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steven donziger
Energy Transfer Is Putting Free Speech and Climate Activism on Trial
A lawsuit against Greenpeace in North Dakota threatens the existence of all nonprofits.
Feb 21, 2025
Imagine a world without effective nonprofit advocacy. When a corporation exploits a local community, no one speaks up or resists. Everyone is too afraid of the weaponized legal system, too vulnerable to liability. The ultra-wealthy take whatever they want and leave others to pick up the pieces. Opposition and resistance have been extinguished.
Those are the risks of a lawsuit against Greenpeace, now going to trial in North Dakota after a seven-year legal battle. Energy Transfer, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline, is seeking $300 million for tort damages, including defamation. Energy Transfer’s previous attempt to sue Greenpeace under federal anti-racketeering laws was blocked by the courts. But the state charges have been upheld, with a trial beginning on February 24, and free-speech advocates are raising alarms about the dangerous precedent that would follow a loss for Greenpeace, or even from the trial proceeding at all.
I recently spoke with Scott W. Badenoch, Jr., a visiting attorney at the Environmental Law Institute. He’s part of a team of distinguished international legal scholars, including Steven Donziger and Jeanne Mirer, who have launched a Trial Monitoring Committee to ensure the case against Greenpeace proceeds fairly and transparently.
While the Trial Monitors and some activists will be on the ground in North Dakota, we need to make noise online and in the media, ensuring that as many people as possible know what’s at stake.
As Badenoch described it, the court is trying to maintain “as much of a black box as you could possibly create in the U.S. court system.” Judge James Gion recently denied a motion to allow live streaming of the trial proceedings.
Instead, Badenoch said the case should be dismissed immediately. The allegations attempt to hold Greenpeace responsible for the actions of activists and volunteers unaffiliated with the group. Legal advocates and climate organizers have called it an unconstitutional SLAPP suit, intended to burden Greenpeace with costly legal fees, shut them down, and restrict the free speech of nonprofits more broadly. “There is absolutely no justification for this trial happening in this court, at this time, with this judge,” Badenoch said. “Just none.”
In a press release from the Trial Monitoring Committee, Steven Donziger pointed to recent trends, writing that “this appears to be part of a broader strategy by the fossil fuel industry to weaponize the courts against activists and weaken organizations like Greenpeace in retaliation for their advocacy.”
While the trial itself presents dangers, the recent actions of Energy Transfer have also brought accusations of jury-tampering. In October, residents of rural Morton County, North Dakota, where the trial will be set, received what appeared to be a legitimate newspaper. However, it contained almost exclusively critical attacks on Greenpeace and the pipeline protests, while praising Energy Transfer. The “newspaper” was actually a political mailer from a company called Metric Media, with links to electioneering and fossil fuel companies, as reported in the North Dakota News Cooperative. Even more concerning, financial records link the CEO of Energy Transfer, Texas billionaire Kelcy Warren, to the creation of the fake newspaper. It looks a like blatant attempt to taint the jury pool. Despite this, Judge Gion refused to allow Greenpeace to investigate the origins of the biased mailer.
The crucial role of the Trial Monitoring Committee is to bring attention to these abuses of due process. “We are going to monitor this case one way or the other,” Badenoch told me. “But the more that [Judge Gion] withholds transparency and access from us, the more obvious it is that something is going on that they don’t want people to see.”
Meanwhile, the stakes of the case extend far beyond Greenpeace. If Energy Transfer is successful, Badenoch said, the precedent would be cataclysmic for nonprofit advocacy. An organization could be held liable for any actions by any activists, however tenuously affiliated. “Literally every social justice, climate justice, civil rights, human rights organization across the country—and maybe the planet—is at risk of legal murder in a courtroom, where an organization is put to death by a SLAPP suit.”
As members of the public, that means we all have a responsibility to advocate for transparency, fairness, and ideally dismissal of Energy Transfer’s lawsuit. While the Trial Monitors and some activists will be on the ground in North Dakota, we need to make noise online and in the media, ensuring that as many people as possible know what’s at stake. Badenoch was emphatic about this: “The number one thing is to bring attention to the case. Don’t let Greenpeace die with a whimper.”
In a time of chaos and distraction, it’s all too easy to let cases like this one go unnoticed. But the risks are simply too dire to ignore. “It’s absolutely terrifying for advocacy in this country and beyond. The risks are really hard to overstate,” Badenoch told me. “If Greenpeace is allowed to die in this field in North Dakota, then every single nonprofit is next in line.”
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'It's Finally Over, I'm Going Home': Biden Grants Commutation—But No Pardon—for Peltier
"The victory of freeing Leonard Peltier is a symbol of our collective strength—and our resistance will never stop," vowed one Indigenous organizer.
