Armed agents almost sent to home of DoJ official ‘fired over Mel Gibson case’

The Trump administration-led justice department planned to send armed US marshals to deliver a letter warning a career pardon attorney about testifying to Congress after she says she was fired over a case involving the actor Mel Gibson, her lawyer said in a letter seen by Reuters on Monday.

“This highly unusual step of directing armed law enforcement officers to the home of a former Department of Justice employee who has engaged in no misconduct, let alone criminal conduct, simply to deliver a letter, is both unprecedented and completely inappropriate,” Michael Bromwich, a lawyer representing the fired pardon attorney Liz Oyer, wrote to the justice department.

The marshals were called off on Friday only after Oyer acknowledged having received the letter by email, Bromwich wrote.

Oyer, who served as the pardon attorney during Joe Biden’s presidency, was one of several career officials fired by the deputy attorney general, Todd Blanche, on 7 March.

Oyer has since told various media outlets that her firing came shortly after she declined to recommend restoring gun rights to Gibson, the star of Braveheart as well as a supporter of Donald Trump.

Gibson lost those rights after being sentenced to probation for domestic violence in 2011.

She was one of several justice department officials who testified on Monday afternoon before a hearing organized by Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate about the Trump administration’s treatment of the justice department and law firms who act in cases disliked by the Republican president.

“I was in the car with my husband and my parents … when I got the news that the officers were on their way to my house where my teenage child was home alone,” Oyer told lawmakers.

“Fortunately, due to the grace of a very decent person who understood how upsetting this would be to my family, I was able to confirm receipt of the letter to an email address, and the deputies were called off.”

The Democratic US senator Adam Schiff of California called the mobilization of the marshals to deliver a letter an effort to “intimidate and silence” Oyer. The US House member Jamie Raskin of Maryland, another Democrat, compared it to a move “ripped straight from the gangster playbook”.

A justice department spokesperson did not comment.

In the letter to Oyer, which was seen by Reuters, the associate deputy attorney general Kendra Wharton said that the department had “significant confidentiality interests”.

These were particularly strong in Oyer’s case because of the role that Oyer played in making clemency recommendations for the president, said the letter, which referred to the executive privilege doctrine that shields some presidential communications from disclosure to Congress.

“Should you choose to appear before Congress, the department expects that you will abide by your obligations under the law, department policy, and the applicable rules of professional responsibility,” Wharton wrote.

“Those matters include the deliberative processes that underlie pardons, clemency, the restoration of firearm rights, and related decisions.”

Bromwich, in his letter to Blanche, said the claim that Oyer’s testimony is barred by executive privilege was “baseless” and that she was entitled to certain legal protections for whistleblowers.

Oyer testified on Monday that the justice department’s letter did not deter her from speaking the truth, saying, “I will not be bullied into concealing the ongoing corruption and abuse of power at the Department of Justice.”