WASHINGTON — A lawyer representing the former U.S. pardon attorney complained in a letter to the Justice Department that it was using "security resources to intimidate" Liz Oyer ahead of her planned participation in a "shadow" hearing held Monday by congressional Democrats.
The letter said the Justice Department dispatched special deputy U.S. marshals to the home of Oyer, who said she was fired after she opposed adding actor Mel Gibson to a list of people having their gun rights restored. (A Justice Department official disputed that the Gibson case drove her dismissal.) The special deputy U.S. marshals had been told to deliver a letter warning Oyer to obey her obligation not to reveal information protected by executive privilege at the event Monday. Ultimately, they did not deliver the letter, after Oyer confirmed receipt of the message to a secondary email.
“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 former Justice Department inspector general representing Oyer, wrote in a response letter addressed to Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche.
Bromwich wrote that Oyer learned the special deputy marshals had been dispatched to her home Friday, when her teen child was home alone.
"You appear to be using the Department’s security resources to intimidate a former employee who is engaged in statutorily protected whistleblower conduct, an act that implicates criminal and civil statutes as well as Department policy and your ethical obligations as a member of the bar,” Bromwich wrote.
Special deputy U.S. marshals are not part of the typical structure of the U.S. Marshals Service, instead having been deputized by the Marshals Service. They have the ability to take certain actions, including carry firearms in federal buildings. Bromwich's letter said the deputy attorney general’s office directed the Justice Department’s Security and Emergency Planning Staff to have two special deputy marshals show up at Oyer's home to deliver a letter warning her of her obligations.
The letter was sent ahead of Oyer's testimony at a "shadow" hearing seeking to spotlight what Democratic members describe as President Donald Trump's attacks on the rule of law. Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and Rep. Jamie Raskin, D-Md., will lead the event Monday afternoon; Schiff told NBC News he hopes the hearing will help "shed a light" on the "rampant" abuses in the first few months of the Trump administration.
With Democrats in the minority in both the House and the Senate, they are unable to convene official congressional hearings themselves or call administration officials to testify. Instead, they are spotlighting people who were fired or resigned from the Justice Department in the early days of Trump's second term.
"If the Republicans aren't going to oversee it and do the necessary oversight, then we're going to need to do it ourselves," Schiff said in an interview. "And there's probably no department more in need of oversight than the Justice Department."
Oyer told NBC News before the hearing that it was critical for members of Congress with oversight responsibilities to understand what’s going on inside the Justice Department.
“Career experts are being marginalized and mistreated. Institutional morale is eroding. Leadership is prioritizing political loyalty over ethics and integrity. All of this has real and dangerous consequences for public safety and national security,” Oyer said in a statement. “This is not a political issue. It is something that should deeply concern Members of both parties and all Americans who share the desire to live in a free and safe society.
Other participants will be former Justice Department prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, who resigned from the department's Public Integrity Section following an order to drop corruption charges against New York Mayor Eric Adams. The former acting U.S. attorney prosecuting the case criticized it as a possible quid pro quo, which Adams' attorneys and department leaders denied. Another will be Rachel Cohen, the former associate at the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom who resigned just before the firm reached a deal to provide $100 million in legal services to causes Trump supports as part of an agreement for Trump to drop an executive order targeting it. Also at the hearing will be Stacey Young, a Justice Department veteran who launched the group Justice Connection to support department employees who were fired or resigned.
Raskin said in a statement that Republicans were passively watching Trump "punish his critics and take a jackhammer to the work of anti-corruption fighters at the Department of Justice."
Schiff told NBC News that the courts have been "absolutely indispensable" in blocking some of Trump's actions even if the litigation can't stop everything, and he expressed concerns over the threats against some federal judges after they came under attack by Trump and Elon Musk.
"As effective as the courts have been and litigation has been, it isn't going to stop all bad things from happening, and the public plays an absolutely vital role," he said.
Schiff, who recently placed a hold on interim U.S. Attorney Ed Martin's nomination to permanently lead the federal prosecutor's office in Washington, D.C., described Martin as "the tip of the spear for Trump’s abuse of the rule of law," calling him part of Trump's efforts to "go after anyone who held him accountable for trying to stop a peaceful transfer of power for the first time in our history."
Martin backed Trump's false conspiracy theories about a stolen election after 2020 and later advocated for Jan. 6 defendants before Trump put him in his current post, where he worked to dismiss cases of the Jan. 6 defendants still facing charges when Trump issued his mass pardon.
"From a political point of view ... it doesn't make any sense for them to keep Jan. 6 in the news, but the president can't help himself, and were it not for Ed Martin's role as a 'stop the steal' advocate, he would never be in that position," Schiff said.
Ahead of the hearing on Monday, Raskin and Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., also sent letters to law firms that had reached deals with or where negotiating with the White House to avoid the type of executive orders that have targeted firms Trump disfavors, including those with connections to the federal criminal investigations that were dropped when Trump won in November.
