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Nine U.S. House Democrats have asked the Justice Department to release American environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, who spent decades battling Chevron Corp over pollution in the Ecuadorian rainforest. The disbarred lawyer was handed a six-month imprisonment sentence in October for criminal contempt arising from a lawsuit brought by the oil company. The Democrats including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib on Monday said in a letter addressed to Attorney General Merrick Garland that the lawyer was jailed for "petty contempt of court". "As the United States is a party to the District Court case against Mr. Donziger, we request that you...

The Niger Delta Avengers (NDA) were a major driver of the rally in oil markets over the past several months, as the outage of roughly 600,000 barrels per day helped push up crude oil prices. In June, a 30-day ceasefire between the NDA and the Nigerian government led to a few weeks of relative calm, and Nigeria’s oil minister said that the country was able to bring back a large chunk of the disrupted supply, bringing output up from 1.4 million barrels per day to 1.9 mb/d at the end of June, but still down from the 2.2 mb/d Nigeria...

Many of us will have felt the grip of claustrophobic isolation over the past year, but the lawyer Steven Donziger has experienced an extreme, very personal confinement as a pandemic arrived and then raged around him in New York City.On Sunday, Donziger reached his 600th day of an unprecedented house arrest that has resulted from a sprawling, Kafkaesque legal battle with the oil giant Chevron. Donziger spearheaded a lengthy crusade against the company on behalf of tens of thousands of Indigenous people in the Amazon rainforest whose homes and health were devastated by oil pollution, only to himself become, as...

The Capitol Police turned over a trove of evidence in the alleged Imran Awan House cyberbreach and theft case to the defense attorneys when they were supposed to deliver it to prosecutors instead, according to court documents and a source. And hours after The Daily Caller News Foundation asked prosecutors about the disclosure, Awan’s lawyer said he had learned of the forthcoming story from a source on Capitol Hill. TheDCNF had not told anyone other than prosecutors about it. “The cop came to [Awan’s defense attorney] Chris Gowen’s office with a stack of papers … Then he came back and...

FULL TITLE: VIDEO: Imran Awan’s Attorney’s Epic Meltdown: Slams Trump, Offers to Sell Case Evidence to Reporter for Cash, Calls Marine a Criminal Imran Awan’s attorney Chris Gowen is not the brightest bulb in the shed. The attorney snapped Thursday, unleashed an epic meltdown that could jeopardize his client’s scheduled plea hearing on July 3. Unglued is not a strong enough word to describe Gowen’s rant, triggered by Crowdsource the Truth editor Jason Goodman who recorded the phone call. Gowen likely crossed the legal line, offering to sell Goodman evidence in the Awan case for $1,000. That offer came after...

The Financial Times reports China has hired the marquee lobbying firm of Patton Boggs, for a $22,000 monthly retainer, to help improve its image in the United States. In the past, Patton Boggs has represented the nuclear proliferators of Pakistan and the jihad enablers of Saudi Arabia -- excellent experience for working with Beijing. "The Chinese are learning to walk the walk and talk the talk, and I don't have a problem with it," says Robert Kapp, former president of the U.S.-China Business Council. (Is there anything China could conceivably do that its cheering section in the business community would...

Chris Gowen, Imran Awan’s lawyer, is a long-time campaigner for former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and a member of an attorney team that brought a fraudulent lawsuit against energy giant Chevron. Pakistani-born Awan was arrested late Monday at Dulles Airport in Northern Virginia before he could board a flight to Qatar and then Pakistan on bank fraud charges. Awan, his younger brothers, Abid and Jamal, his wife, Hina Alvi, and Rao Abbas, his best friend, have been subjects of a federal criminal investigation led by the U.S. Capitol Police and including the FBI since...

It’s the Washington conspiracy that barely speaks its name. And unlike the incandescent “Russian interference” scandal dominating the news for well over a year, this one has the potential to cause grave harm to our national security. **SNIP** How did Imran Awan come to be represented by a lawyer who is close to both Bill and Hillary Clinton? Mr. Awan, so far as one knows, does not know the Clintons personally. But his chief protector, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, certainly does. The Florida congresswoman was an outspoken ally of Hillary Clinton during her 2008 and 2016 presidential runs. And Awan’s attorney,...

  Rebecca Solnit wrote in Salon.com that “The Age of Capitalism is over”.  Oh my, where to start? At the beginning seems a good place as any.  Solnit was thrilled to hold a land auction notice from post-Jacobin France—Thermidorian France for the historically-minded.  Thermidorian France was no more compassionate to live (mostly, to die) in than the Jacobin version which oversaw the execution of tens of thousand civilians, and the wanton destruction of anything associated with Christianity.  This short period in France’s mottled past, from 1795 to 1799, abolished everything other than the whims of its leaders.  And this sent...