Jan 20, 2025
Just minutes before leaving office, Joe Biden on Monday commuted the life prison sentence of Leonard Peltier, the elderly American Indian Movement activist who supporters say was framed for the murder of two federal agents during a 1975 reservation shootout.
"It's finally over, I'm going home," Peltier, who is 80 years old, said in a statement released by the Indigenous-led activist group NDN Collective. "I want to show the world I'm a good person with a good heart. I want to help the people, just like my grandmother taught me."
While not the full pardon for which he and his defenders have long fought, the outgoing Democratic president's commutation will allow Peltier—who has been imprisoned for nearly a half-century—to "spend his remaining days in home confinement," according to Biden's statement, which was no longer posted on the White House website after Republican President Donald Trump took office Monday afternoon.
🚨BREAKING🚨 Leonard Peltier Granted Executive Clemency After 50 years of unjust incarceration and the tireless efforts of intergenerational grassroots organizing and advocacy, our elder and relative Leonard Peltier has been granted executive clemency.
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— NDN Collective ( @ndncollective.bsky.social) January 20, 2025 at 9:02 AM
"Tribal Nations, Nobel Peace laureates, former law enforcement officials (including the former U.S. attorney whose office oversaw Mr. Peltier's prosecution and appeal), dozens of lawmakers, and human rights organizations strongly support granting Mr. Peltier clemency, citing his advanced age, illnesses, his close ties to and leadership in the Native American community, and the substantial length of time he has already spent in prison," Biden explained.
Biden Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Indigenous cabinet secretary in U.S. history, said in a statement: "I am beyond words about the commutation of Leonard Peltier. His release from prison signifies a measure of justice that has long evaded so many Native Americans for so many decades. I am grateful that Leonard can now go home to his family. I applaud President Biden for this action and understanding what this means to Indian Country."
Congressman Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.), who last month led 34 U.S. lawmakers in a letter urging clemency for Peltier, said in a statement that "for too long, Mr. Peltier has been denied both justice and the pursuit of a full, healthy life at the hands of the U.S. government, but today, he is finally able to go home."
"President Biden's decision is not just the right, merciful, and decent one—it is a testament to Mr. Peltier's resilience and the unwavering support of the countless global leaders, Indigenous voices, civil rights and legal experts, and so many others who have advocated so tirelessly for his release," Grijalva added. "While there is still much work to be done to fix the system that allowed this wrong and so many others against Indian Country, especially as we face the coming years, let us today celebrate Mr. Peltier's return home."
NDN Collective founder and CEO Nick Tilsen said Monday that "Leonard Peltier's freedom today is the result of 50 years of intergenerational resistance, organizing, and advocacy."
"Leonard Peltier's liberation is our liberation—we will honor him by bringing him back to his homelands to live out the rest of his days surrounded by loved ones, healing, and reconnecting with his land and culture," Tilsen continued.
"Let Leonard's freedom be a reminder that the entire so-called United States is built on the stolen lands of Indigenous people—and that Indigenous people have successfully resisted every attempt to oppress, silence, and colonize us," Tilsen added. "The victory of freeing Leonard Peltier is a symbol of our collective strength—and our resistance will never stop."
Amnesty International USA executive director Paul O'Brien said that "President Biden was right to commute the life sentence of Indigenous elder and activist Leonard Peltier given the serious human rights concerns about the fairness of his trial."
While Peltier admits to having participated in the June 26, 1975 gunfight at the Oglala Sioux Reservation at Pine Ridge, South Dakota, he denies killing Federal Bureau of Investigation agents Jack Coler and Ronald Williams.
As HuffPost senior political reporter Jennifer Bendery recapped Monday:
There was never evidence that Peltier committed a crime, and the U.S. government never did figure out who shot those agents. But federal officials needed someone to take the fall. The FBI had just lost two agents, and Peltier's co-defendants were all acquitted based on self-defense. So, Peltier became their guy.
His trial was rife with misconduct. The FBI threatened and coerced witnesses into lying. Federal prosecutors hid evidence that exonerated Peltier. A juror acknowledged on the second day of the trial that she had "prejudice against Indians," but she was kept on anyway.
The government's case fell apart after these revelations, so it simply revised its charges against Peltier to "aiding and abetting" whoever did kill the agents—based entirely on the fact that he was one of dozens of people present when the shootout took place. Peltier was convicted and sentenced to two consecutive life terms.
American Indian Movement (AIM) activist Joe Stuntz Killsright was also killed at Pine Ridge when a U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs agent sniper shot him in the head after Coler and Williams were killed. Stuntz' death has never been investigated.
Some Indigenous activists welcomed Peltier's commutation while also remembering Annie Mae Pictou Aquash, an Mi'kmaq activist who was kidnapped and murdered at Pine Ridge in December 1975 by her fellow AIM members. Some of Aquash's defenders believe her killing to be an assassination ordered by AIM leaders who feared she was an FBI informant.
