DOJ Lawyer Behind Legal Filing in Press Ban Case Once Admired Hitler — and Praised Him for Understanding the ‘Importance of Propaganda’

Donald Trump (AP Photo/Julia Demaree); Liz Oyer, Inset (Screenshot)

The Department of Justice attorney who signed a heavily criticized legal filing in the department’s battle over press access to the White House once voiced his admiration for Adolf Hitler — and how much the murderous dictator valued propaganda.

Michael Velchik is listed as the DOJ’s senior counsel on the legal papers filed Tuesday in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

The late-night filing accused CNN, MS NOW and Politico of “trafficking in verifiable falsehoods about national security and other issues, and publishing sensitive or classified information.”

Yet one such story the DOJ cited as objectionable focused on bad “vibes” at the GOP Midterm Convention.

Liz Oyer, the DOJ’s former pardon attorney who was fired by the Trump administration in March 2025 and has since taken to Instagram as a frequent critic of her former agency, made the connection between past reporting on Velchick’s — and his love of Hitler — to the current legal brief in a Monday post.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Ddof_gQBhJ7/

Oyer, who has 975,000 followers on the platform, called Velchik’s filing “lunacy from a legal perspective.”

It was reported in September 2025 that Velchik, a Harvard grad, admired Hitler while in school and once called Mein Kampf his favorite book.

Oyer noted that Hitler eliminated the free press in Germany and established state media.

“He praised Hitler for understanding the importance of propaganda, among other things,” Oyer said of Velchik. “Velchik also complained that he doesn’t like reading books written by women, which he was forced to do at Harvard.

“Adolf Hitler is a person who did not believe in the free press,” she pointed out, adding, “which is exactly what Michael Velchik admires about him. It is quite terrifying that this is the person that is now representing the Justice Department as senior counsel in litigation against the press.”

Neither the Justice Department nor Velchik immediately responded to messages from Mediaite seeking comment.

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