Dozens of members of Congress are urging President Joe Biden to issue a full pardon of environmental lawyer Steven Donziger over the “alarming” and “highly suspect” charges levied against him after his lawsuit against Chevron in the 1990s, in a case that has become a major touchpoint of the environmental movement.
Thirty-four lawmakers, led by Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Massachusetts), sent a letter to Biden on Wednesday highlighting the irregularities in Donziger’s case and the chilling effect the harsh punishments he’s faced could have on the environmental movement at large.
“In light of the highly suspect charges against Mr. Donziger and their alarming connection to his work as an environmental lawyer, we ask that you exercise your power of executive clemency to issue a full and unconditional pardon,” the lawmakers wrote.
The letter was signed by Senators Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D-Rhode Island), as well as dozens of House Democrats, including progressive Representatives Cori Bush (D-Missouri), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan). It was also signed by the new leader of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Rep. Greg Casar (D-Texas).
Donziger thanked the lawmakers for their effort. “A stunning 34 members of the US Congress — including @AOC, @BernieSanders, and @RepMcGovern — have sent a letter to President Biden calling on him to pardon me after I was targeted by Chevron with the nation’s first corporate prosecution,” Donziger wrote on social media. “Grateful.”
As a result of Donziger’s case, the lawmakers wrote, “Those who try to help vulnerable communities will feel as though tactics of intimidation — at the hands of powerful corporate interests, and, most troublingly, the U.S. courts — can succeed in stifling robust legal representation when it is most needed. This is a dangerous signal to send.”
“Pardoning Mr. Donziger would instead 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,” the lawmakers said.
Donziger’s fight with Chevron has lasted decades. In the 1990s, he led a class action lawsuit on behalf of Indigenous Ecuadorian people arguing that oil company Texaco, now owned by Chevron, had contaminated the rainforest through drilling activities. The Ecuadorian people were awarded $9.5 billion.
Chevron never paid. Instead, the company sued Donziger with Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) charges. After a series of events that many environmental advocates and legal experts have noted were highly abnormal or outright in violation of Donziger’s right to a fair trial, Donziger was placed under pre-trial house arrest for contempt of court for declining to turn over his electronic devices to Chevron lawyers.
Then, in 2021, Donziger was sentenced to six months in federal prison, where he served 45 days until being transferred to house arrest for COVID-related reasons. In total, he served 993 days in detention, and in 2023, the Supreme Court denied his appeal for his conviction.
As legal experts and the lawmakers pointed out, this is the longest-ever sentence for a misdemeanor. In 2021, a UN Human Rights Council working group concluded that Donziger’s excessively long pre-trial detention was in violation of international human rights, highlighting abnormalities in his case— like the demonstrated bias toward Chevron by the judge in his original case and the appointment of a Chevron-tied prosecutor in his subsequent case. Despite these findings, Donziger remains stripped of his law license.
Social justice advocates have called for Biden to issue crucial pardons and commutations as the nation awaits Donald Trump’s second term in office in January, following the president pardoning Hunter Biden from convictions on gun violations after Republicans spent months spreading false conspiracy theories about the president’s son. In the last week, hundreds of civil and human rights groups and other organizations have called on Biden to commute all 40 people on death row, in line with the principle that the death penalty is wrong — a principle championed by the Democratic Party until this year’s election.
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