Attorney General Todd Blanche unlawfully fired a career Justice Department lawyer hours after she refused to help restore actor Mel Gibson's gun rights, a lawsuit alleges.
Elizabeth Oyer, who reviewed clemency requests as the department's pardon attorney until March 2025, filed the complaint Thursday in federal court in Washington, D.C.
Blanche was not the attorney general when he signed her termination memo, according to the complaint. He was the deputy attorney general, the department's second-ranking official.
"This removal was unlawful," the lawsuit states, arguing that the firing violated Oyer's due process rights, her protections under federal civil service law and her First Amendment right to political association. The memo accused Oyer of no misconduct and gave no reason that federal law allows for removing a career executive, the complaint says.
"Pursuant to Article II of the Constitution and the laws of the United States, your employment with the Department of Justice is hereby terminated," it read.
Before being named deputy attorney general of the Justice Department, Blanche had represented President Donald Trump at his Manhattan hush-money trial and in both federal criminal cases brought by special counsel Jack Smith.
Only weeks after Trump's inauguration, Oyer was placed on a working group assigned to identify people who had lost their gun rights to criminal convictions but might deserve to have them restored, the complaint says.
The work was "an unusual task for the Office of the Pardon Attorney," the complaint says. Oyer took it on. Her office produced a list of about 95 people with old, nonviolent convictions who had been vetted and judged unlikely to reoffend, according to the filing.
Blanche's staff cut the list to nine and asked Oyer to write a memo recommending those nine, the complaint says.
"Mr. Blanche's staff then came back to Ms. Oyer with another request: they asked her to add the actor Mel Gibson to the list," the complaint says.
Gibson had lost the right to own a gun after a domestic violence conviction, and he had asked the attorney general to restore it, according to the complaint. Oyer had "serious concerns about the public safety implications."
"Over half of the women murdered in the United States are killed by a current or former intimate partner," says the department's own guide on domestic violence and firearms, quoted in the complaint. "The presence of firearms significantly escalates the danger in relationships where there is domestic violence by increasing the risk of homicide by 500%."
Gibson had never been investigated, unlike everyone else on the list, and Oyer's staff had no way to judge whether he was likely to reoffend, the complaint says. She emailed her concerns to Blanche's staff on March 6, 2025, and said she could not recommend restoring Gibson's gun rights.
"Later the same day, a senior official on Mr. Blanche's staff called Ms. Oyer and urged her to recommend reinstatement of Mr. Gibson's gun rights anyway in consideration of the fact that Mr. Gibson had a personal relationship with President Trump," the complaint says.
"The official employed a bullying tone and suggested to Ms. Oyer that she would be wise to make the recommendation," the filing adds.
Oyer sent a new memo the next day that declined to recommend it, saying she did not know the particulars of Gibson's case and that the decision was the attorney general's, the complaint notes.
A few hours later, the complaint says a colleague pulled Oyer out of an unrelated meeting to tell her that security officers were waiting in her office with her termination papers.
"Ms. Oyer returned to her office, where two DOJ security officers handed her a memo from Mr. Blanche, instructed her to pack up her personal belongings, and escorted her out of the building," the lawsuit explains.
Federal law allows a career senior executive to be removed only for misconduct, neglect of duty, malfeasance, or refusing a reassignment, the complaint says. The law also requires 30 days' notice and a chance to respond. Oyer says she received neither.
The lawsuit points out that the department's own position is that only the attorney general can remove a department official under Article II. It has argued in other litigation that a removal by a lower-ranking official is "void ab initio," or invalid from the start, according to a copy of that filing attached to the complaint.
Pam Bondi was the attorney general in March 2025. Blanche was not, and by the department's own standard, Oyer argues, the memo that ended her 13-year career never legally removed her.
The Senate confirmed Blanche as attorney general over a year after Oyer was fired. The vote was 50-49, with two Republicans joining every Democrat in opposition.
While serving as Justice Department head, Blanche worked to settle Trump's private lawsuit against the IRS on terms favorable to the president.
"President Trump did not pursue his claims until he once again occupied the White House and had appointed his former lawyer … to prominent positions in the DOJ," U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams wrote in July, voiding the IRS settlement, according to CBS News. "It is risible to suggest that there was ever adverseness between the Parties."
Williams ordered copies of her ruling sent to the New York and District of Columbia bar associations for disciplinary review of Blanche, The Hill reported.
"There was no collusion in this case, and the partisan judge who speculated otherwise has disregarded decades of precedent," the department said in a statement.
The department has fired employees who worked on Trump-related cases since January 2025, citing the president's constitutional powers, Reuters reported. At least 37 came from Smith's team, and Blanche fired Peter Carr, the career spokesman for both Smith and former special counsel Robert Mueller, CBS News reported.
Oyer spent 16 months at the Merit Systems Protection Board, which Congress created to hear federal personnel disputes, without receiving a substantive review, according to the complaint. The board dismissed her appeal in June, leaving her without a decision for at least six more months.
It had already ruled in March that it lacks jurisdiction over many Article II firings, which would shut her out entirely, the complaint says.
She is now in federal court. Her suit brings six counts and asks a judge to void the removal and order her reinstated.
Blanche gave a different reason for the firing when he appeared before the Senate Judiciary Committee in July seeking confirmation.
"The decisions that she had made as pardon attorney … were completely inconsistent with President Trump," Blanche said at the hearing, pointing to her recommendation to commute the sentences of everyone on federal death row.
"I took an oath to uphold the law, not to do political favors," Oyer said in July, in a separate records lawsuit she brought against the department.