News
DOJ Accused of ‘Abuse of Power’ After Sending Armed Marshals to Whistleblower’s Home
A former U.S. Department of Justice pardon attorney delivered sworn testimony before Congress on Monday, accusing her former agency—now under the leadership of Attorney General Pam Bondi—of “corruption and abuse of power.” She claimed that armed U.S. Marshals were sent to her home to deliver what she described as a “warning” from the DOJ, cautioning her about the risks of testifying.
Liz Oyer “told U.S. media outlets that her firing came shortly after she declined to recommend restoring gun rights to actor Mel Gibson, a supporter of President Donald Trump,” Reuters reports. She reportedly was fired by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on March 7.
CNN’s Kaitlan Collins last month reported that “Oyer says she was fired as the pardon attorney at the Justice Department within hours of saying she couldn’t add Mel Gibson to a list of individuals she recommended should have their gun rights restored.”
“Within hours of my decision not to do that,” Oyer said, “I was escorted out of my office by DOJ security officers.”
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During her testimony, Oyer described the tense situation.
“The letter was to be served at my home between 9 o’clock and 10 o’clock on Friday night,” she explained (video below). “I was in the car with my husband and my parents, who are sitting behind me today, when I got the news that the officers were on their way to my house, where my teenage child was home alone. Fortunately, due to the grace of a very decent person who understood how upsetting this would be to my family, I was able to confirm receipt of the letter to an email address, and the deputies were called off.”
Oyer blasted the DOJ.
“At no point did Mr. Blanche’s staff pick up the phone and call me before they sent armed deputies to my home,” she said in her testimony. “The letter was a warning to me about the risks of testifying here today. But I am here because I will not be bullied into concealing the ongoing corruption and abuse of power at the Department of Justice.”
“DOJ is entrusted with keeping us safe, upholding the rule of law, and protecting our civil rights. It is not a personal favor bank for the President. Its career employees are not the president’s personal debt collectors.”
“It should alarm all Americans that the leadership of the Department of Justice appears to value political loyalty above the fair and responsible administration of Justice. It should offend all Americans that our leaders are treating public servants with a lack of basic decency and humanity.”
Attorney Michael Bromwich, who is representing Oyer, in a letter to DOJ called it an “unusual step” to direct “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.” He characterized the act as “both unprecedented and completely inappropriate.”
Bromwich also challenged the administration’s apparent claim of executive privilege over Oyer’s testimony, calling it”baseless,” and wrote “that she is entitled to certain legal protections for whistleblowers.”
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According to NBC News, Bromwich also accused Blanche of appearing “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.”
Former U.S. Attorney Joyce Vance, a professor of law and popular MSNBC/NBC News legal analyst, remarked: “Sending two armed marshals to a former DOJ lawyers [sic] home at 9pm to ‘deliver a letter’ when they’re in email contact with her or could have just called smacks of an effort to intimidate.”
CBS News justice correspondent Scott MacFarlane posted a copy of the letter Oyer was sent.
Watch the video below or at this link.
Oyer: Perhaps the most personally upsetting part of the story is the lengths to which the leadership of the department has gone to prevent me from testifying here today. On Friday night, I learned that the Deputy Attorney General’s office had directed the department’s Security… pic.twitter.com/Ah3wx9HD37
— Acyn (@Acyn) April 7, 2025
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Image via Reuters
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President Donald Trump continues to tease out a possible 2028 run, despite the constitutional prohibition on a third term. On Friday, the 79-year old unveiled a new “slogan,” and his new name for Trump Republican voters.
Trump has acknowledged the constitutional block on a third term, recently telling reporters that Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, a constitutional attorney, told him a third term is not allowed — a fact he appeared to accept.
But Trump on Friday afternoon posted an AI meme of a silver-haired, older-looking Donald Trump, holding a campaign sign that reads — not “Make America Great Again” — but, “Trump 2028, Yes!”
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The post, on his Truth Social website, also says, “Trumplicans!”
