A former Trump Justice Department official sounded the alarm Wednesday after diving into the background of the government lawyer defending Donald Trump’s ban on three media organizations and discovering "extremely disturbing news."
“I just discovered that the lawyer defending Donald Trump’s media ban is an admirer of Adolf Hitler,” former pardon attorney Liz Oyer said Wednesday in a video posted to her X account. “He works for the Department of Justice.”
Oyer identified the lawyer as Michael Velchik, a senior counsel in the DOJ’s Civil Division who signed the administration’s response to a lawsuit brought by CNN, MS Now and Politico.
“The brief is lunacy from a legal perspective, which prompted me to look into who wrote it,” Oyer said.
Oyer, who served as the DOJ’s pardon attorney from 2022 to 2025, pointed to previous reporting in The Boston Globe that Velchik wrote a college essay from Hitler’s perspective while attending Harvard and was directed to redo the assignment. The newspaper also reported that Velchik later described Hitler’s "Mein Kampf" as his favorite book, according to Oyer.
“It is quite terrifying that this is the person who is now representing the Justice Department as a senior counsel in litigation against the press,” she added Wednesday.
Trump barred the three outlets from the White House after accusing them of spreading “fake news.” The organizations are now fighting the ban in federal court, claiming First Amendment right violations.
“We need to get Nazis and misogynists out of our government,” Oyer concluded. “Is that too much to ask?”
Extremely disturbing news about the lawyer defending Donald Trump’s media ban. Watch this sitting down, and please help spread the word. https://t.co/RHi9zpNGwN
— Liz Oyer (@lawyeroyer) September 23, 2026