Last week, former Justice Department lawyer Liz Oyer testified in the Senate against the confirmation of Todd Blanche as attorney general. Then came the death threats.
Oyer oversaw the DOJ’s pardon office before President Donald Trump ousted her last year and promptly turned the office into a tool to help out his donors and political allies. She has said she was fired for refusing to restore actor Mel Gibson’s gun rights after his 2011 misdemeanor conviction for domestic violence, a claim the Trump administration has denied.
And she was a key witness urging senators to vote against confirming Blanche, who has already sought as acting attorney general to quash further inquiry into the Epstein files and drew criticism over his softball interview with convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.
And it seems Republicans are now fueling attacks against Oyer as they try to make Blanche the nation’s top law enforcement official.
“Hey everybody, I started getting death threats after I testified against Todd Blanche last week,” she said, showing images of expletive-riddled messages she received.
Oyer attributed the threats to dubious accusations — peddled by Missouri’s Republican senators, Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt, and in conservative media — that she was basically an ally to rapists and murderers.
At the Senate hearing, the two senators homed in on President Joe Biden’s decision to commute most federal death sentences. In an effort to undermine Oyer’s credibility, Schmitt and Hawley cherry-picked examples of macabre crimes committed by some of the death row prisoners to suggest she didn’t take the crimes seriously. The attacks were reminiscent of Hawley’s attacks on current Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson during her confirmation hearing.
In her video, Oyer explained that her recommendation to reassess the cases of all 40 inmates on federal death row, 37 of whom Biden spared from execution, was in keeping with the administration’s broad opposition to capital punishment. She also dispelled misinformation that commuted inmates will be ever be released from prison, adding:
Biden campaigned on a promise to end the federal death penalty. In light of that promise, some people believe it would have been more principled for Biden to commute all 40 death sentences, not 37. That would have sent a clear message that the president was categorically rejecting the death penalty — not weighing the relative value of people’s lives.
Intent on scoring political points, Hawley and a spokesperson for Schmitt doubled down on their attacks despite Oyer’s post about receiving death threats. In comments to the Columbia Missourian, Hawley said the “real victims” are the people hurt by those who were spared from execution. And the Schmitt spokesperson said Oyer’s “disgraceful clemency recommendations ignored the victims’ families’ concerns.”
The unavoidable irony here is that Hawley and Schmitt are hardly advocates for victims. They’re basically launching this line of attack to help Blanche — someone who has been rebuked by Epstein victims and their families.
And, of course, Hawley and Schmitt are both staunch allies of Trump’s — someone whose own clemency actions have included scores of Jan. 6 rioters who have gone on to commit assaults and sex crimes after being freed. Hawley, as you likely remember, raised a fist to the Jan. 6 horde right before the insurrection broke out, only to be later seen running for safety.
So when it comes to the topic of placating criminals, Hawley and the GOP have little credibility.
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