It’s a tale as old as time: an underdog fighting for what’s right, and a powerful giant doing everything it can to stop him. Yet in today’s America, the giants don’t lose – they rig the system to crush anyone who dares to challenge them.
That’s exactly what happened to Steven Donziger, a well-known human rights lawyer who stood up to oil giant Chevron. After helping Indigenous and farming communities in Ecuador secure a historic $9.5bn judgment against the company for decades of environmental destruction, Chevron retaliated with a vicious legal campaign designed not just to discredit him, but to ruin his life.
Donziger’s story is nothing new. We all know that billion-dollar corporations wield their influence to silence critics. But what is so jarring about this case is the lengths to which Chevron has gone to manipulate the courts, corrupt the rule of law and evade accountability.
It is so bad that this week, I led 34 members of Congress in calling on Joe Biden to pardon Donziger after he was prosecuted and jailed directly by Chevron lawyers in the nation’s first corporate prosecution. That’s after 68 Nobel laureates demanded he be released from detention and three federal judges – including two supreme court justices – determined his prosecution was unconstitutional.
Donziger’s ordeal began after he helped uncover Chevron’s decades of environmental destruction in Ecuador’s Amazon rainforest – exposing a legacy of poisoned soil, toxic waste dumped into the water, and entire villages ravaged by cancer. In 2008, I traveled to Indigenous communities with Steven and met with families and farmers whose lives and livelihoods were ruined. It was heartbreaking, but it filled both of us with anger and a conviction to fight for justice.
When Donziger and his team secured the historic court judgment against Chevron in 2018, it was a rare triumph of the little guy. But instead of accepting responsibility and complying with court rulings that ordered the company to compensate the Amazon communities poisoned by its actions, Chevron turned the tables – launching a retaliatory legal campaign and leveraging its deep pockets to harass and punish Donziger.
What happened next was chilling. Chevron successfully weaponized the courts to target Donziger personally. The company filed a bogus civil Rico lawsuit against him, securing an unprecedented court order that would have forced him to turn over his confidential case file to Chevron. When Donziger appealed the order, the trial judge who issued it charged him with misdemeanor contempt of court. After the US attorney in Manhattan declined to prosecute such a bizarre charge, Chevron pressured the judge to appoint private prosecutors from a corporate law firm – who previously had Chevron as a client – to prosecute him in the name of the US government.
Donziger was denied a jury trial, disbarred without a fact hearing, thrown in jail for over a month, and put on house arrest with an ankle bracelet for almost three years – more than four times longer than the maximum allowable sentence in the contempt case. Chevron had his passport confiscated and his work discredited – all because he had the gall to stand up to the company and demand accountability for the harm they caused to communities in the Amazon.
It’s no wonder the mistreatment of Donziger has continued to draw international outrage. In addition to the federal judges and Nobel laureates, Amnesty International and the United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention have condemned Donziger’s treatment as unlawful. In short, the failure to provide justice in this case not only undermines faith in our legal system at home, but also our credibility on the world stage – weakening our government’s ability to support human rights without being branded as hypocrites.
Just like in the original David and Goliath, this story doesn’t begin or end with one person. Steven Donziger deserves to be pardoned, but this goes way beyond him. It’s about what kind of country we want to live in – one where fairness still means something, or one where corrupt corporations can continue using deep pockets to rig the system and get their way.
As we brace for the transition to the Trump administration, it’s more urgent than ever to safeguard the integrity of our institutions and shore up the rule of law. Biden has a closing window to take bold, decisive action.
A pardon for Donziger would not erase the injustices he has endured. And it would certainly not fix what Chevron did to the innocent people of Ecuador. But it would send a powerful signal that truth and fairness still matter, and that the United States stands for justice and not corporate impunity. It also would allow Donziger to travel again and help the Amazon communities force Chevron to comply with court orders that it pay the judgement.
Perhaps most importantly, it would give hope to human rights and environmental defenders everywhere that their critically important advocacy – so necessary to safeguard our planet – will be protected, not punished.
President Biden, the people of Ecuador are waiting for justice. The world is watching. Draw a line in the sand. Protect the rule of law. Pardon Steven Donziger. And send a message that no corporation, no matter how powerful they seem or how much money they have, can behave as if they are above the law.
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Jim McGovern is a congressman from Massachusetts
