Speaker 1: And it's freaking early. It's six thirty eight. I wanted
Speaker 1: to leave at six thirty, but that's fine, and I
Speaker 1: am headed to the Martin County Courthouse. It's day one
Speaker 1: of the Energy Transfer versus Greenpeace trial in Mandan, North Dakota.
Speaker 1: The courthouse won't open until seven thirty, but I heard
Speaker 1: there was very limited seating in the courtroom, and I
Speaker 1: want to be sure to get in, even if it
Speaker 1: means waiting outside the door until it opens. Last week
Speaker 1: it was thirty below. Luckily, right now it's about thirty
Speaker 1: six degrees, so if I'm standing around outside, I will survive.
Speaker 1: It's important that I'm there to listen because no one's
Speaker 1: going to get to record anything inside the trial. You know,
Speaker 1: we had some pretty unfavorable rulings from the judge about
Speaker 1: press access. I'm pretty irritated that I'm not going to
Speaker 1: be able to bring anything except a pen and paper
Speaker 1: in there. The judge is worried about witness contamination and
Speaker 1: jury contamination, so he ruled that. So he ruled that
Speaker 1: we can't even record on our cell phones for note
Speaker 1: taking purposes. Drilled In several other media organizations filed a
Speaker 1: request for a live stream of the trial. When the
Speaker 1: judge said no, we asked to just be able to
Speaker 1: record so we could get the quotes right. That was
Speaker 1: a node too. Now we're waiting on the North Dakota
Speaker 1: Supreme Court to respond to our appeal, but I'm not
Speaker 1: feeling optimistic. I pull up to the courthouse. The parking
Speaker 1: spots in front of the brick building are empty. Okay,
Speaker 1: the sheriff's the only one here.
Speaker 2: Me and the sheriff.
Speaker 1: I parked the car and head in, leaving my recorder behind.
Speaker 1: I did not need to get here this early, but
Speaker 1: it gives me time to take in the scene. The
Speaker 1: courtroom is humble. It could be an office space if
Speaker 1: it wasn't for all the wood furniture. I sit on
Speaker 1: a light colored wood bench that looks like a church pew.
Speaker 1: In front of me, dark wood paneling frames the judges bench,
Speaker 1: and the door to his chambers. Everything is laid out
Speaker 1: exactly like you'd expect, with a jury box to the
Speaker 1: judges left. A law enforcement officer wearing a tactical vest
Speaker 1: observes from a corner of the room. Other observers sit
Speaker 1: down around me. They're mostly green peace people. The judge
Speaker 1: enters from behind the stand and we all stand up.
Speaker 1: Judge James Gien is around seventy, with white hair and
Speaker 1: a white beard and tired lines down his face. When
Speaker 1: I look him up later, I'll learn that in his
Speaker 1: spare time he plays guitar and harmonica. Used to play
Speaker 1: in a country band called Dakota Gold. Welcome the potential jurors.
Speaker 1: Around thirty file into the room, filling the reserved audience piece.
Speaker 1: They're every day mid Westerners, dressed casually. Almost all of
Speaker 1: them are life. Judge Gean greets the jurors with a
Speaker 1: notable North Dakota accent. I want to congratulate you on
Speaker 1: being chosen for jury duty because it is one of
Speaker 1: the highest obligations and privileges of our democratic system. Only
Speaker 1: eleven people will actually sit on the jury for this trial.
Speaker 1: The lawyers for Energy Transfer in green Peace will spend
Speaker 1: the next two days selecting them. Greenpeace has been trying
Speaker 1: for years now to move this trial to a different county.
Speaker 1: They say that Morton County residents are so biased against
Speaker 1: the anti pipeline protesters that there's no way Greenpeace could
Speaker 1: get a fair trial. Every judge in this district recused
Speaker 1: themselves from the case because of conflicts. The court had
Speaker 1: to pull judge Gean from rural western North Dakota for this,
Speaker 1: but Green Piece is stuck with Morton County jurors. I'm
Speaker 1: not even sure there will be any jurors left. After
Speaker 1: Greenpeace weeds out the biased ones. The curtain is raised
Speaker 1: and the trial is set to begin. It's scheduled to
Speaker 1: last five weeks, but the next two days of jury
Speaker 1: selection will be what decides Greenpiece's fate. In fact, maybe
Speaker 1: it's already decided. This season of Drilled, we bring you
Speaker 1: Slapped the story of an indigenous nation fighting for its water,
Speaker 1: an environmental nonprofit facing extinction, and an energy giant using
Speaker 1: the courts to punish protesters. I'm Ellen Brown. Jury selection begins.
