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The Justice Department is refusing to automatically bar domestic abusers from owning guns because Donald Trump wanted to please his movie star buddy Mel Gibson, it has been claimed.
Former U.S. Pardon Attorney Elizabeth Oyer asserts she proposed a blanket ban on convicted abusers from regaining access to firearms as officials developed a new restoration program designed for prohibited gun owners.
But in a striking new allegation, Oyer says a senior DOJ official told her they could not shut them out as “it was necessary to grant relief to Mel Gibson” due to “the fact that Mr. Gibson had a personal relationship with President Trump.”
Oyer, who maintains she was fired in May for refusing to return Gibson’s gun, made the claim in her complaint to the department’s inspector general about Associate Deputy Attorney General Paul Perkins, obtained by PunchUp.
The bizarre case has gained fresh relevance after the DOJ opened the first stage of the federal gun-rights restoration program last Friday—without imposing the catch-all exclusion Oyer says she proposed.