type: timeline_event
On March 7, 2025, Pam Bondi fired DOJ Pardon Attorney Elizabeth "Liz" Oyer after Oyer refused to add Mel Gibson to a pilot program restoring gun rights to people with certain criminal convictions.
The DOJ had created a program to restore Second Amendment rights to non-violent offenders. The first batch of nine approved applicants were elderly individuals convicted of non-violent crimes like insurance fraud. But Bondi instructed Oyer to add "a famous friend of the president who had lost his right to own a gun due to a domestic violence conviction"—Mel Gibson, who had pleaded no contest to misdemeanor domestic violence battery in 2011.
Gibson's team had appealed directly to Trump, who passed the request to Bondi. Oyer refused on legal and ethical grounds—federal law specifically bars gun rights restoration for domestic violence convictions—and was fired the next day.
When Oyer was scheduled to testify before Congress on April 7, 2025, DOJ sent armed U.S. Marshals to her home on April 4 to warn her not to testify. Oyer testified anyway, describing "ongoing corruption" at the Department of Justice.
Gibson was one of 10 people whose gun rights Bondi ultimately restored. The incident demonstrated that under Bondi, the DOJ's legal processes existed to serve the president's personal relationships, and career officials who upheld the law faced termination and intimidation.