Elizabeth Oyer spent 13 years as the pardoning attorney for the Department of Justice. Last week, she testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee about Todd Blanche’s nomination for Attorney General, specifically that Blanche fired her after she refused to restore firearm rights for Mel Gibson, a close friend of Donald Trump’s. This week, she posted a YouTube video showing screenshots of her inbox. And you guys, it gets ugly.
“Hey everybody,” she said in the video. “I started getting death threats after I testified against Todd Blanche last week.”
The emails include messages like “Die in hell you pos,” “I hope you die tragically,” and “Let’s hope somebody murders your family and gets clemency.”
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Here is what Senators Josh Hawley and Eric Schmitt — both of Missouri, both members of the Senate Judiciary Committee — chose to do with their hearing time: they did not ask Oyer a single question about Todd Blanche because why would you do the thing you’re here to do. Instead, they drilled her on her recommendation to President Biden to commute 40 federal death sentences, confronting her with photos of victims of crimes committed by people whose sentences she recommended for commutation — note, not set free. “Two Republican senators with a political agenda rage-baited their followers into believing nasty and dangerous lies,” Oyer said in her video.
Hawley’s response was unrepentant. “The people who were murdered, and devastated and raped by the criminals that she recommended that President Biden give clemency to, those folks are the real victims here,” he told the Missourian. “I was proud to tell their stories.” Schmitt’s office called her clemency recommendations “disgraceful” and “so extreme that even Joe Biden’s autopen handlers couldn’t stomach them.” Neither addressed the death threats, because personal accountability is for chumps.
We’ve been tracking this pattern for two years — administration officials target someone publicly, the MAGA faithful take the bait, and the threats follow. It started with federal judges who ruled against the administration and lower court judges whose threats don’t generate headlines the way a SCOTUS swatting attempt does. Between May 2024 and March 2025, threats against judges increased a staggering 327% — 241 threats against 202 judges in 2026 (through March) alone! Now it’s reached a former DOJ attorney who had the temerity to testify before Congress against a MAGA candidate.
What Hawley and Schmitt did at that hearing was not incidental. The confirmation hearing for Todd Blanche — a man who called two senators liars in his written responses, who introduced himself as Trump’s lawyer at his own confirmation hearing, who got a fact wrong and was corrected on the spot by a senator, and whose former SDNY colleagues won’t vouch for him anymore — became a vehicle for two senators to perform for their base at the expense of a witness who came to testify in good faith. The death threats were the predictable result. Oyer’s inbox is what it looks like when the rage-bait works.
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Earlier:
Todd Blanche’s Confirmation Strategy: Call Two Senate Judiciary Committee Members Liars
Paging Dr. Freud: Todd Blanche Calls Himself Trump’s Lawyer At His Attorney General Confirmation Hearing
Todd Blanche’s Former SDNY Colleagues Vouched For Him Last Year. They Won’t Make That Mistake Again.
Todd Blanche’s Confirmation Hearing Just Got More Complicated
Former DOJ Prosecutors To Senate: Blanche Took The Same Oath We Did. But He Didn’t Keep It.
DOJ Attorney Says She Lost Her Job Because She Wouldn’t Let Mel Gibson Get A Pew Pew
Kathryn Rubino is a Senior Editor at Above the Law, host of The Jabot podcast, and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. AtL tipsters are the best, so please connect with her. Feel free to email her with any tips, questions, or comments and follow her on Twitter @Kathryn1 or Bluesky @Kathryn1