The lawmakers sent the letter very last Monday evening, several hours immediately after Donziger was launched from far more than two-and-a-fifty percent a long time of residence confinement and a 6-7 days stint in federal jail.

“I’m experience exhilarated to have this detention completed, but I’m still astounded that it even happened,” Donziger mentioned by phone.

Though Donziger’s confinement is in excess of, the 10 Democratic signatories, like McGovern and Massachusetts Consultant Ayanna Pressley, stated that granting him clemency would mail an critical sign.

“This is about much more than a courtroom situation — it is about sending a message that company polluters want to be held accountable for breaking the law, and that they should not be permitted to harass and intimidate these who seek justice,” McGovern wrote in an e mail to the World.

The letter follows a identical call from more than 100 environmental and human legal rights companies, which includes Amnesty International and Greenpeace, to pardon Donziger. Famous people these as Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters and actor Susan Sarandon have also supported him. And United Nations officials have reported they were “appalled by uncontested allegations” from him and explained his cure appeared to be retaliatory.

The root of the controversy close to Donziger, and of the new outpouring of help, is a class-action fit he and other attorneys introduced against the multinational electricity organization Texaco on behalf of some 30,000 indigenous individuals and farmers in the Ecuadorian Amazon practically 30 several years in the past. Texaco experienced been drilling for oil in the area, in partnership with Ecuador’s national oil enterprise, Petroecuador. The lawsuit accused Texaco of spilling crude oil and dumping billions of gallons of wastewater into unlined pits.

A 2001 examine observed elevated premiums of most cancers and birth problems in the region and concluded that they could be joined to oil production. McGovern traveled to the Amazon with Donziger in 2008.

“When Steve and I went to Ecuador and frequented these communities with each other, there were being areas where the stench of poisonous substances was so robust it burned my nose. There were villages where approximately each and every loved ones had been afflicted by cancer,” claimed McGovern.

Chevron purchased Texaco in 2001 and turned the vital defendant in the case the plaintiffs asserted that it should be liable for the cleanup because it now owned the company. In 2011, the plaintiffs received an $18 billion judgement against Chevron in Ecuadorian courts. That sum was later lowered to $9.5 billion, viewed as one of the premier environmental court docket judgments throughout the world.

Chevron did not dispute the pollution or its large scale but claimed Petroecuador was largely liable and that a 1998 arrangement that Texaco signed with Ecuador following shelling out $40 million on cleanup absolved it of legal responsibility. It explained the Ecuadorian governing administration ought to be dependable for more remediation.

Chevron also claimed that Donziger and his workforce received the judgment by unlawful signifies and in 2011 brought a civil lawsuit less than the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act from him and two other plaintiffs, alleging between other things that they ghost-wrote an expert report and bribed a choose. Donziger explained that a consulting company doing the job with his crew had drafted areas of the report but reported that comported with Ecuadorian “law, custom and follow.” He denied the bribery fees. A US courtroom ruled that the judgment in the Ecuadorian situation was attained by way of “egregious fraud” including bribery and declared it unenforceable.

An appeals court later on upheld the ruling, stating Donziger and his team engaged in “a parade of corrupt actions.” An worldwide tribunal independently concluded that the evidence of fraud was “overwhelming.”

In 2018, Donziger’s lawful license was suspended.

“Steven Donziger is an adjudicated racketeer and fraudster who was disbarred for his unlawful and unethical functions in the Ecuador scenario and held in civil and prison contempt for flouting lawful court docket orders,” James Craig, communications advisor at Chevron, wrote in an email to the Globe last Tuesday.

As portion of the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Corporations Act situation, the court docket requested Donziger to switch above his laptop computer and other personalized units to the court. Donziger refused, saying executing so would violate attorney-shopper privilege. The choose drafted legal contempt rates from Donziger for failing to comply and took the unconventional move of inquiring a non-public legislation firm to prosecute when federal prosecutors declined.

Kaplan also eschewed the common course of action of randomly assigning a choose to oversee the case and as an alternative picked one himself.

Donziger was considered a flight chance and positioned on household arrest though awaiting demo — a requirement the lawmakers’ letter to Biden phone calls “unprecedented.”

“We are unaware of these types of restrictions possessing been imposed on any attorney in the United States going through a comparable allegation,” the lawmakers wrote.

At his jury-totally free demo in July 2021, Donziger was found guilty on the contempt fees and afterwards sentenced to six months in prison, the greatest sentence. His crew submitted an enchantment which has not nonetheless been given a ruling. He served six months and then returned to house arrest in December 2021 under a Covid-19 early release method to complete his sentence.

A United Nations report shortly ahead of the sentencing hearing said “the fees from and detention of Mr. Donziger seems to be retaliation” for his involvement with the Chevron fit.

“I was victimized by a new company playbook that permitted a private oil enterprise to capture elements of the prosecutorial apparatus — the general public prosecutorial equipment — of our state, and bend it to serve its personal personal interests,” claimed Donziger.

Donziger stated it “frankly angers and depresses” him that he has expended decades in confinement, but is even much more concerned that it could prevent other people from combating polluting corporations.

“What happened to me was a lot larger than me,” he claimed.

By granting Donziger clemency, the lawmaker’s Monday letter mentioned, Biden can blunt that “chilling outcome.”

Dharna Noor can be arrived at at [email protected]. Stick to her on Twitter @dharnanoor.