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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...

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...

When $27 billion is at stake, some companies would pay big bucks to win a PR battle, but one side of an environmental lawsuit doesn't have to, since CBS is pushing its position for free. On CBS's May 3 "60 Minutes," correspondent Scott Pelley, who once compared global-warming skepticism to Holocaust denial, gave the plaintiff of a $27-billion frivolous lawsuit against Chevron a public relations victory with his report. Pelley's report featured a suit filed by the Amazon Defense Coalition, a group described as "eco-radicals," who are trying to squeeze $27 billion from Chevron for environmental cleanup that the nation's...

SNIPPET: "Forget the "60 Minutes" angle against an alleged big, bad American polluter. This looks like an Ecuadoran shakedown of millions of American small investors who have a stake in Chevron. Now that is a story worth investigating."

Big Oil: So what happened to the $19 billion judgment against Chevron over rainforest pollution in Ecuador? Seems the leftist lawyer behind it all now finds himself in the dock on a RICO rap for a massive fraud. This has been going on for years, the oft-repeated meme that Chevron, through its Texaco acquisition, polluted the rainforest floor and poisoned its helpless villagers. Activist Bianca Jagger is emblematic of this disregard for fact. In the Huffington Post, she wrote that while she's no apologist for Chevron's accusers, the bottom line is: "Ecuadorian communities were the victims of exploitation by a...

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,...

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...

Litigation: After thwarting a $9.5 billion judgment from an Ecuadorean court, Chevron is going after the entire edifice of environmentalist enablers who make such junk lawsuits possible. Couldn't happen to a nicer bunch. To the surprise of many, the oil giant is suing the tony, white-shoe law firm of Patton Boggs for alleged unethical involvement in an all-out legal attack by environmentalists over rainforest pollution in Ecuador. Chevron accuses the oh-so-respected firm of lying, concealing inconvenient facts, running a public smear campaign and miscellaneous other flim-flammery, all for the sake of the dollar signs spinning in their eyes. This poses...

Dr. Ann Maest is a managing scientist at Straus Consulting, and she’s the go to expert on all things groundwater. In the press release announcing her reappointment to the National Academy of Sciences, they mention that she is focused on the environmental effects of mining and petroleum extraction and production, and, more recently, on the effects of climate change on water quality. Maest is in high demand as an expert for those looking to stop oil and mineral exploration. She’s also heavily used by the federal government, even though after new details about her past work are coming to light...

Ecuador‘s case against California's Chevron Corp. has boomeranged against the plaintiffs’ lawyers. Today in Manhattan, federal District Judge Lewis A. Kaplan is considering a RICO (Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations) complaint Chevron filed Feb. 1 against attorneys and consultants targeting the oil giant. Nineteen U.S. judges made preliminary rulings in Chevron‘s favor and at least four used the word “fraud” to describe the plaintiffs’ legal actions, but the Justice Department has yet to investigate. RICO, best known for nailing Mafia bosses, also is used (sometimes abusively) to bring down alleged corporate scofflaws when a pattern of fraud or corruption is...