This week, I had the privilege of sitting down with Liz Oyer, the former U.S. pardon attorney at the Department of Justice. Earlier this year, she was abruptly fired by Donald Trump. What she revealed in our conversation is both deeply personal and profoundly alarming. It’s not just her story — it’s a warning about the direction of the Justice Department and, by extension, the rule of law in America.
I am currently offline for Yom Kippur, and will have a full news update this evening. If you value in-depth conversations like this — the kind you won’t hear anywhere else — I hope you’ll consider subscribing. It helps me keep doing this work, bringing you the stories and voices that those in power would rather you not hear.
Subscribe
When President Joe Biden appointed Liz Oyer in 2022, she achieved what she described as her dream job. After a career as a public defender, standing beside individuals caught in the system with little hope, she was now in a position to influence life-changing decisions at the highest level. The Office of the Pardon Attorney is the only formal channel for reviewing petitions for clemency, pardons, and commutations — and for thousands of Americans, it represents the last chance to correct or mitigate injustice. Oyer stepped into this role determined to tackle the overwhelming backlog of petitions and restore fairness to a process long plagued by politics.
But in March, her career in public service came to a stunning halt. She was asked to review an application to restore actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights. Those rights had been stripped following a 2011 domestic violence conviction. After carefully reviewing the case, Oyer made the call she believed was dictated by law and conscience: she refused to recommend reinstating Gibson’s gun rights. That same day, she says, she was terminated. For Oyer, it was a clear signal that independent, law-driven judgment was no longer welcome at the Justice Department.
Since her firing, Oyer has chosen to speak out, despite the risks, because she sees what is happening as nothing less than a five-alarm fire for democracy. The guardrails that once kept partisan influence in check at the Department of Justice — guardrails that ensured decisions were made based on law, precedent, and fairness — are being dismantled. She points to the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey as emblematic of this shift: a process increasingly weaponized to punish perceived enemies and reward loyalists.
And then she laid out, in striking detail, one of the most troubling aspects of Donald Trump’s presidency: the abuse of presidential pardons.
Traditionally, pardons serve a narrow, carefully considered purpose. They are meant to correct injustices, temper harsh punishments, or acknowledge extraordinary rehabilitation. They are powerful, yes — but they have always been constrained by norms, traditions, and respect for the rule of law. According to Oyer, Trump shattered those boundaries.
She described how Trump began granting full pardons to people who had not even served their sentences. These pardons were not simply symbolic acts of mercy. They were sweeping erasures — wiping away not just prison time but also every financial penalty associated with the crime. This included restitution, a mandatory part of sentencing in financial crimes, requiring perpetrators to repay victims the money they stole. With a single stroke of his pen, Trump canceled those obligations, leaving victims without a path to recovery.
The scale of this was staggering. Tens of millions, and in some cases hundreds of millions, of dollars that should have gone to victims simply vanished. Families, retirees, and small investors who had been defrauded found that the justice system not only failed to protect them but, under Trump, actively blocked their last chance of restitution.
To illustrate the point, Oyer told the story of Trevor Milton, the founder of Nikola, the electric truck company that promised revolutionary technology but instead delivered one of the biggest corporate frauds in recent history. Milton misled investors, raised vast sums of money, and became a billionaire on false promises. When the fraud unraveled, the losses were catastrophic — investors were out nearly $700 million. The Department of Justice was pressing to hold him accountable, demanding he repay what he had stolen. But before a cent was returned, Trump issued Milton a full pardon. That pardon meant Milton kept his fortune, while ordinary people — retirees, families, and individuals who had invested their savings — were left with nothing.
For Oyer, cases like this show how Trump used the pardon power not as an instrument of justice but as a tool of favoritism, rewarding allies, donors, and the well-connected, while victims and ordinary Americans were left abandoned. In her view, this was not only an abuse of power but a direct assault on the basic promise that the justice system protects the vulnerable and holds the powerful accountable.
Her story is not just about one firing, or one flawed process. It is about a pattern — a dangerous and unprecedented dismantling of norms, checks, and protections inside the Department of Justice. Oyer’s warning is clear: the systems we once assumed would protect against corruption and abuse are no longer functioning. If they can be overridden so quickly, so brazenly, and so thoroughly, then no one can assume that the law will be applied fairly.
This is not a theoretical concern. It is playing out right now, in real time, with real victims. The pardon power, designed by the framers as a narrow instrument of mercy, has been transformed into a political weapon. The Department of Justice, once a safeguard of independence, is being hollowed out from within. And those with the least power — ordinary Americans seeking justice, victims of fraud, people trapped in the system — are paying the price.
That is why Liz Oyer is raising her voice now. She sees what’s happening as a five-alarm fire for the republic — a crisis that demands attention before it is too late. Her testimony is more than just a personal account of losing a dream job. It is a stark reminder that democracy depends on institutions, norms, and laws being respected. When those are eroded, when justice itself becomes politicized, what remains is raw power — and the victims are everyone who thought the law would protect them.
This is a conversation about the very core of our democracy: whether the rule of law still has meaning, whether the Justice Department can still function as an independent institution, and whether victims of crime — large and small — will ever again have recourse to true justice. Liz Oyer is sounding the alarm, and we would all do well to listen.