Democrats Called Her to Attack the New AG.
She Recommended Clemency for a Man Who Killed a Baby.
At Todd Blanche’s July 15, 2026 confirmation hearing to become permanent Attorney General, Senate Judiciary ranking member Dick Durbin (D-IL) called Liz Oyer, DOJ’s former career Pardon Attorney, to testify that Blanche “weaponized” the department when he fired her in March 2025. What Durbin’s witness didn’t volunteer: in her final months in that job, Oyer had recommended clemency for all 40 federal death-row inmates — including Dylann Roof, the Charleston church shooter — while personally conceding in an internal memo that Roof was “not a compelling candidate.”
President Biden ultimately commuted 37 of the 40 to life without parole on December 23, 2024, declining only Roof, Robert Bowers, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. The 37 include men convicted of raping and murdering a teenage mother, killing a police officer, and firebombing a house to kill a witness and four children inside.
Oyer was fired days after Blanche’s own confirmation as Deputy AG — not over the death-row memo, but after she refused a directive to recommend restoring Mel Gibson’s gun rights.
- 37 of 40 — federal death-row sentences President Biden commuted to life without parole, December 23, 2024, on Oyer's recommendation
- All 40 — the number Oyer recommended for clemency, including Dylann Roof, Robert Bowers, and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev — Biden declined to commute those three
- Fired — DOJ terminated Oyer as Pardon Attorney in March 2025, two days after Blanche's own confirmation as Deputy AG, after she refused to recommend restoring Mel Gibson's gun rights
- Armed marshals — DOJ dispatched U.S. marshals to Oyer's home in April 2025 to deliver an executive-privilege warning letter ahead of her congressional testimony
- 8 of 37 — commuted inmates since moved to ADX Florence supermax, with new state capital charges pursued in at least two cases
Todd Blanche (Trump-administration nominee) has served as Acting Attorney General since early April 2026, when President Trump removed Pam Bondi (R) over her handling of DOJ’s Jeffrey Epstein files. His July 15 confirmation hearing before the Senate Judiciary Committee, chaired by Chuck Grassley (R-IA), was Durbin’s chance to make the Democratic case against him. Durbin called Liz Oyer, a career, nonpolitical Senior Executive Service official who served as Pardon Attorney from 2022 until Blanche fired her.
An October 30, 2024 memo from Oyer, obtained by The Federalist, recommended clemency for all 40 men then on federal death row — including Roof, who she wrote was “not a compelling candidate for clemency,” and recommended anyway. Biden granted 37 of the 40 on December 23, 2024, declining only Roof, Bowers, and Tsarnaev, whose crimes were mass-casualty hate-motivated attacks.
Trump signed Executive Order 14164 a month later, describing the 37 as “the most vile and sadistic rapists, child molesters, and murderers on Federal death row” and directing DOJ to evaluate state capital charges against them. That EO language, not a specific documented child-molestation conviction, is the source of the phrase in the Federalist’s headline — the underlying federal convictions among the 37 are for murder, several involving rape as an aggravating factor.
Joe Biden just commuted the Death Sentence on 37 of the worst killers in our Country. When you hear the acts of each, you won't believe that he did this. Makes no sense.
Among those commuted: Marvin Charles Gabrion II, who kidnapped and raped 19-year-old Rachel Timmerman — set to testify against him on a pending rape charge — then chained her to a concrete block and threw her alive into a Michigan lake, also killing her 11-month-old daughter Shannon, whose body was never recovered. Anthony George Battle raped and murdered his ex-wife, then beat a correctional officer to death with a hammer while already imprisoned. Jorge Avila-Torrez murdered a Navy petty officer and separately stabbed two young girls, ages 8 and 9, to death. Kaboni Savage ordered the firebombing of a witness’s house, killing four children along with the witness and her family.
“Roof is not a compelling candidate for clemency.”
Liz Oyer, internal DOJ memo, October 30, 2024
They will offer compelling testimony about the dangers of Todd Blanche weaponizing the Justice Department in service of Donald Trump, rather than the American people.
What Oyer testified to: her March 2025 firing after refusing to recommend restoring Mel Gibson's gun rights; DOJ's alleged intimidation via an armed-marshal letter delivery.
What she didn't volunteer: her own October 2024 memo recommending clemency for all 40 death-row inmates, including Roof.
Both are true. Neither cancels the other out.
Democrats called Liz Oyer to make Todd Blanche's confirmation about how he treats DOJ employees. Her own paper trail makes it about something else: a career pardon official who recommended mercy for a man who drowned a mother and her infant daughter, and was fired not for that decision but for a different one, months later, involving a movie star's gun rights.
