A whistleblower who testified in Congress today is accusing the Trump administration of trying to “intimidate” her with help from the US Marshals Service, the law enforcement agency of the federal judiciary.
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Liz Oyer, the former US pardon attorney who was fired last month, says Justice Department leaders dispatched two special deputy marshals to her house on Friday night—days before she was scheduled to speak with lawmakers about her concerns with the firing of career employees and what she describes as “corruption” at the department.
“You appear to be using the Department’s security resources to intimidate a former employee who is engaged in statutorily protected whistleblower conduct,” Oyer’s attorney Michael Bromwich, a former Department of Justice inspector general, wrote in a letter to Justice Department leadership on Monday. He said dispatching special deputy marshals to Oyer’s home was “both unprecedented and completely inappropriate.”
As I reported earlier today, this is not the first time US marshals have acted in strange ways since President Donald Trump came to office. In a deep-dive, I looked at how the law enforcement agency has been recruited recently to help Elon Musk, Trump’s right-hand man.
Since January, the US Marshals Service has deputized members of Musk’s private security detail, helped his Department of Government Efficiency get inside a federal agency it was trying to dismantle, and even prodded federal judges to move more quickly on Jan. 6 cases.
For more on Oyers’ testimony, check out some of today’s news coverage. And if you’re confused about the Marshals Service and its recent activity—or if you’re curious to hear experts explain why we should care about it—head to my explainer.
As one former DOJ official told me, “the risk to people’s civil rights is enormous.”
