Justice Dept. official says she was fired after refusing to restore Mel Gibson’s gun rights

The Justice Department’s pardon attorney was dismissed a day after she refused to recommend that the actor Mel Gibson, a prominent supporter of President Trump’s, should have his gun rights restored, The New York Times reported, citing the attorney and others familiar with the situation.

Elizabeth G. Oyer, the former pardon attorney, described the sequence of events as an alarming departure from longstanding practice, one that put public safety and the department’s integrity at risk. Mr. Gibson had lost his gun rights as a result of a 2011 domestic violence misdemeanor conviction.

“This is dangerous. This isn’t political — this is a safety issue,” Ms. Oyer said in an interview with The New York Times as she described the internal discussions about whether to give gun rights back to people with domestic violence convictions.

Ms. Oyer’s account of a series of Justice Department discussions about guns, domestic violence and star power was confirmed by two other people familiar with the events, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation.

She was one of a number of high-ranking Justice Department officials who were fired on Friday, the latest in a series of moves by the Trump administration to remove or demote senior career lawyers who play critical roles in department decisions. She was not told why she was dismissed, but as events unfolded, she feared that they might lead to her firing.

A Justice Department official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations, said the disagreement over Mr. Gibson played no role in the decision to dismiss the pardon attorney.

A representative for Mr. Gibson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

About two weeks ago, Ms. Oyer was put on a working group to restore gun rights to people convicted of crimes, she said. That effort has been championed by some on the right who maintain that not all people with criminal convictions are dangerous or deserving of such a ban. Others contend that doing so, particularly when it comes to people with domestic violence convictions, carries significant risks.

It was an unusual assignment for the office of the pardon attorney, which typically handles requests for clemency and tries to focus on people who cannot hire well-connected lawyers to plead their cases to the White House, where the president has vast power to grant pardons in federal cases. Mr. Trump has a history of making pardon decisions without substantial input from the pardon attorney, but in this case Justice Department leaders planned to make the decision about gun rights on their own.