Trump's DOJ Restored Gibson's Gun Rights and Tried to Erase Bannon's Conviction

On March 7, 2025, Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche fired Elizabeth Oyer, the Justice Department's career pardon attorney.¹² Hours earlier, by her account, she had refused to recommend restoring Mel Gibson's gun rights.¹³ Gibson lost them after a domestic violence conviction, and Oyer says Blanche's staff pressed her to approve him despite her safety concerns, because of his personal relationship with President Trump.¹ Twenty-four days after the firing, Attorney General Pamela Bondi granted Gibson the relief. Blanche signed the notice that published it.⁴

The charge is preferential justice: under Trump, the Justice Department gave legal relief to politically connected people and removed officials who resisted.¹⁵⁶ Trump kept Blanche in office and nominated him for Attorney General; the Senate confirmed him on August 8, 2026.⁷⁸ In the Live Nation monopoly case, The Wall Street Journal later reported, Trump personally told a senior DOJ official to settle.⁹

The Recommendation Oyer Would Not Sign

Oyer took the career post in April 2022 after ten years as a federal public defender, and supervised about forty nonpolitical employees who advise the President on clemency.¹⁰³ Her team had thoroughly vetted approximately 95 candidates for gun-rights restoration, she says in her federal complaint. Blanche's staff cut the list to nine, then asked her to add Gibson.²

Written testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Todd Blanche's nomination¹

I was asked by Mr. Blanche’s office to recommend restoring firearm rights to Mel Gibson, a Hollywood actor who I was told has a personal relationship with President Trump.

Gibson's lawyer had asked for the relief by invoking his client's relationship with Trump and his films, Oyer testified.¹ She had not been allowed to investigate whether restoring his rights would be safe.¹ Her testimony also identifies Blanche as Trump's former personal attorney.¹ Blanche's staff pressed her to reconsider. She refused.¹ The termination memo attached to her complaint carries Blanche's signature and the date March 7, 2025. It invokes Article II and removes her immediately.²

What the pressure would have bought, on Oyer's account, was a career expert's recommendation for an applicant her office had not vetted: a political favor presented, she alleges, as an independent judgment.²

Gibson Got the Relief, Oyer Lost the Job

On March 20, 2025, thirteen days after the firing, Bondi withdrew the delegation of firearms-restoration authority to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.¹¹ On March 31 she granted relief to ten people, Gibson among them.⁴ The Federal Register published their names on April 29, in a notice dated April 18 and signed by Blanche.⁴ The notice says Bondi reviewed each recipient's relevant facts and materials, found each unlikely to endanger public safety, and judged relief consistent with the public interest.⁴ It describes no individual investigation of Gibson.⁴

Bondi had the legal power. Section 925(c) lets the Attorney General restore federal firearm rights when the applicant is unlikely to endanger public safety and relief would not be contrary to the public interest; a court cannot decide an application the agency has not acted on.¹²¹³ Oyer's refusal gave her no veto.¹²²

Blanche disputes that Gibson had anything to do with the firing.¹⁴ At his confirmation hearing, the Associated Press reported, he said he knew nothing about Gibson or the letter when he fired Oyer.¹⁴ He gave another reason, AP reported: her clemency decisions near the end of Biden's term, including a recommendation to commute the sentence of every person on federal death row, were inconsistent with Trump's authority.¹⁴ The memo he signed that day gave no reason.²

Oyer sued Blanche and DOJ in Washington on September 3, 2026, seeking reinstatement and a declaration that her removal violated civil-service protections, due process, political-association rights, and Article II.² Her complaint says DOJ gave her neither the required advance notice nor a chance to respond, and argues that even DOJ's theory of presidential removal power did not authorize the Deputy Attorney General to remove her.² DOJ maintained that she was an inferior officer removable at will.² The Supreme Court's broad removal-power precedent does not resolve her civil-service challenge.¹⁵²

The firing cost more than one job.³ Oyer says more than 6,000 clemency applications, mostly from ordinary Americans, were pending when DOJ fired her. She says leadership had already redirected her office's resources toward firearm restoration.³ Her benefits information arrived twenty-six days after the firing, she says. It warned that her family's health insurance would expire in five days and priced continued coverage at more than four times its previous cost.³

Armed Marshals Sent Before She Spoke to Congress

After the firing, Oyer testified, Blanche "took extraordinary measures to keep me quiet."¹ On the Friday night before the April 7, 2025 bicameral spotlight hearing, she says, his office directed two armed Special Deputy U.S. Marshals to her home to deliver a warning about testifying.³¹⁶ The assigned window was between 9:00 and 10:00 p.m., when her teenage child was the only person home.³ Oyer confirmed receipt of the emailed letter, and the officers were recalled before they reached her house.³¹⁷

