeth Oyer, and the circumstances surrounding her ouster.
The former U.S. pardon attorney, Elizabeth G. Oyer, was terminated Friday after she opposed restoring actor Mel Gibson’s rights to carry a gun, her spokesperson and two Justice Department officials familiar with the matter told NBC News. A spokesperson for Oyer said that she was not told why she was terminated but that because of the sequence of events she believes her refusal to carry out a request from officials in the deputy attorney general’s office to add Gibson’s name to a list of people to have their gun rights restored may have played a role.
To be sure, pretty much all of the recent DOJ purges have been controversial to one degree or another, but these new allegations suggest the politicization of Main Justice has reached a point that deserves greater attention.
According to Oyer’s version of events, she was recently assigned to a working group focused on restoring gun rights to people convicted of crimes — a priority for many on the right. After assembling a list of people who appeared worthy, she claims she was told to include Gibson, who lost his gun rights following a domestic violence misdemeanor conviction in 2011, because of his relationship with the president.
(Trump, it’s worth noting, recently announced that was making Gibson a “special envoy” to Hollywood, serving as a part of a team that would be his “eyes and ears” inside the entertainment industry.)
Hours after Oyer wrote a follow-up report, failing to recommend the restoration of Gibson’s gun rights, she claims she was fired. For its part, the DOJ has contested Oyer’s account. “The Mel Gibson decision did not play a role in termination decision,” a DOJ official familiar with the matter told NBC News. I don’t imagine we’ve heard the last of this one. This post updates our related earlier coverage.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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