Speaker 1: Energy Transfers lawyer Trey Cox stands behind a little podium
Speaker 1: facing the potential jurors. He's blonde and looks like a
Speaker 1: high school football coach. He's got an intense energy, like
Speaker 1: he's about to unleash something. Neither side is using their
Speaker 1: staff attorneys for this case. An Energy transfer has hired
Speaker 1: a real doozy of a law firm. Trey and most
Speaker 1: of the other lawyers for the company come from Gibson,
Speaker 1: Dunn and Crutcher. Maybe you don't know their name, but
Speaker 1: you know their work. The firm argued the landmark Supreme
Speaker 1: Court case Citizens United. That's the one that used the
Speaker 1: First Amendment to get rid of limits on certain types
Speaker 1: of political donations. Trey introduces himself with the subtle Southern accent.
Speaker 1: He weaves in personal details I guess to sound relatable.
Speaker 1: I'm originally from Shreveport, Louisiana, he says. I ended up
Speaker 1: following not a girl, but the girl to Dallas, Texas.
Speaker 1: When I look it up later, I'll see that Trey
Speaker 1: is married to Aaron neely Cox, a former US prosecutor
Speaker 1: appointed by Donald Trump. Trey begins asking the potential jurors questions.
Speaker 1: Is there anyone uncomfortable or feel like they will struggle
Speaker 1: to award a pipeline company like my client something in
Speaker 1: the neighborhood of three hundred million dollars if the evidence
Speaker 1: and law supported it. No one raises their hand. Greenpeace's lawyer,
Speaker 1: Everett Jack takes his turn. He wears a tomato red
Speaker 1: striped tie and parts his hair to the side. He's
Speaker 1: lanky and his face looks a little warm. He tells
Speaker 1: the potential jurors that his hometown is Portland, Oregon, and
Speaker 1: that he's married with two daughters and three grandkids. Feel
Speaker 1: like Everett Jack could be cast in the role of
Speaker 1: Atticus Finch, the lawyer in the book To Kill a Mockingbird.
Speaker 1: In real life, he's married to Fay Resnik, a recurring
Speaker 1: guest star on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. Chris Jenner,
Speaker 1: the matriarch of the Kardashian family, officiated their wedding. As
Speaker 1: Everett begins to question the group of jurors, a pattern
Speaker 1: emerges Dure after jur says that hearing about the standing
Speaker 1: Route protests reminds them of what they call the disruption
Speaker 1: in our community. One woman puts it plainly, I think
Speaker 1: you'll have a tough time finding people completely unbiased on
Speaker 1: that because it affected everyone. Everett Jack follows up, how
Speaker 1: many of you feel the same way? All but a
Speaker 1: handful of people raise their hands. Everett asks another question,
Speaker 1: is there anybody that hurt a rumor that there were
Speaker 1: paid protesters out at the protest site? Nearly all the
Speaker 1: hands in the room go up. My mind wanders back
Speaker 1: to those internal documents that had been leaked to me
Speaker 1: years back by someone who worked with Energy Transfer's private
Speaker 1: security contractor, Tiger Swan, back when I'd been interested in
Speaker 1: what kind of spying Tiger Swan was doing for the
Speaker 1: oil company. But going through the documents, I realized that
Speaker 1: they were doing more than just surveillance. The files referenced
Speaker 1: a social media campaign carried out by a guy named
Speaker 1: Rob Rice. Here's Rob.
Speaker 3: There's a new trend among anti pipeline protesters online. It's PayPal.
Speaker 3: Last year Standing Rock, we saw one of twenty million
Speaker 3: dollars raised by protesters who set up thousands of gofund
Speaker 3: me accounts.
Speaker 1: Tigerswan was paying Rob Rice to develop Facebook pages aimed
Speaker 1: at local community members, like the ones in the jury pool. Now,
Speaker 1: Rob posted videos where he posed as a news anchor
Speaker 1: reporting on the protesters. He said that they were paid
Speaker 1: outside agitators. He also said that they were working to
Speaker 1: hide how they raised money. Ironically, Rob failed to share
Speaker 1: in these videos that he himself was being paid by
Speaker 1: Tiger Swan.
