Prosecutor Fired After Refusing Mel Gibson's Gun Request Testifies: Report

LOS ANGELES, CA — The U.S. Justice Department's former pardon attorney, who says she was fired for refusing to reinstate gun rights for actor Mel Gibson, a Malibu resident and prominent supporter of the president, is at the center of a power struggle between Congress and the Trump administration.

Elizabeth G. Oyer testified before lawmakers about her experience Monday after the Justice Department attempted to stop her from testifying by arguing that the topic is protected from congressional review because of executive privilege. Her attorney told the New York Times the Justice Department was attempting to intimidate a whistleblower.

“I am here because I will not be bullied into concealing the ongoing corruption and abuse of power at the Department of Justice,” she told Democratic senators and representatives, according to the New York Times.

“I don’t want to be complicit in what is happening inside the Department of Justice, which is the misuse of the resources of the department to do political favors for friends of the president, political loyalists,” she added.

Oyer's is one of several high-profile cases in which Justice Department attorney's were fired or quit after refusing to follow Trump administration directives they deemed to be unethical.

Oyer made headlines in March when she was dismissed after refusing to restore gun rights to President Donald Trump's Special Ambassador to Hollywood Mel Gibson, who lost the right to possess guns due to a 2011 domestic violence conviction.

Oyer claims she was part of an alarming set of discussions about guns, domestic violence and star power that culminated in her dismissal for taking a stance to uphold a law designed to protect victims from abusers.

“This is dangerous. This isn’t political — this is a safety issue,” Oyer told the New York Times. “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.”

The Justice Department has not responded to requests for comment from Patch.

Oyer has said she was placed on a working group to restore gun rights to people convicted of crimes, and her office came up with a list of 95 carefully vetted candidates her boss then whittled down to nine people deemed low risk for recidivism. Then she was told to add Gibson's name to the list because he has a personal relationship with the president.

Gibson's attorney had written to the Justice Department, citing his successful movies and status as Trump's special ambassador to Hollywood as reason to restore his gun rights, the Times reported.

Around the time the letter was sent, Gibson waded into politics, announcing an effort to recall Trump nemesis California Gov. Gavin Newsom at a press conference held in an Altadena neighborhood destroyed by the Eaton Fire.

Gibson contended the governor has "brought us nothing but crime, acute homelessness, horrendous inflation — I mean this industry that I work in, the film industry, this used to be the mecca of filmdom. It is no more."

Prior to this, Gibson's profile had been muted after a series of arrests and scandals including the 2011 domestic violence arrest in which he pleaded no contest to a misdemeanor charge of battering his former girlfriend at his Malibu home. The guilty plea helped him to avoid jail time, but it was that conviction that made him ineligible to own a gun.

And Oyer believes it turned out to be her unlikely downfall as well.

Hours after she refused to recommend him for restored gun rights, she was dismissed and escorted from the building by security officers, the Times reported.

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