DOJ invoked confidentiality and possible executive privilege over its firearms-restoration deliberations, according to her lawyer, Michael Bromwich, who answered that Trump had asserted no such privilege and accused the Department of using security resources to intimidate a whistleblower.¹⁸ Senators Adam Schiff and Cory Booker and Representative Jamie Raskin wrote that the dispatch "seems calculated to intimidate Ms. Oyer and prevent her from testifying."¹⁷ Oyer spoke at the forum anyway, and later submitted testimony opposing Blanche's nomination.³¹

A General Program Followed the Special Grant

DOJ's August 2026 final rule created a general screening process effective September 21, with intake by the pardon office and fingerprint processing by the FBI.¹⁹ DOJ scheduled three application stages: invited candidates on September 25, 2026; the first 5,000 public applicants on November 4, 2026; and 500 more public applicants on January 4, 2027, when the application fee would begin.²⁰

DOJ's scheduled application openings²⁰

1. September 25, 2026Invited candidates scheduled to begin applying.
2. November 4, 2026Public opening scheduled for the first 5,000 applicants.
3. January 4, 2027500 more public applicants scheduled to apply, when the application fee would begin.

The rule's stated goals are to protect firearm rights while ensuring recipients are unlikely to endanger the public.¹⁹ DOJ's program page, captured October 10, 2026, gives the application schedule but no approval totals or information about whether any recipient has endangered the public.²⁰ DOJ lists a permanent presumptive denial for domestic violence felonies and a ten-year presumption for misdemeanor domestic violence convictions, subject to extraordinary circumstances.²¹ Gibson got his rights back more than a year before any of it took effect.⁴¹⁹

Ending a prosecution takes a judge's permission.²² DOJ sought it in three cases with political connections, and twice a judge answered that DOJ had not supplied the reasons or the facts.²³²⁴

Bannon's Conviction Was Not DOJ's to Erase by Assertion

Bannon was Trump's chief White House strategist.²⁵ A jury convicted him in 2022 of two counts of contempt of Congress for defying the January 6 committee's subpoena.²³²⁶²⁷ The court sentenced him to four months in prison and a $6,500 fine.²⁸

On February 9, 2026, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro signed DOJ's motion to dismiss the indictment with prejudice, which would permanently bar renewed charges.²⁹²² The motion's entire explanation was one sentence: dismissal served the interests of justice.²⁹

Government's Unopposed Motion to Dismiss Indictment, ECF 207²⁹

The government has determined in its prosecutorial discretion that dismissal of this criminal case is in the interests of justice. Defendant Bannon does not oppose this motion.

The Supreme Court vacated the appellate judgment on April 6 and remanded for consideration of the motion.³⁰ On July 30 DOJ and Bannon jointly asked to return to the district court so the prosecution could be terminated, and the appeals court agreed on August 12.²³

On August 26 Judge Carl Nichols, whom Trump appointed in 2019, denied the motion.²³²⁵ DOJ's single explanatory sentence, he held, failed Rule 48(a)'s procedural requirement.²³ The denial was without prejudice: DOJ may file again with reasons and facts.²³ Nichols also told DOJ to address whether the rule could dismiss a prosecution after the district court had entered a judgment that had not been vacated.²³

Bannon had already served the prison term; what the motion would remove is the conviction's legal consequences, and Nichols required DOJ to explain itself first.²³³¹

Bondi Named the Political Route to Moore's Dismissal

Michael Kirk Moore Jr., a Utah surgeon, faced a four-count indictment that included conspiracy, conversion of government property, and destruction of evidence.³² It alleged that the defendants disposed of at least $28,028.50 in government-provided vaccines, distributed vaccination cards without administering vaccines, and gave children saline shots at their parents' request to make the children believe they had been vaccinated.³² On July 12, 2025, DOJ moved to dismiss with prejudice, with the same general explanation it later gave for Bannon.³³

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene's letter of the same date asked Bondi to drop the charges against Moore and his co-defendants. It described Moore as protecting patients from the COVID-19 vaccine and said he faced 35 years in prison.³⁴ Bondi announced that DOJ had dismissed the charges at her direction, and defended Moore for giving patients a choice when the government would not.⁶ "He did not deserve the years in prison he was facing," she wrote.⁶

Post on X, archived⁶

This would not have been possible without @RepMTG who brought this case to my attention. She has been a warrior for Dr. Moore and for ending the weaponization of government.