Speaker 3: Now, paid protesters are switching their tactics. They're beginning to
Speaker 3: use PayPal as their main method of raising money. Why
Speaker 3: because you can't tell how much they've raised or what
Speaker 3: they're using it for.
Speaker 1: The paid protester will come up again and again as
Speaker 1: the boogeyman of this trial. It's an old trope that
Speaker 1: says that protests do not come from local communities with
Speaker 1: serious grievances. Instead, they're driven by professional outsiders and people
Speaker 1: making money off of disruption. Back in nineteen fourteen, the
Speaker 1: Rockefellers and Standard Oil used this claim against a coal
Speaker 1: miner strike. In recent years, the idea of the professional
Speaker 1: protester has popped up more and more as mass protest
Speaker 1: movements have grabbed headlines. And it turns out Energy Transfer
Speaker 1: started pushing that narrative in Morton County nearly a decade ago.
Speaker 1: Neither Rob Rice nor Tiger Swan responded to my requests
Speaker 1: for comment, and I found no evidence that Tiger Swan
Speaker 1: was specifically trying to influence a jury pool back then.
Speaker 1: But what I do know is that Energy Transfer continued
Speaker 1: to aim messaging at the local community. Before I flew
Speaker 1: into town, I was looking through a website energy Transfer
Speaker 1: had recently launched, called Taking Back the Truth. It's dedicated
Speaker 1: to quote setting the record straight, not only on oil
Speaker 1: and gas, the lifeblood of our modern society, but our
Speaker 1: projects and our company. The pipeline company had also posted
Speaker 1: photos on Twitter of North Dakodin's holding giant checks the
Speaker 1: company donated to community groups. Even more bizarrely, last fall,
Speaker 1: these weird newspapers started appearing at the doors of Warren
Speaker 1: County residents. Sandwiched in between articles criticizing Kamala Harris or
Speaker 1: analyzing the dangers of quote unquote illegal aliens were stories
Speaker 1: describing negative things that happened related to the Standing Rock protests.
Speaker 1: Those protests were a long time ago. These weren't articles
Speaker 1: of normal newspaper would publish. According to their court filings,
Speaker 1: Greenpeace uncovered a murky trail of funds that connects these
Speaker 1: weird newspapers to Energy Transfer's board chair, Kelsey Warren. The
Speaker 1: newspaper's publisher, Metric Media, didn't respond to our request for comment.
Speaker 1: When Greenpeace's lawyer asks about the weird newspapers, one guy
Speaker 1: pulls out a copy he brought with him. I thought
Speaker 1: it was it's kind of weird that I got that.
Speaker 1: He says, it brought back memories. I agree with it
Speaker 1: that what happened down there wasn't good. As jury selection continues,
Speaker 1: another potential jur tells the lawyers that she knows that
Speaker 1: Energy Transfer donated money three million dollars actually to build
Speaker 1: this shiny new library a few blocks from the courtroom.
Speaker 1: From what I could tell, energy Transfers propaganda efforts haven't
Speaker 1: slowed down much since the protests, and here in the
Speaker 1: courtroom they're paying off. Before today, I would have thought
Speaker 1: naked bias would be enough to make you ineligible for
Speaker 1: a jury, but Greenpeace's lawyers are having a hell of
Speaker 1: a time getting the judge to disqualify people. It turns
Speaker 1: out a bunch of people in the jury pool have
Speaker 1: financial ties to the fossil fuel industry. There's a guy
Speaker 1: who works maintenance at the local refinery. A woman whose
Speaker 1: family collects royalties from oil extracted on their landon works
Speaker 1: at Dakota Gasification. Another works for Cool Creek Station. Everett
Speaker 1: Jack asks the potential jurors to raise their hands if
Speaker 1: this isn't the right case for them. Five people's hands
Speaker 1: go up. One hand raiser explains, I work in the
Speaker 1: petroleum industry. Juror fourteen says he would be uncomfortable ruling
Speaker 1: against his industry, and he would be less likely to
Speaker 1: believe green pieces witnesses than energy transfers. He's even got
Speaker 1: a second layer of bias. He has a family member
Speaker 1: in law enforcement who policed the protests. Energy Transfer's attorney,
Speaker 1: Trey Cox, hits back with the question of his own,
Speaker 1: one that he will repeat throughout the day. If the
Speaker 1: judge instructs you that the law requires you to only
Speaker 1: consider the evidence in this courtroom and to treat all
Speaker 1: the parties fairly, are you able to follow the judge's instruction. Yes,
Speaker 1: the man replies, it's funny that Trey asks that question.
