By Sarah N. Lynch
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Justice Department sent armed U.S. Marshals to deliver a letter warning a fired career pardon attorney about testifying to congressional Democrats, her lawyer said in a letter seen by Reuters on Monday.
“This highly unusual step of directing 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, is both unprecedented and completely inappropriate,” Michael Bromwich, a lawyer representing fired pardon attorney Liz Oyer, wrote to the Justice Department.
The Marshals were called off on Friday only after Oyer acknowledged having received the letter once she had located it in a secondary email that she had not been using to communicate with the department’s human resources officials, Bromwich wrote.
While U.S. Marshals deputies are sometimes used to serve congressional subpoenas or protect witnesses, dispatching them to deliver a letter from the Justice Department is unusual, one former official said.
A Justice Department spokesman did not have any immediate comment. Oyer declined to comment through a spokesman ahead of the hearing.
Oyer, who served as the pardon attorney during President Joe Biden’s tenure, was one of several career officials fired by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche on March 7.
Oyer has since told various 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.
She is one of several Justice Department officials slated to testify on Monday afternoon before a hearing organized by Democrats in the House of Representatives and Senate about the Trump administration’s treatment of the Justice Department and law firms who act in cases disliked by the Republican president.
Democratic U.S. Senator Adam Schiff of California called the mobilization of the Marshals to deliver a letter an effort to “intimidate and silence” Oyer, while U.S. Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland compared it to a move “ripped straight from the gangster playbook.”
In the letter to Oyer, Associate Deputy Attorney General Kendra Wharton said that the department has “significant confidentiality interests.”
These were particularly strong in Oyer’s case because of the role Oyer played in making clemency recommendations for the president, said the letter, which referred to the executive privilege doctrine that shields some presidential communications from disclosure to Congress.
“Should you choose to appear before Congress, the department expects that you will abide by your obligations under the law, Department policy, and the applicable rules of professional responsibility,” Wharton wrote.
“Those matters include the deliberative processes that underlie pardons, clemency, the restoration of firearm rights, and related decisions.”
Bromwich, in his letter to Blanche, said the claim that her testimony is barred by executive privilege is “baseless” and that she is entitled to certain legal protections for whistleblowers. He added that he is referring the matter for review to the Justice Department’s inspector general.
(Reporting by Sarah N. Lynch; Editing by Scott Malone, Peter Graff and Bill Berkrot)