Bondi's own statement supplies the political route to her decision. The motion supplies no factual explanation for it.⁶³³ Defending patient choice does not address the indictment's allegations of false records, destroyed vaccines, and deception of children.⁶³²

Adani's Lawyers Had Access, DOJ's Evidence Contradicted Its Reasons

Gautam Adani's lawyer, Robert Giuffra, was also Trump's personal attorney, Judge Nicholas Garaufis noted in an August 10 order that recounts months of defense presentations and meetings with DOJ.⁸ The indictment alleged a scheme involving approximately $265 million in bribes, concealment from investors, and obstruction of U.S. investigations.⁸ On May 18, 2026, DOJ official R. Trent McCotter sought dismissal of all five counts against eight defendants.⁸

Part of the request succeeded. On August 10 Garaufis dismissed with prejudice the securities and wire-fraud counts against Gautam Adani, Sagar Adani, and Vneet Jaain.⁸ DOJ had argued that the anti-bribery assurances at issue were potentially too general to support criminal fraud charges, a legal risk the judge found sufficiently supported and substantial.⁸ Giuffra had twice raised Adani Group's willingness to invest $10 billion in the United States as part of a resolution, the court recounted, but it accepted that this promise had not influenced McCotter's decision.⁸ Garaufis expressly warned that permission to dismiss was not an endorsement of DOJ's decision or a ruling on the case's merits.⁸

The rest failed.²⁴ On September 3 Garaufis denied without prejudice DOJ's effort to dismiss the foreign-bribery conspiracy and obstruction conspiracy counts against the five other defendants, because McCotter had not supplied sufficient facts.²⁴ Some evidence contradicted DOJ's explanation. McCotter had presented Indian decisions as investigations clearing misconduct; Garaufis found that they appeared instead to decline investigations and did not clear the conduct charged here.⁸²⁴ The August order had also questioned McCotter's apparent replacement of investigators' and prosecutors' professional judgments with his own, formed largely with defense counsel.⁸

The administration invoked Trump's revised foreign-bribery enforcement priorities. Garaufis found that the allegations instead matched several priorities in Blanche's own guidance, including serious misconduct and concealed bribe payments.⁸ Changing policy did not relieve DOJ of the obligation to support its request to extinguish those charges.²⁴

Trump's Reported Direction and the Verdict DOJ Did Not Win

In the Live Nation case the reporting reaches Trump himself.⁹ A Live Nation subsidiary, Live Nation Worldwide, gave Trump's inaugural committee $500,000 on January 8, 2025.³⁵³⁶ The donation establishes a financial connection, not the reason for DOJ's settlement.³⁵⁹ On March 31 Trump signed an order directing enforcement of competition laws in the live-entertainment industry.³⁷

Roger Alford, a Republican who served in both Trump administrations and was the Antitrust Division's second-ranking official, says DOJ dismissed him for insisting that lobbyists were subordinate to the law, and that cases were being resolved through political connections.⁵³⁸ In August 2025 he publicly warned that Live Nation could be the next casualty.⁵ In the Hewlett Packard Enterprise merger, he said, he had no reason to think the White House or other departments were involved and did not think Blanche was involved; he praised Blanche's character.⁵ Alford and civil-enforcement deputy William Rinner disappeared from the Division's leadership page between July 13 and August 9, 2025.³⁹⁴⁰ Antitrust chief Gail Slater announced her departure in February 2026, with senators relaying subsequent reports of termination.⁴¹

Trump met Live Nation CEO Michael Rapino on February 27, the Journal reported in August 2026, and afterward told a senior DOJ official to settle.⁹ Its account also places Trump briefly at March 5 White House negotiations and describes the settlement as allowing Live Nation to keep Ticketmaster.⁹ The Journal reported that Live Nation's lawyer at the White House negotiations, James McDonald, was also representing Trump in two New York appeals; Trump later nominated him to be Manhattan's top federal prosecutor. It also reported that Bondi warned some Republican state officials that the deal was personal to Trump.⁹ By then, the Journal reported, McCotter had already told trial attorneys to remove Ticketmaster divestiture from DOJ's draft proposal, and DOJ's January 2026 counterproposal omitted it.⁹

DOJ's strongest defense, as the Journal reported it, was that the deal delivered quick consumer benefits without risking years of litigation: access for competing promoters, alternative ticket platforms, and service-fee caps.⁹ The White House denied using DOJ to help Trump's friends. Live Nation said its concessions matched or exceeded what the government could have won on the actual claims.⁹

The states tested that risk argument.⁴² The New York Attorney General announced that her coalition rejected DOJ's settlement, continued the trial, and won an April 15 jury verdict finding unlawful monopolization and tying by Live Nation and Ticketmaster.⁴² The jury found harm to fans through overcharges and to competing ticket services, promoters, and venues through exclusion.⁴² The Journal also reported that the states had asked the judge to force Live Nation to sell Ticketmaster. The jury's liability verdict did not itself decide that remedy.⁹⁴²

Live Nation is contesting the verdict, pointing to pending motions and intended appeals.⁴³ It described the jury's $1.72-per-ticket award as limited to particular tickets, venues, purchasers, states, and years, estimated single damages below $150 million, subject to trebling, and said it had accrued $280 million toward state damages and penalties under DOJ's settlement.⁴³

