Former Justice Department officials addressed Congressional Democrats Monday about the Department of Justice’s alleged closed-door dealings in a so-called shadow hearing — one of the few avenues for conducting oversight of the Trump administration afforded to the minority party in a Republican governing trifecta.
Democrats on the House and Senate Judiciary Committees pressed former DOJ pardon attorney Liz Oyer, who was fired from the department, and former federal prosecutor Ryan Crosswell, who resigned in wake of the agency’s decision to drop its corruption charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams, about the circumstances of their departures.
Both witnesses appeared willingly before the Democratic lawmakers who, without control of the House or Senate, lack the ability to call official hearings and subpoena uncooperative witnesses.
California Democratic Sen. Adam Schiff, who led the hearing with House Judiciary ranking member Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), said Democrats had pleaded with congressional Republicans to hold oversight hearings around the Trump administration’s actions, but their colleagues had “abdicated that important responsibility.”
“Trump is taking unprecedented steps to bend our justice system to his will,” said Schiff in his opening remarks, adding that congressional Republicans “have stood by as the President has run roughshod over the legislative branch and turned Congress into a little more than a rubber stamp.”
A shadow hearing, as its often called, is a frequent tool for House lawmakers in the minority to hold public meetings around issues that the majority party will not. It’s less often deployed in the Senate. But the bicameral event was unusual in bringing together about 14 lawmakers from across the Capitol for a hearing led by one of the Senate’s most junior Democrats. Schiff, who served in the House prior to his election to the Senate last November, sat beside the top Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, Dick Durbin of Illinois.
Oyer, the former pardon attorney, testified that she had been fired after refusing to cooperate with the administration’s efforts to restore the gun rights of actor Mel Gibson, who is also a supporter of President Donald Trump. She claimed that ahead of her appearance before lawmakers Monday, the Justice Department moved to silence her, sending a letter urging her not to share confidential department information. To deliver the letter, DOJ intended to send U.S. marshals to her home Friday night while her teenage son was there alone, but once Oyer confirmed receipt of the letter via email, the in-person delivery was called off, she added.
A Justice Department spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Crosswell, the former federal prosecutor, recalled how attorneys in his division of DOJ were asked to sign a motion to help drop the charges against Adams, after a number of other officials had resigned in refusing to cooperate. The alumnus of the DOJ’s public integrity section ultimately chose to resign his post too, he said.
In addition to Oyer and Crosswell, the witnesses included Rachel Cohen, a former Big Law associate who called on her firm to refuse to cooperate with the administration, and Stacey Young, the founder of a support network for DOJ alumni launched at the start of the second Trump administration.