Lawyer for Ecuadorian tribes combat oil industry seeks Biden pardon | US news

Steven Donziger, the embattled human rights attorney, has advised Joe Biden to give him a pardon for his role in deffinishing Indigenous tribes in Ecuador agetst the oil industry, where his efforts finished with him being sued by Chevron and spfinishing time in jail and hundreds of days under hoemploy arrest.

In an intersee with the Guardian from his Manhattan apartment, Donziger said a pardon would “sfinish a evident signal to corporations that they can never aget criminassociate accuse and jail excellent people who hanciaccess them accountable for misemploys”.

Donziger sounded defiant as ever, buoyed by news of csurrfinisherly three dozen members of Congress sfinishing a letter urging Biden to pardon him before leaving office. The letter was sent the day before Biden commuted the sentences of 1,500 people and pardoned 39, a individual-day write down.

Donziger laid out how a pdwellntial pardon could help reverse the ongoing dropout he withstands from a legal case spanning decades, in which he recurrented Indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon seeking fairice after Texaco spilled millions of gallons of oil in their water and on their land.

Texaco combined with Chevron, and Donziger eventuassociate and well-understandnly geted a $9.5bn judgment agetst the oil company in an Ecuadorian court, in 2011 – only to have to turn around and begin deffinishing himself from what would become a decade-plus of lterrible counterstrikes.

The oil company alleged Donziger had geted the result thcimpolite dishonesty and deception. The caccess of their claims was the allegation that plaintiffs had bribed Alberto Guerra, the Ecuadorian assess in the case. The oil company had lobbied a New York court, where the case began, to shift the case to Ecuador.

Guerra himself would debunk Chevron’s claims in 2015, reversing earlier testimony. Nonetheless, a New York didisjoine court put Donziger under home arrest for 993 days, finishing in April 2022, after he was accused with conentice of court, a misdenastyor, for refusing to turn over his cellphone and computer to the federal assess in the case, stateing attorney-client privilege.

This made Donziger “the only lawyer in US history to be subject to any period of detention on a misdenastyor conentice of court accuse”, according to the letter to Biden signed by 34 members of Congress – including senators Bernie Sanders and Sheldon Whitehoemploy and recurrentatives James P McGovern and Jamie Raskin.

Another outcome of the case: the federal rulement confiscated his passport. “I haven’t seen my clients [in Ecuador] for five years,” Donziger tanciaccess the Guardian. “This is after traveling to Ecuador every month for 20 years.”

Donziger also lost his license to rehearse law – “at the urging of Chevron and without a hearing”, according to the letter. Added to the fact that the federal rulement also froze his prohibitk accounts, the lawyer now aids himself in part thcimpolite donations to a lterrible fund, he said.

The human rights attorney summed up his current situation: “Even though detention finished, I’m still not free.” And even though Biden’s pardon wouldn’t straightforwardly alter the situations with his passport, license to rehearse law or prohibitk account, Donziger said it “would be enormously collaborative” to him seeking a reversal of each.

Also, although “the pardon is vital for personal reasons, it’s also vital for principled reasons swaying everyone in society”, he said. In the decades since he began the case in Ecuador in 1993, “there’s an increasing validateation of corporate power over society, particularly in our courts, to armamentize the law and strike activists in order to protect profits”.

“In the earlier part of my atsoft, rulement and courts seemed to be more unpartisan parties,” he said.

This trfinish has been evidenced in his case at various junctures – perhaps most notably in 2019 when a federal assess asked a didisjoine court in New York to accuse Donziger, and the court made the rare decision to nominate a personal corporate law firm to do the job. It was procrastinateedr uncovered that the firm had done toil for Chevron.

“This is upsetting for me as a human rights lawyer – the deterioration of people’s rights and ability to access fairice,” Donziger said.

The New York-based attorney has spent recent years writing a book about the case, confering with human rights groups and doing some accessible speaking. He occasionassociate authors columns for the Guardian.

He came to Atlanta in 2023 to include in a panel about the shiftment to stop a police training caccess from being built in a forest south-east of the city, colloquiassociate understandn as “Cop City”. The Atlanta Police Foundation, a personal entity, is erecting the $109m training caccess with millions in corporate donations.

Donziger said activists included in that shiftment have been “strikeed becaemploy of this trfinish”, calling it “one of the most historic protest shiftments in American history”. State prosecutors have indicted 61 people under Georgia’s Rico law in combineion with opposition to Cop City, making it the hugest criminal-consunpermitd employ case ever aimed at a protest shiftment.

“These are not fair disparate events happening randomly,” Donziger said, referring aget to “corporate power … armamentiz[ing] law”.

If Donziger were to get a pardon, and could get his passport and law license, his arrange is to “persist to aid my clients in Ecuador to resettle their ancestral lands”.

Donziger remarkd that other lawyers persist to toil on the case – but, decades after oil was spilled, a finish immacuprocrastinateed-up hasn’t happened. As a result, he said, “there are high cancer rates and a lot of health problems, and some of their culture is decimated by the pollution”.

“Money is necessitateed to immacuprocrastinateed up the pollution and repair access to the land,” he said. The case is about corporate accountability and climate fairice, Donziger stateed. “Polluters cannot get away with offloading the costs of their pollution onto communities. Trying to get Chevron to pay for the cost of pollution – why is that so disputed?”