Democrats held a rare bicameral forum to examine the Trump administration’s actions targeting Department of Justice (DOJ) staff and major law firms as the party explores how to push back against the Trump presidency.
The forum featured a series of attorneys who were fired or resigned from the Justice Department or have pushed big law firms to respond to a series of executive orders from President Trump targeting firms.
“Donald Trump is taking unprecedented steps to bend our justice system to his will, and his administration is moving systematically and swiftly to dismantle the legal pillars that hold up our democracy,” said Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), who organized the panel alongside Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), the top Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee.
“If Donald Trump and his personal criminal defense lawyers now running the Justice Department succeed, the consequences will be profound.”
It’s clear the forum was on the radar of the Trump administration. The Justice Department was prepared to send U.S. marshals to the home of one of the invitees, Liz Oyer, the former U.S. pardon attorney.
“To all those who gathered across America … asking what Congress is doing to try to stop these excesses and these violations of the Constitution, remember what happens on this day. On this day, I think we are making history at the right moment,” Senate Judiciary ranking member Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said.
Speaking to the panel from the Justice Department were Oyer, who was fired by the Justice Department after she would not recommend actor Mel Gibson have his gun rights restored, and Ryan Crosswell, a former attorney with the department's public integrity section who resigned in the wake of the department’s bid to drop its case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams.
Rachel Cohen, who resigned in protest of her law firm’s failure to respond to the Trump administration’s targeting of major law firms, also testified.
The forum touched on a number of topics, from the targeting of DOJ attorneys to the deals major law firms have signed with the Trump administration in the wake of executive orders blocking their attorneys from federal buildings.
Oyer said she came to the panel despite pushback from the department to highlight what she sees as broader abuse of DOJ power.
“I came because I don't want to be complicit in what is happening inside the Department of Justice, which is the misuse of the resources of the department to do political favors for friends, of the president, for loyalists. And I just don't believe that that's right, and I don't want to be part of it, so I feel that I need to speak up,” she said.
Oyer detailed more of her decision not to add Gibson to a list of individuals she was asked to compile for recommendation for restoration of gun rights, noting the actor’s misdemeanor conviction on domestic violence charges.
“I did not have enough information to convince me that I could recommend that it could be done safely,” she said.
She also noted Trump’s pardons of more than 1,500 charged in connection with the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the Capitol were done without any consultation of her office.
“The role is to ensure that people who are waiting their turn, who have meritorious cases, that those cases can make their way to the ...