“There is a new word for a TRUMP REPUBLICAN, which is almost everyone,” he recently wrote. “It is, TEPUBLICAN??? Or, TPUBLICAN???”
Apparently, “Trumplicans” won out.
Health care activist Melanie D’Arrigo remarked on Wednesday that “Trump is workshopping names for his cult, while Americans struggle to afford the rising costs of groceries, healthcare and housing.”
Reporting on Trump’s musings, TIME on Thursday noted that his new MAGA moniker comes “amid high-profile divisions within the MAGA base.”
Were Trump to run for a third term, he would be 82 on Election Day in 2028.
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Image via Reuters
President Donald Trump is under fire over a report that claims he is proposing that the U.S. recognize Russian control of parts of Ukraine, including Crimea, which Russia has unlawfully annexed, as a means to end the war.
“The Telegraph understands that Donald Trump has sent his peace envoy Steve Witkoff and son-in-law Jared Kushner to make the direct offer to Vladimir Putin in Moscow,” the news outlet reported. “The plan to recognize territory, which breaks US diplomatic convention, is likely to go ahead despite concerns among Ukraine’s European allies.”
Russian President Vladimir Putin “on Thursday said Washington’s legal recognition of Crimea and the Donetsk and Luhansk regions as Russian territory would be one of the key issues in negotiations over the US president’s peace plan,” according to The Telegraph.
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Critics are blasting President Trump.
Shaun Pinner, a former British soldier who served as a contracted Marine fighting in Ukraine’s armed forces, responded to the report:
“I’ve lived through the cost of losing ground. I’ve seen the bodies, the destroyed homes, and I’ve been tortured by Russia like so many others. Land is never ‘just land.’ It’s people. Families. Lives shattered.”
“So yes, watching Trump casually bargain away territory that isn’t even his to give feels like a deep betrayal,” he added. “It’s a lesson I wish none of us had to learn the hard way, and one far too many are being forced to relive again because one of our so-called allies is now suggesting we reward genocide.”
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Michael McFaul, former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, remarked, “Trump would be rewarding imperial conquest, thereby encouraging other autocrats to do so, resulting in a very unstable world.”
Russian chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov, co-founder of the Renew Democracy Initiative, issued a warning:
“If the US recognizes territory taken by force, just replace ‘leader of the free world’ with ‘for sale’. Xi can come up with more cash than Putin for Trump and his pals to do the same for Taiwan.”
Marko Mihkelson, Chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Estonian Parliament, remarked, “If this is true, then we have a major problem, Houston.”
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Image via Reuters
A Trump administration order to keep an aging and unneeded Michigan coal-fired power plant open and online reportedly is costing taxpayers about $615,000 per day, or $113 million to date. Closing the plant would save taxpayers about $640 million by 2040.
“The Trump administration in May ordered utility giant Consumers Energy to keep the 63-year-old JH Campbell coal plant in western Michigan, about 100 miles north-east of Chicago, online just as it was being retired,” according to The Guardian.
“The costs of unnecessarily running this jalopy coal plant just continue to mount,” Michael Lenoff, an attorney with Earthjustice, which is suing over the order, told The Guardian.
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President Donald Trump signed a national energy emergency order on his first day in office this year, rolling back regulations.
In court documents, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that the administration’s latest order is “arbitrary and illegal.”
Consumers Energy, the operator of the plant, did not ask the Trump administration for the order to keep the coal plant running, and the Trump administration did not consult local regulators, a spokesperson for the Michigan public service commission (MPSC), told the Guardian in May.
“The unnecessary recent order … will increase the cost of power for homes and businesses in Michigan and across the midwest,” the chair of the MPSC, Dan Scripps, said in a statement at the time.
Reporting on what it called Trump’s “pro-fossil fuel agenda,” The Guardian in January quoted the president:
“We have something that no other manufacturing nation will ever have, the largest amount of oil and gas of any country on Earth, and we are going to use it – let me use it,” Trump said in his inaugural address. “We will be a rich nation again, and it is that liquid gold under our feet that will help to do it.”
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Image via Reuters
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