U.S. Pardon Attorney gets grilled by Senator Hawley

Elizabeth Oyer, fired by Todd Blanche

Elizabeth Oyer was appointed as the U.S. Pardon Attorney in April 2022 by President Joe Biden

GOP senators confront former Biden pardon attorney over clemency push for Dylann Roof, federal death row inmates

Republican senators turned a confirmation hearing for acting Attorney General Todd Blanche into a sustained confrontation with the former Biden administration pardon attorney who recommended clemency for all 40 federal death row inmates, including the man who walked into a Charleston, South Carolina, church in 2015 and shot nine Black parishioners to death during Bible study.

Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri led the charge Thursday on Capitol Hill, pressing Elizabeth Oyer over a 73-page memorandum she authored in November 2024 that urged President Joe Biden to spare every inmate on the federal death row.

Democrats had called Oyer as their chief witness against Blanche's nomination. By the time Republicans finished questioning her, the witness they summoned had become the hearing's central liability.

The exchange, reported by Fox News Digital, laid bare a question that should trouble every American who believes victims matter more than their killers:

Hawley went straight at the most indefensible names on Oyer's list. Dylann Roof murdered nine parishioners at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston. Robert Bowers killed 11 Jewish worshipers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev carried out the Boston Marathon bombing. Oyer recommended clemency for all three.

How did a senior Justice Department official produce a 73-page clemency recommendation that, according to a DOJ report cited during the hearing, devoted just three paragraphs to the grievances of victims' families?

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