Attorney General Todd Blanche’s F-Bomb Reaction to Mel Gibson Gun Dispute Revealed

Photo Illustration by Eric Faison/The Daily Beast/Reuters Attorney General Todd Blanche dropped the F-bomb after learning that he had fired an underling without knowing she was involved in an internal Justice Department dispute over Trumpy movie star Mel Gibson’s gun rights, it has been claimed .

The then-deputy AG dismissed pardon attorney Liz Oyer last March as part of a wider clear-out of career DOJ officials with links to the Biden administration.

Blanche apparently did so without knowing Oyer had been involved in a private disagreement with one of his aides over whether the Lethal Weapon star—who is a convicted domestic abuser—should have his gun rights restored, multiple sources told the Daily Beast’s sister Substack, PunchUp.

When Blanche learned about the clash three days later, a source with direct knowledge of the conversation said he immediately realized how Oyer could interpret the timing.

“F---! She’s going to think that’s why I fired her,” Blanche said, according to one DOJ source speaking to PunchUp.

It is the latest twist in an extraordinary and increasingly bitter fallout at the heart of the DOJ, with department officials furiously disputing Oyer’s account of the events surrounding her removal.

A spokesperson for Oyer said she repeatedly asked the DOJ for an official explanation for her firing, but they repeatedly refused.

“What they say at this point has zero credibility,” they added.

Oyer has maintained that she was fired because she refused to recommend that Gibson, 70, have his gun rights reinstated.

The Braveheart actor lost that privilege after pleading no contest to misdemeanor spousal battery involving his former girlfriend Oksana Grigorieva in 2011.

Oyer has said then-Associate Deputy Attorney General Paul Perkins instructed her to add Gibson to a shortlist of nine other candidates for firearms rights restoration and pressed her when she resisted, alleging that Perkins told her Gibson’s relationship with Donald Trump, 80, should be sufficient reason to recommend him.

The scandal-plagued actor—who was accused of homophobia throughout the 1990s, went on an antisemitic tirade after being arrested in 2006 for drunk driving, and in August came under fire for mocking an ASL translator —has spoken at Trump’s private Mar-a-Lago club.

In January 2025, he received the dubious honor of being declared one of Trump’s “Special Ambassadors to Hollywood.” Perkins, who has since left the DOJ to work in the private sector, previously told PunchUp that Oyer’s allegations were “categorically false” and denied ever saying the rules governing restoration needed to accommodate Gibson.

Now multiple DOJ sources familiar with the dispute have offered up a markedly different chronology of Oyer’s March 7 firing.