Speaker 1: He actually wrote a book on how to pick a
Speaker 1: sympathetic jury. It's called Mastering Las Deer. That's a lawyer
Speaker 1: word for jury selection. Trey and as co authors note
Speaker 1: that people are often unaware of their biases. His book
Speaker 1: says this may lead the juror to being dishonest with
Speaker 1: herself as well as the court. A notable and common
Speaker 1: example occurs when a potential juror says they can be
Speaker 1: fair and impartial to both sides after revealing a predisposed
Speaker 1: belief or opinion that renders them incapable of impartiality. Trey's
Speaker 1: own book says questions like the one he's asking today
Speaker 1: hide biases judge. Gian rules that Juror fourteen will remain
Speaker 1: in the jury pool. Versions of this happen over and over.
Speaker 1: A woman whose father works in oil and gas says
Speaker 1: she got lost driving once around the time of the
Speaker 1: protests and found herself in an area where pipeline opponents
Speaker 1: were gathered, banging their hands on her car. Gian rules
Speaker 1: that she remains in the pool. Another man says he
Speaker 1: heard negative stories about the Standing Rock movement from a
Speaker 1: friend who serves in the National Guard and was called
Speaker 1: to respond to the protests. When Green pieces ever at,
Speaker 1: Jack asks if he'd be able to disregard what his
Speaker 1: friend told him. He replies, how can I erase or
Speaker 1: ignore what was said? He adds, wouldn't that be impossible?
Speaker 1: Gian rules that he stays in the pool. Midway through
Speaker 1: day two of this, the moment arrives for the lawyers
Speaker 1: to make their selections. They silently pass papers back and forth.
Speaker 1: Those of us in the gallery observe anxiously, and the
Speaker 1: jurors are announced that guy who said his work in
Speaker 1: the fossil fuel industry means Green Piace would have a disadvantage.
Speaker 1: He's on the jury. Another juror works at a gasification company.
Speaker 1: A third oversees two power facilities. My job depends on
Speaker 1: fossil fuels, he'd said during jury selection. The woman whose
Speaker 1: family receives royalties for oil on their land, she's on
Speaker 1: it too, And three others have had husbands with ties
Speaker 1: to the oil and gas industry. One woman's husband also
Speaker 1: worked for a security company hired by the pipeline, as
Speaker 1: well as for the contractor that drilled under the river
Speaker 1: for energy transfer. She said she didn't think he worked
Speaker 1: at those places during pipeline construction, but still, by my count,
Speaker 1: a total of seven out of eleven jurors and alternates
Speaker 1: have economic ties to the fossil fuel industry, and no
Speaker 1: one on the jury has identified themselves as indigenous. This
Speaker 1: was the best green Peace could do. The organization's lawyer,
Speaker 1: Everett Jack, makes one last motion to relocate the trial.
Speaker 1: Judge Gian denies it. This doesn't seem fair, But maybe
Speaker 1: I shouldn't be surprised, because there's something else I noticed
Speaker 1: in those tiger Swan private security documents I mentioned earlier.
Speaker 1: In addition to spreading propaganda about paid protesters, Tigerswan was
Speaker 1: also helping energy transfer look into the money behind the
Speaker 1: Standing Rock movement. They put together spreadsheets listing dozens of
Speaker 1: crowdfunding pages and how much each raised. They were identifying
Speaker 1: which cars showed up at certain protests, and they were
Speaker 1: using an infiltrator to figure out what group's protesters belonged to.
Speaker 1: They didn't seem to mention Greenpeace, although there are several
Speaker 1: pages missing. Their emails showed that they were clear about
Speaker 1: what all of this was for. As early as twenty seventeen,
Speaker 1: Tigerswan was specifically helping energy transfer lawyers develop a racketeering
Speaker 1: case a Rico. It was a different law firm that
Speaker 1: actually filed Energy Transfers first RICO suit. Pips and Dunn
Speaker 1: took over the case in twenty twenty three, but it
Speaker 1: turns out they first got involved almost a decade ago.