Before leaving office, Biden issued a flurry of eleventh-hour preemptive pardons meant to protect numerous relatives and government officials whom Trump and his allies have threatened with politically motivated legal action.
However, the outgoing president dashed the hopes of figures including Steven Donziger, Charles Littlejohn, and descendants of Ethel Rosenberg, who were
seeking last-minute pardons or commutations.
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Biden's Clemency Clock Winds Down for Donziger, Littlejohn, Peltier, and Assange
There are only a few days left for Biden to heed calls for clemency coming from a diverse array of rights groups.
Jan 17, 2025
Outgoing U.S. President Joe Biden announced commutations on Friday for approximately 2,500 people who have been convicted of non-violence drug crimes—a move that was cheered by rights groups and brings his total number of pardons and commutations to the highest of any president.
But Biden has so far stopped short of granting clemency to a number of high profile individuals whose cases—while all very different—have generated significant public interest and sympathy. They include: the former IRS contractor Charles Littlejohn, the environmental lawyer Steven Donziger, Indigenous activist Leonard Peltier, and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange.
The cases have prompted a flurry of calls from various groups for Biden to take action on the cases before he hands over the White House to President-elect Donald Trump on January 20.
Littlejohn was sentenced in January 2024 to the five years in prison for unauthorized disclosure of tax information to the media. In 2020, The New York Times published a story based on information leaked byLittlejohn revealing that Trump paid only $750 in federal income taxes the year he won the presidency and in 2017. Later, journalists at ProPublicaused documents made available by Littlejohn to report on how the wealthiest 25 individuals in America were able to get away with paying very little in income tax between 2014 and 2018.
Given the nature of his case, Kenny Stancil of the Revolving Door Project and Bob Lord of the Institute for Policy Studies, wrote in December that Littlejohn "very well could be on Trump's enemies list" and urged Biden to commute his sentence.
"The longer Littlejohn languishes in jail, the more he is at risk of retribution from Trump," wrote Stancil and Lord, who also highlight that Littlejohn was given the statutory maximum sentence for his crime.
On Thursday, millionaire Abigail Disney penned a defense of Littlejohn, writing that Biden should commute his sentence because he "did the nation a great service by spotlighting the urgent need for tax reform in a country being ripped apart by extreme and rising inequality."
Indigenous leaders and the human rights organization Amnesty International are calling for clemency for another man who is currently behind bars: the Indigenous rights activist Leonard Peltier, who was convicted in 1977 of having murdered two FBI agents and has spent the majority of his life in prison, despite concerns about the fairness of his trial and conviction.
Peltier had his request for parole and compassionate release denied last year, meaning clemency is "likely his only chance for freedom," according to Amnesty International.
"All of us see a little bit of ourselves in Leonard Peltier, and that's why we fight so hard for him," said Nick Tilsen, the founder and CEO of NDN Collective, an Indigenous rights group. "This is about paving a path forward that gives us the opportunity to have justice and begin to heal the relationship between the United States government and Indian people. And so, this decision is massive."
Meanwhile, 50 human rights and environmental groups sent a letter in early January to President Biden, urging him to pardon U.S. human rights lawyer Steven Donziger, who secured a multibillion settlement for Indigenous plaintiffs against Texaco (later acquired by Chevron) in an Ecuadoran court over the company's destructive oil pollution in the Amazon, but was later charged with criminal contempt of court in the U.S. for withholding evidence in a countersuit brought by Chevron. Donziger was disbarred in 2018, and then spent time in both prison and under house arrest.
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.), who has called for Donziger's pardon, recently toldDemocracy Now! that "Chevron has spent countless millions and millions of dollars going after Steven Donziger and not helping a single person in Ecuador deal with what they left behind. We have to stand up to corporate excesses in this country."
"If President Biden would pardon him, I think that would be a signal that maybe things are beginning to change," he added.
Also this week, press freedom and civil liberties organizations demanded that Biden pardon WikiLeaks founder and publisher Julian Assange, who last year—as a way to avoid extradition to the U.S. after languishing for years in a British prison—pleaded guilty to a felony charge under the U.S. Espionage Act of conspiring to obtain and disclose classified national military documents. Per the terms of the plea deal, he was allowed to return to his native Australia and is no longer incarcerated.
Freedom of the Press Foundation director of advocacy Seth Stern said in a statement Thursday that Assange's case "normalized the criminalization of work national security journalists do every day—talking to sources, obtaining documents from them, and publishing those documents."
"A pardon won't undo the harm the case has done to the free press or the chilling effect on journalists who now know their work can land them behind bars at the whim of the Department of Justice. But it will help reduce the damage," he said.
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