Will Biden Pardon This Human Rights Lawyer Who Beat Big Oil in Court?
In the last few days of Joe Biden’s presidency, Steven Donziger hopes Biden will pardon him — as do dozens of progressive lawmakers in Congress, as well as human rights and environmental activists across the world.
Donziger’s story is unique. “I’m the only person in the country to be criminally prosecuted by a private corporation,” Donziger tells Rolling Stone.
As a lawyer, he helped secure a historic judgment against the oil giant Chevron on behalf of 30,000 Ecuadorians, after Texaco (bought by Chevron) heavily polluted the Amazon rainforest. The judgment was upheld by Ecuador’s top court, which ordered Chevron to pay $9.5 billion. Chevron never paid a dime, and instead filed a racketeering suit against Donziger in the United States, claiming the case in Ecuador was fraudulent.
“Chevron’s attempt to silence me is really an attack on these communities,” Donziger says, adding that the communities he represented in Ecuador have been “decimated” by “probably the world’s worst oil disaster.”
After a judge ruled against him, Chevron demanded possession of Donziger’s electronic devices — which he refused, citing attorney-client privilege. The judge moved to hold Donziger in contempt, then criminal contempt. When Donald Trump’s Justice Department declined to prosecute the case, the judge appointed a corporate law firm — a firm that had recently represented Chevron — to prosecute Donziger, and picked a judge to hear the case.
Donziger ultimately spent 993 days under house arrest and 45 days in prison. He lost his law license. Now, he’s broke, he says, because the first judge ordered him to pay Chevron’s massive legal fees.
The human rights lawyer previously urged the Supreme Court to review his prosecution. While the high court declined to hear his case, Justice Neil Gorsuch issued a blistering dissent — joined by Justice Brett Kavanaugh — declaring that “the prosecution in this case broke a basic constitutional promise essential to our liberty,” because judges have no power “to initiate a prosecution of those who come before them.”
“Our Constitution does not tolerate what happened here,” Gorsuch added.
Now, Donziger is petitioning Biden for a pardon. “I want to get out from under the burden of this conviction so I can practice my profession again and do my human rights advocacy all over the world,” he says, “including on behalf of the Amazon communities in Ecuador.”
Currently, Donziger can’t leave the country. “That means I cannot meet my clients,” he says. “I need my law license back.” He adds that Chevron has “taken all my money. I literally have no money. I live off of a defense fund. Getting a pardon would make it much easier to get all of that stuff fixed.”
Moreover, he’s hoping Biden will see his case “as an opportunity to send a clear message to our society that private corporate prosecutions will never again happen in this country.”
Donziger has many high-profile advocates. Last month, 34 lawmakers — including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.), Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.), and former Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) — wrote to Biden requesting he pardon Donziger. They criticized the judge’s “alarming and unusual decision to appoint a corporate law firm to step into the role of the U.S. government in order to prosecute Mr. Donziger,” noting that the firm “had recently represented Chevron as a client.”
The lawmakers noted that Donziger “is the only lawyer in U.S. history to be subject to any period of detention on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge,” and said that pardoning him would “send a powerful message to the world that billion-dollar corporations cannot act with impunity against lawyers and their clients who defend the public interest.”
Nearly 200 human rights and environmental advocacy groups have previously urged Biden to pardon Donziger.
On Monday, human rights activist Kerry Kennedy, the daughter of Robert F. Kennedy, wrote a letter to Biden noting that Donziger was “prosecuted by a private law firm that had Chevron as a client after the Department of Justice rejected the charges.”
“It is far past time to correct this wrong and align our government with the international human rights community in protecting Steven,” she wrote, adding: “Not addressing this important matter would send exactly the wrong message to the human rights community from an administration that obviously cares deeply about upholding the rule of law. Inaction in my view would not be consistent with our values as a country.”
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