Speaker 1: Before the court clears for the day, I rush outside
Speaker 1: to try to get people to talk to me about
Speaker 1: what's happening. I wait at the courtroom doorway. Who My
Speaker 1: fingers are very cold? Tree Cox and Energy Transfers other
Speaker 1: lawyers exit. I shoot my shot, mister Cox, Can I
Speaker 1: ask you a quick question? Okay, they don't want to
Speaker 1: talk to me. Hey, are you guys able to share
Speaker 1: a quick comment.
Speaker 4: Nope, sorry, okay, neither.
Speaker 1: Do people from Greenpeace, at least not with the trial
Speaker 1: just starting, I'm going to have my work cut out
Speaker 1: for me. I finally find someone who is down to talk.
Speaker 1: Scott Badendock. He's a lawyer with the Environmental Law Institute
Speaker 1: and he's part of a group called the Energy Transfer
Speaker 1: Versus Greenpeace Trial Monitoring Committee. There are a group of
Speaker 1: lawyers that came together specifically to watch this trial.
Speaker 5: Trial monitors don't monitor trials because they want to. They
Speaker 5: monitor trials because they feel they need to. And Bismarck
Speaker 5: in end of February is definitely not my first choice.
Speaker 1: Scott and the other trial monitors called us a slap
Speaker 1: suit slap spelled slapp meaning strategic lawsuit against public participation.
Speaker 1: The point of a slapsuit is not necessarily to win,
Speaker 1: but to drain opponents of resources and discourage them from
Speaker 1: speaking out. Slaps are meant to set an example. What's
Speaker 1: in your notes? What really stood out to you?
Speaker 5: It seemed like virtually every single juror was directly or
Speaker 5: one step removed from the oil and gas industry. Then
Speaker 5: when you combine that with the fact that they have
Speaker 5: negative opinions about what happened there. Those two together sort
Speaker 5: of combined to be a real problem.
Speaker 1: Some of these trial monitors have run into Gibson Done
Speaker 1: and Crutcher before. Gibson Dunn represented Chevron in a notorious
Speaker 1: reco case against an environmental lawyer named Stephen Don. It
Speaker 1: turns out Stephen is also in North Dakota. He's one
Speaker 1: of the people who organize the trial monitoring committee. Steven
Speaker 1: is tough to catch outside the courtroom. He's constantly belining
Speaker 1: it to his car to look at his phone and
Speaker 1: post updates on social media about what's happening inside the courtroom.
Speaker 1: I make arrangements to meet him for an interview at
Speaker 1: his hotel. For Stephen, this case is personal.
Speaker 6: I really wanted to come and look those Gibson Done
Speaker 6: lawyers in the eye and let them know of sitting
Speaker 6: right there on the front row watching them, and I'm
Speaker 6: posting about it, We're putting out statements about it, and
Speaker 6: we're going to do a report about it.
Speaker 1: To understand the trial here in North Dakota, you have
Speaker 1: to understand energy transfers law firm Gibson, Dune and Crutcher.
Speaker 1: They have a history of helping big corporations avoid accountability
Speaker 1: for harming the environment or undermining indigenous people's rights. At
Speaker 1: the end of Steven's clash with Gibson, Done and Crutcher,
Speaker 1: he lost his law license and even his freedom. The
Speaker 1: case harmed Stephen's clients too, indigenous Ecuadorians fighting oil contamination
Speaker 1: in the Amazon. To really get to the bottom of it,
Speaker 1: we have to go back to a case from the
Speaker 1: early two thousands and a legal strategy that Gibson Dunn
Speaker 1: developed back then. In two thousand and seven, banana workers
Speaker 1: in Nicaragua won a multimillion dollar lawsuit in the US
Speaker 1: against the fruit company Dole, for poisoning them with a
Speaker 1: pesticide called DCBP. Dole hit back. They hired Gibson, Dun
Speaker 1: and Krutcher to launch a full fledged attack against everyone involved.
Speaker 1: Dole's general counsel at the time gave their strategy cute
Speaker 1: name The Kill step Dole and the lawyers alleged a
Speaker 1: vast conspiracy where the worker's attorney recruited fake banana workers
Speaker 1: to use to go after the fruit company. There were
Speaker 1: all kinds of holes in this story, but to the
Speaker 1: American judge, it didn't really matter. The money that had
Speaker 1: been awarded to the workers was taken back, and Dolan
Speaker 1: Gibson Dunn didn't just go after the lawyers and the plaintiffs.
