WASHINGTON (Legal Newsline) - Six members of Congress who asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to intervene on behalf of disbarred attorney Steven Donziger should be embarrassed, says the Manhattan Institute's James Copland.
“The level of fraud alleged against Donziger is profound and sweeping and obviously international in scope,” said Copland, senior fellow and legal policy director at the think tank. “The notion that this guy ought to get special favoritism from the courts is an embarrassment to every member of Congress for even beginning to suggest it.”
Copland was responding to an April 27 letter signed by Massachusetts Congressman James McGovern, who is the House Rules Committee Chair, as well as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman of New York, Maryland's Jamie Raskin, Missouri's Cori Bush, and Michigan's Rashida Tlaib. In the letter, they asked Garland to review the case against Donziger.
“Mr. Donziger has been subjected to an unprecedented 600+ days of pre-trial house arrest while awaiting trial on a petty misdemeanor charge resulting from a discovery dispute,” the six Congressmembers stated in their letter to Garland, which is posted online. “We have deep concerns that the unprecedented nature of Mr. Donziger’s pending legal case is tied to his previous work against Chevron.”
As previously reported, Donziger won a $9.5 billion award in an Ecuador court after suing Chevron.
But in 2014, U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan at the Southern District of New York held that Donziger had defrauded the judicial system in Ecuador with bribery, which the Second Circuit upheld on appeal.
“I have high respect for Merrick Garland who has a distinguished judicial record and I fully expect that Merrick Garland will tell these embarrassing Congress members to pound sand because that's what should be done,” Copland told Legal Newsline.
Donziger, who is currently under house arrest, faces criminal contempt charges for not turning over evidence related to the bribery scheme.
“I've been a critic of where the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act has been stretched beyond what I think are its clear legal limitations by the Department of Justice over and over again but this is not only a paradigm case,” Copland said. “This is an obscene case of corrupting justice abroad.”
The federal Foreign Corrupt Practices Act of 1977 bans American businesses and individuals from engaging in bribery with government officers from foreign countries.
Celebrities such as Susan Sarandon and Marianne Williamson have appeared on television in support of Dozinger, and the Foreign Press Association announced an event in which Donziger will be a panelist along with Amazon Watch climate activist Paul Paz y Miño.
“Among some, but not all, of the climate change community there is an ‘end justifies the means’ mentality, which I have criticized previously,” Copland said. “The efforts to end-run the law through shareholder activism, through state and local driven litigation have been deeply problematic around an important global issue that clearly rests within the regulatory powers of Congress.”
U.S. District Judge Loretta Preska at the Southern District of New York ruled in a May 10 court order after a hearing, “The lion’s share of the Subpoenas’ requests are paradigmatic 'fishing expeditions,' and for some Mr. Donziger has brought especially heavy tackle. But because Nixon, 418 U.S. at 700, makes clear that Rule 17(c) cannot be put to that purpose, the Court will not allow Mr. Donziger to use the Subpoenas to end-run around the rules governing discovery in criminal cases.”
Donziger stated in a May 16 Tweet on Twitter that Judge Preska barred him from testifying in his own defense.
“She just ruled that the many legal and ethical reasons I used to protect the confidentiality of my Indigenous clients is irrelevant,” Donziger posted. “Absurd and unjust—but our appeal grows stronger.”
This week, attorney Marty Garbus demanded Judge Preska be removed from Donziger's prosecution, according to a Donziger tweet.
"The court's suppression of evidence and ties to the private prosecutor amount to a major illegality," he wrote in a letter dated June 3.