The former head of the US Department of Justice's pardon office has alleged in sworn congressional testimony that Donald Trump's blanket pardons for more than 1,500 January 6 defendants were issued without any vetting, freeing individuals with prior records of child sexual abuse, domestic violence, rape, and other violent crimes.
Elizabeth 'Liz' Oyer, who served as the DOJ's non-partisan Pardon Attorney for nearly three years, was fired on 7 March 2025 by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, hours after she declined a request to recommend restoring the firearm rights of a 'famous friend of the President' who had lost them following a domestic violence conviction.
Oyer testified before the joint House and Senate Judiciary Committees on 7 April 2025 that her office was never consulted before Trump signed the mass pardons on his first day back in office. 'I learned about those pardons on the news just like every other American,' she told the committee, chaired by Senator Adam Schiff and Representative Jamie Raskin.
Oyer's Testimony: No Vetting, No Consultation, No Warning
In her written statement to Congress, Oyer said her team of approximately 40 career professionals stood ready on Inauguration Day to assist with any clemency process. The new administration never asked for their input on the Jan. 6 pardons.
Instead, Oyer testified, DOJ leadership redirected her office to a task it had never previously performed: recommending the restoration of gun rights to people who had lost them due to criminal convictions. She said she complied in good faith until she was asked to recommend the restoration of firearms rights for an unnamed individual she described in testimony as 'a famous friend of the President,' who had a prior domestic violence conviction. She declined on public safety grounds. Hours later, she was escorted from the building with her belongings in a grocery bag.
Reporting by Newsweek subsequently identified the individual in question as actor Mel Gibson, a fact Oyer has not confirmed or denied in official testimony. Gibson's 2011 domestic violence conviction is a matter of public record. Deputy Attorney General Blanche contacted CNN and MSNBC after Oyer went public to dispute her account. Oyer stated in her congressional testimony that all the relevant emails and memos documenting her account still exist within DOJ and that Blanche's office had not responded to her Freedom of Information Act request for them.
Terrifying revelation. A former DOJ attorney exposes that the Trump administration mass pardoned Jan 6 rioters with zero vetting. She found at least 22 pardoned individuals with horrific histories of child sexual abuse and domestic violence. Absolute insanity. pic.twitter.com/t0hDASN5OA
— Furkan Gözükara (@FurkanGozukara) March 31, 2026
Before Oyer could testify, the DOJ dispatched two armed deputy US Marshals to her home on the night of 4 April 2025 to deliver a letter warning her against disclosing internal deliberations about pardons and gun rights. Oyer confirmed receipt of the letter by email before the marshals arrived and prevented the visit. Her attorney, Michael Bromwich, called the tactic 'unprecedented and entirely inappropriate.' The incident was reported in detail by Newsweek and confirmed by the Associated Press.
The Criminal Records That the Pardons Failed to Screen
NPR's investigative reporting, published on 30 January 2025, identified dozens of pardoned Jan. 6 defendants with prior convictions or pending charges across a range of serious offences. The list included rape, domestic violence, manslaughter, production of child sexual abuse material, sexual abuse of a minor, and drug trafficking.
Newly released US Justice Dept video court exhibit shows 320pm on Jan 6, 2021 ... near the Capitol Rotunda doors (nearly an hour after a surge in violence on the grounds) pic.twitter.com/gZMxRLlTZ3
— Scott MacFarlane (@MacFarlaneNews) August 1, 2022
Among those cases, David Daniel faced separate federal charges of producing and possessing child pornography allegedly involving a prepubescent child under 12 years old. Magistrate Judge David Keesler wrote in case filings, per NPR, that the evidence was 'compelling and suggests Defendant engaged in sexual acts with two young girls in his own family.' The Jan. 6 pardon did not extinguish those charges, which remained active after Daniel's release.
Theodore Middendorf, another pardoned defendant, had been convicted of predatory criminal sexual assault of a child and sentenced to 19 years in prison. He is registered as a sex offender in Indiana for crimes against a seven-year-old in 2018, according to Axios. Andrew Taake, who pleaded guilty to assaulting police officers with a metal whip and bear spray, faced an outstanding 2016 charge in Texas for online solicitation of a minor. Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare told NPR: 'We are already in the process of tracking Taake down.'
Peter Schwartz, whose Jan. 6 sentence of 14 years was among the highest imposed, had a prior record of 38 convictions that prosecutors described as 'jaw-dropping,' spanning assault with a deadly weapon, terroristic threats, and domestic violence. Trump's pardon applied specifically to offences related to the Capitol attack. Existing convictions and pending charges on unrelated matters were not wiped away, though some defendants' lawyers, in several cases supported by DOJ, have argued in court that the pardon's language is broad enough to cover them.
Andrew Paul Johnson: Pardoned, Then Re-offended
The most documented consequence of the unvetted pardons involves Andrew Paul Johnson, a Jan. 6 defendant who was serving a sentence for child sexual abuse when Trump took office and issued the mass clemency order. According to NPR's March 2026 report, he re-entered the lives of the child he had abused and the child's mother shortly after his release.
Johnson subsequently used the online gaming platform Roblox and the messaging service Discord to send the now-older victim messages, some of which were sexual in nature. He also befriended the victim's 12-year-old friend, inviting both children to activities including paintball and hotel swimming pools. Both children later testified that Johnson exposed himself to them on multiple occasions and sexually abused the girl. Law enforcement located Johnson in Tennessee on 26 August 2025, seven months after his pardon. He is now serving a life sentence.
The House Judiciary Committee Democrats released a formal memo on 16 September 2025, authored by Ranking Member Jamie Raskin, documenting how the Trump administration had simultaneously issued pardons to convicted sex offenders, dismantled federal anti-trafficking infrastructure, and terminated grants to state and local law enforcement supporting the investigation of violent crimes and sexual abuse. 'Trump is systematically dismantling the offices and programmes we rely on to combat human trafficking and prosecute sex crimes,' Raskin said in the memo's introduction.
The Office of the Pardon Attorney's official clemency record remains publicly available on the DOJ website, listing all grants of clemency issued during Trump's second term, though individual case histories are not disclosed there.