Speaker 1: They went after the story that was being told. They
Speaker 1: sued filmmaker Frederick Curtin, who made a documentary about the
Speaker 1: banana workers called Bananas.
Speaker 7: They create an angle and then everybody has to follow.
Speaker 7: If he goes against the angle they created, you are
Speaker 7: the radical, you know.
Speaker 1: Eventually, Frederick forcetle to drop the lawsuit, and he even
Speaker 1: won a countersuit. A court in California said that this
Speaker 1: was a slap suit, that strategic lawsuit against public participation thing.
Speaker 1: But Dolan Gibson Dunn had damaged Frederick's ability to tell
Speaker 1: the banana workers story. He couldn't get his film distributed
Speaker 1: in the US.
Speaker 7: We had sold the US TV rights to ITVS, which
Speaker 7: was a part of PBS, and they didn't dare to
Speaker 7: broadcast it.
Speaker 1: A few years later, Chevron hired Gibson Dunn Crutcher to
Speaker 1: go after another lawyer, Stephen Donziger. Drill did a whole
Speaker 1: season on Stephen's case, and I re listened to it.
Speaker 1: The heart of the story was another horrible case of contamination,
Speaker 1: this time in the Ecuadorian Amazon. The homeland of indigenous
Speaker 1: Ecuadorians was destroyed, and Stephen helped them win a big
Speaker 1: case against the oil giant Chevron Gears from Drilled Season five,
Speaker 1: hosted by My Boss investigative reporter and editor Amy.
Speaker 4: Westervelt, Chevron was ordered to pay more than nine billion
Speaker 4: dollars to clean up waste pits of oil and refining
Speaker 4: fluids left in the Ecuadorian Amazon by Texaco, the company
Speaker 4: Chevron acquired in two thousand. But the case didn't end there.
Speaker 4: Back in the US, Chevron took Donziger and the other
Speaker 4: lawyers to civil court, filing a racketeering case against them,
Speaker 4: otherwise known as a Rico case, and accusing them of fraud.
Speaker 1: It was the kill step all over again. Stephen lost
Speaker 1: the Rico case, and over the next few years Chevron
Speaker 1: and Gibson Dunn kept going after him. He ended up
Speaker 1: on house arrest for two years and in jail for
Speaker 1: forty five days for a contempt of court charge.
Speaker 6: The impact on me was profound, on my life, life
Speaker 6: of my family. Chevron is still after me. I cannot
Speaker 6: travel out of the country. They have taken most of
Speaker 6: my money I live off basically philanthropy. People giving money
Speaker 6: to my legal defense fund and helps pay my household expenses.
Speaker 6: I mean, it's a crazy way to live. I'm sixty
Speaker 6: three years old. I have nothing other than half of
Speaker 6: my house, which Chevron has a lean on.
Speaker 1: Perhaps even more troubling is that the indigenous Ecuadorians couldn't
Speaker 1: collect the settlement awarded to them. Chevron had pulled its
Speaker 1: assets out of Ecuador, and now a US judge had
Speaker 1: said they couldn't collect in the US either. Just like
Speaker 1: with the banana workers in Nicaragua, the victims of contamination
Speaker 1: were left with no justice in this case too. They
Speaker 1: went after a journalist, a guy named Joe Berlinger, who
Speaker 1: directed a film about the contamination called Crude. Chevron and
Speaker 1: Gibson Dunn forced him to hand over his unused footage
Speaker 1: so they could use it as evidence against Stephen and
Speaker 1: the others. Gibson Dun was effective at using the courtroom
Speaker 1: to weaponize Stephen Donziger's missteps, and the legal drama also
Speaker 1: distracted from the oil oozing through the Amazon rainforest. At
Speaker 1: the heart of the kill step strategy is an attempt
Speaker 1: to discredit the client's legal adversaries. But the kill step
Speaker 1: is more than that. The bananas filmmaker Frederick Gerton calls
Speaker 1: it the double kill, extreme legal aggression combined with strategic communication.
Speaker 7: So they tried to take down my character. They tried
Speaker 7: to take down the lawyer who represented the banana workers.
Speaker 7: You can see that with the crew. They tried to
Speaker 7: go after Joe Berlinger, and then they went after his lawyer,
Speaker 7: and they with the lawyer of Steve Donziger. They were
Speaker 7: really very successful taking down his figure, his public figure.