The Tunney Act requires a judge to find DOJ's settlement in the public interest before entering it.⁴⁴ The company had announced the deal without admitting wrongdoing, and DOJ filed its proposed judgment on June 12.⁴⁵⁴⁶ Pollstar reported that public comments closed September 4 and the judge was reviewing the settlement on September 15.⁴⁷

Discretion Is a Power, Not an Explanation

The strongest general defense is discretion: presidents and prosecutors control which crimes to investigate and prosecute.⁴⁸⁴⁹ Judicial permission to drop charges chiefly protects defendants from prosecutorial harassment, and a judge cannot deny dismissal simply because he disagrees with the prosecutor's charging judgment.⁴⁹ Agency decisions not to enforce are also presumed immune from judicial review.⁵⁰ These limits bind courts. Article II separately lets Congress judge abuses of public trust through impeachment.⁵¹⁵²

Rule 48(a) still requires judicial permission to dismiss an indictment, and Nichols and Garaufis enforced its requirement of reasons and factual support; Garaufis granted the supported portion of DOJ's request.^2223824 DOJ's own manual instructs prosecutors to consult investigative agencies before dismissal and forbids political association and personal feelings from influencing charging or other action against a person.⁵³⁵⁴ Bondi's acknowledgment of Greene's intervention does not by itself prove a violation of that policy; it establishes access and direction.⁶⁵⁴

The Senate's acquittals of Justice Samuel Chase and President Andrew Johnson caution against treating partisan judicial conduct or an executive removal alone as sufficient for impeachment.⁵⁵⁵⁶ The House Judiciary Committee's Nixon articles offer a concrete comparison: interference with investigations and the use of presidential powers to impair the administration of justice.⁵⁷

The Charge Against Trump

"I took office with two main goals: to end the weaponization of justice and return the Department to its core mission of fighting violent crime," Bondi told the Senate.⁵⁸ On the second, that October 2025 statement cited arrests, drug and gun seizures and falling crime in Washington, D.C.; it gave no national violent-crime figure.⁵⁸ On the first, her Department gave Gibson the relief Oyer refused to recommend, sought to erase Bannon's congressional-contempt conviction without explaining why, and sought Adani dismissals that a judge required it to justify.⁴¹²³²⁴ Trump's tie differs by act.¹⁹ Oyer's account names Gibson's relationship to the President; her testimony also identifies Blanche as Trump's former personal attorney. Her termination memo names Blanche, whom Trump retained and nominated for Attorney General, with Senate confirmation on August 8, 2026.¹²⁷⁸ Bannon was Trump's White House strategist, Moore's intervention ran through Greene and Bondi, and Adani's defense included Trump's personal lawyer.²⁵⁶⁸ The Journal's Live Nation account goes further, reporting Trump's own instruction to settle.⁹

These were not the only such disputes. DOJ also appeared as a friend of the court supporting Trump in his federal appeal seeking to move his New York criminal case to federal court. The Second Circuit's November 6, 2025 opinion vacated and remanded the procedural removal ruling; that opinion did not vacate his conviction.⁵⁹ In the Hewlett Packard Enterprise settlement that Alford criticized, DOJ argued that its internal disagreements fall outside the judge's review.⁵⁶⁰ DOJ opposed release of Volume II of Jack Smith's classified-documents report. Judge Aileen Cannon barred release outside DOJ, relying on her prior ruling that Smith's appointment was unconstitutional, the existing discovery protective order, privilege and grand-jury concerns, and fairness to defendants whose guilt had not been adjudicated.⁶¹⁶² In a March 24, 2026 letter, Representative Jamie Raskin alleged that DOJ had nevertheless given the House Judiciary Committee nonpublic case documents on March 13, including pages marked as containing grand-jury and sealed material, and that this production might violate Cannon's order. That is Raskin's allegation, not a court finding; it concerns produced case documents, not disclosure of Volume II itself.⁶³ Three senators objected in September 2025 to DOJ's reported hiring of January 6 defendant Jared Wise after clemency, and in March 2025 DOJ announced a review of Colorado county clerk Tina Peters's prosecution.⁶⁴⁶⁵ Outside DOJ, Trump's private YouTube settlement directed $22 million of a $24.5 million payment toward the White House ballroom.⁶⁶

The charge is preferential justice. Connections opened routes to legal relief, officials who resisted lost their posts, and DOJ tried to end cases without the explanation the courts required.^1562324 More than 6,000 clemency applications were waiting when Oyer was fired, she says.³ Trump bears responsibility for the officials he retained and promoted, and the Live Nation reporting attributes a settlement direction to him personally.⁷⁸⁹ Public law-enforcement power carries a duty to the country; using it to favor connected beneficiaries is an abuse of that trust and grounds for Congress to examine impeachment.⁵¹⁵²