The pardon attorney for the U.S. Justice Department said she was fired one day after she refused to recommend that pro-Trump Hollywood star Mel Gibson have his gun rights restored, due to his 2011 misdemeanor domestic violence conviction.
In a story for the New York Times, Elizabeth G. Oyer, the former pardon attorney, said that Gibson’s attorney sent a letter to two senior Justice Department officials, James R. McHenry III and Emil Bove III, arguing for his gun rights to be restored because he had been tapped for a special appointment by President Trump and because “he had made a number of big, successful movies.”
Shortly before his inauguration, Trump announced that three prominent Hollywood supporters, Gibson, Sylvester Stallone and Jon Voight, would be his “special ambassadors” in the “great but very troubled” entertainment capital.
Oyer described the sequence of events, which involved Gibson and her firing, as “an alarming departure from longstanding practice” that is designed to ensure public safety, the New York Times reported. Federal law prohibits people convicted of crimes, including misdemeanor state domestic violence cases, from purchasing or owning a handgun. Law enforcement officials at the state, local and federal levels are especially concerned that domestic abusers might reoffend.
In 2011, Gibson pleaded no contest in Los Angeles Superior Court to a misdemeanor charge of battering his former girlfriend, Oksana Grigorieva, as part of a deal with prosecutors that allowed him to avoid jail time, the Los Angeles Times reported at the time.
The no-contest plea allowed Gibson to avoid admitting any wrongdoing in a January 2010 altercation at his Malibu mansion, even though Grigorieva said the incident left her with two broken teeth and a black eye, the Los Angeles Times reported. Grigorieva told authorities that Gibson had punched her and threatened her with a gun as she held their infant daughter. Recordings of an enraged Gibson, ranting, swearing and threatening Grigorieva, subsequently surfaced on the gossip site, Radar Online. The tapes included Gibson telling Grigorieva that she “deserved” the assault.
For his conviction, Gibson received a sentence of community service and three years of probation, and was ordered to pay $570 in fines. Gibson’s attorney also said the “Braveheart” star would complete one year of court-ordered domestic violence counseling.
At the time, the prosecutor said the agreement was struck to minimize “trauma and impact” on Grigorieva and the couple’s young daughter. Following his conviction, Gibson told a reporter that the scandal had been “terribly humiliating and painful for my family,” as Reuters reported. He also insisted that he had never “treated anyone badly or in a discriminatory way based on their gender, race, religion or sexuality — period.”
Gibson’s altercation with his ex-girlfriend is now back in the public eye, against the backdrop of the Trump administration purging experienced career officials from traditionally nonpartisan roles at the Justice Department, likely in order to pave the way for Trump and his allies to install people who align ideologically with the president, as the Washington Post reporting.
According to the New York Times, Gibson’s conviction also highlights a push to restore gun rights to people with criminal convictions. Some of the right maintain that not all people with criminal convictions are dangerous or deserving of such a ban.
Oyer was one of a number of high-ranking Justice Department officials who were fired on Friday, the Times reported. Oyer said she was not told why she was dismissed, but she feared that her actions regarding Gibson could lead to her firing.
While the law technically gives the Justice Department the authority to restore gun rights to specific individuals, the department has not done so in practice, according to the Times. But two weeks ago, Oyer said she was put on a working group that would generate a list of people to get back their gun rights. Her office came up with an initial list of 95 people she deemed worthy of consideration. The list was principally made up of people whose convictions were decades old and for whom her office thought the risk of recidivism was low.
The list was soon whittled down to just nine candidates, and Oyer said she submitted a draft memo last Thursday, recommending that those nine get their gun rights back. But she said the memo was returned, with a request saying, “We would like you to add Mel Gibson to this memo.”
To Oyer, Gibson’s request was “worrisome on multiple fronts,” according to the Times. The other candidates had all undergone significant background investigations to measure their likelihood of committing another crime. That wasn’t the case with Gibson.
“Giving guns back to domestic abusers is a serious matter that, in my view, is not something that I could recommend lightly, because there are real consequences that flow from people who have a history of domestic violence being in possession of firearms,” Oyer told the Times.
Oyer also told the Times she was vaguely aware of another highly publicized episode in 2006 when Gibson was caught on tape being verbally abusive and antisemitic to a police officer who had stopped him on suspicion of driving under the influence.
Oyer said she wrote a brief email to her superiors at the Justice Department, saying she could not recommend that Gibson’s gun rights be restored. Several hours later, she said a senior Justice Department official called to ask if her position was flexible. When she said no, she said the official explained that Mel Gibson “has a personal relationship” with the president. The official said “that should be sufficient basis for me to make a recommendation and that I would be wise to make the recommendation,” she said.
Oyer told the Times she spent a sleepless night trying to figure out how to navigate the situation with compromising her ethics. “I can’t believe this, but I really think Mel Gibson is going to be my downfall,” she said she told a trusted colleague the next day.
Oyer told the Times said she wrote another memo, saying that she did not know the details of Gibson’s case and that it was ultimately the attorney general’s decision. A few hours later, she returned to her office to find security officers, waiting her to hand her a letter from Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche firing her. The security officers waited as she packed up her belongings, then escorted her out of the building.