Speaker 7: And I think that's what you are up against. That's
Speaker 7: the that's the double kill in some ways, and it's
Speaker 7: it's not a new thing, you know, because every whistle
Speaker 7: blower in history has had it coming after. If you're
Speaker 7: a factory worker and you you go and say, hey,
Speaker 7: we are actually letting out poison in the chemicals in
Speaker 7: the river, there will be a story first of all saying, oh,
Speaker 7: you are risking the work of all your colleagues, and
Speaker 7: then there will be a story he's probably beating his wife,
Speaker 7: or he might be an alcoholic. You know, I heard
Speaker 7: that he's hard on drugs. You know, you do everything
Speaker 7: to make the whistle blower look like he's not somebody
Speaker 7: you could trust. That's that's a very old technique, but
Speaker 7: they used it. They infuse that technique with millions of dollars.
Speaker 1: There's another threat that connects several of Gibson Dunn's most
Speaker 1: well known cases, attacks on the rights of Indigenous nations.
Speaker 1: Natalie Segovia is director of the Water Protector's Legal Collective,
Speaker 1: which is represented pipeline opponents. She's Quetchua and is also
Speaker 1: part of the monitoring group and is in town for
Speaker 1: the trial.
Speaker 2: Gibson Dunn has been involved in struggles against Indigenous peoples
Speaker 2: and against indigenous justice for a long time.
Speaker 1: She says the Stephen Donziger and Chevron case is one example,
Speaker 1: but there's another that's even bigger.
Speaker 2: They took up the case against the Indian Child Welfare
Speaker 2: Act all the way up to the Supreme Court.
Speaker 1: The Indian Child Welfare Act or IQUA, passed unanimously in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies in response to the Indian Adoption Project
Speaker 1: and the forced separation of Indigenous children from their families.
Speaker 1: The law assures that if Indigenous kids are removed from
Speaker 1: their parents or lose their parents, they have an opportunity
Speaker 1: to be placed with indigenous family members and communities before
Speaker 1: being adopted out. Equo went unchallenged for more than thirty years. Then,
Speaker 1: beginning in twenty thirteen, a series of constitutional challenges were
Speaker 1: filed against it by corporate law firms supported by a
Speaker 1: whole ecosystem of right wing think tanks. In twenty fifteen, Gibson,
Speaker 1: dun and Krutcher joined some of these cases, and by
Speaker 1: twenty seventeen it became the main law firm taking on
Speaker 1: the cases pro bono.
Speaker 2: For a law firm to willingly step in and try
Speaker 2: to overturn legislation that was meant to be restorative and
Speaker 2: reparative in a form of reparative justice just kind of
Speaker 2: tells you the kind of law firm that they are.
Speaker 1: One of those cases went all the way up to
Speaker 1: the Supreme Court in twenty twenty three, and Trey Cox,
Speaker 1: the lawyer in the courtroom today, worked on it too.
Speaker 1: His law firm at the time partnered with Gibson Done
Speaker 1: on the case, and he joined Gibson Done soon after Gibson,
Speaker 1: Dune and Crutcher lost the Supreme Court case attacking EQUA,
Speaker 1: but the firm didn't move on. They already have another
Speaker 1: constitutional challenge lined up. Tribal leaders across the US believe
Speaker 1: that these cases are not about the welfare of Native
Speaker 1: kids or adoptive families. The true target is Indigenous land rights.
Speaker 1: And bear with me here because this one is even
Speaker 1: more tricky. In the EQUA case, Gibson Dunn argued that
Speaker 1: EQUA creates an unconstitutional race based preference. The thing is,
Speaker 1: being Indigenous is not a racial identity. It's a political
Speaker 1: one that means you belong to a nation that has
Speaker 1: a treaty with the United States that affords you certain rights.
Speaker 1: Rewriting Indigenous identity is racial would make it a lot
Speaker 1: easier to attack Indigenous nations rights to decide what happens
Speaker 1: on their land. Natalie Segovia from Water Protectors Legal Collective
Speaker 1: says that energy transfers lawsuit against green Peace is also
Speaker 1: about undermining Indigenous rights for corporate gain, because she says,
Speaker 1: the true targets of this legal attack include members of
Speaker 1: the Standing Rock Zoo Tribe.
Speaker 8: This lawsuit was a proxy war against the Standing Rock
Speaker 8: Szoo Tribe and against indigenous sovereignty.
Speaker 1: In the months and years before we got to trial,
Speaker 1: the impacts of this case went way beyond green Peace.
Speaker 1: I asked her about Cody Hall and the fact that
Speaker 1: he was still named an energy transfer's lawsuit up until
Speaker 1: the trial began.
Speaker 8: It's sort of like a scarecrow tactic, right, If you
Speaker 8: put up a scarecrow, doesn't actually do anything to physically
Speaker 8: protect your crops, but it might scare others that are
Speaker 8: similarly situated from coming anywhere near this specific thing. You know,
Speaker 8: they weren't just It wasn't just the named parties. There
Speaker 8: were third parties that received subpoenats.
Speaker 1: In the case, the organized that Natalie leads, which has
Speaker 1: provided legal support to pipeline opponents, was one of them.
Speaker 8: Water Protectively Collective received a subpoena in twenty twenty one.
Speaker 8: We fought it for three years, and we were just
Speaker 8: the first of many organizations that were subpoenaed throughout for
Speaker 8: their work in proximity to Standing Rock, in part to
Speaker 8: learn information is part of the discovery process, but also
Speaker 8: in every slab suit there is this measure of intimidation,
Speaker 8: chilling and a chilling effect on broader society and then
Speaker 8: a broader subset in particular environmental and indigenous organizations.
Speaker 1: As has been the case, was so many of Gibson
Speaker 1: Dun's lawsuits. Rewriting the narrative, changing the story being told
Speaker 1: about Standing Rock has been critical to the success of
Speaker 1: this case, and yet again in the Energy Transfer versus
Speaker 1: Greenpeace case, journalists have been targeted. The company sought to
Speaker 1: force reporters with the media outlet Unicorn Riot to hand
Speaker 1: over their footage to pick through for evidence. The pipeline
Speaker 1: company lawyers took it all the way up to Minnesota
Speaker 1: Supreme Court, where the state's shield law for journalists stopped them.
Speaker 1: Gibson Dunn's pattern of going after journalists is important because
Speaker 1: the firm has also used the media to build a
Speaker 1: reputation for defending the First Amendment. Gibson Dunn has offered
Speaker 1: its services pro bono or joined the boards of CNN,
Speaker 1: Pro Publica, Reveal, and the International Women's Media Foundation. That
Speaker 1: work is often carried out by a Gibson Dunn partner
Speaker 1: named Ted Boutros. He's a First Amendment expert who also
Speaker 1: happens to be Chevron's attorney in several climate cases, and
Speaker 1: he worked on the Dole case where the firm developed
Speaker 1: the kill step. Ted Buttrose would not talk to me
Speaker 1: for this story. Back at the hotel. Stephen and the
Speaker 1: other trial monitors are waiting for me to finish this
Speaker 1: interview so they can go eat dinner. Well, I think
Speaker 1: that's all I've got. Is there anything you want to
Speaker 1: add that we didn't talk about, though, Let's go eat.
Speaker 1: I reached out to Energy Transfer and Gibson Dune about
Speaker 1: everything I talked about with the trial monitors. Gibson Done
Speaker 1: declined to comment. Energy Transfer sent me this statement. Our
Speaker 1: lawsuit is about recovering damages for the harm Greenpeace caused
Speaker 1: our company. It is not about free speech. They're organizing,
Speaker 1: funding and encouraging the unlawful destruction of property, and the
Speaker 1: dissemination of misinformation goes well beyond the exercise of free speech.
Speaker 1: We look forward to proving our case and we trust
Speaker 1: the North Dakota legal system to do that. In the
Speaker 1: lobby of Stephen's hotel, a commercial blairs on a big
Speaker 1: TV surrounded by couches.
Speaker 9: Tomorrow, millions of Americans will go to work and school,
Speaker 9: some will go on vacation, and others will simply come home.
Speaker 9: But America will move tomorrow because North Dakota works Today.
Speaker 9: North Dakota produces more than one point one million barrels
Speaker 9: of crude oil every day, with almost half of that
Speaker 9: safely going through the Dakota Access pipeline.
Speaker 1: With jury selection behind us, the real show is about
Speaker 1: to begin, and I'm eager to hear how each side
Speaker 1: will present their cases. Greenpeace has made a last ditch
Speaker 1: attempt to relocate the trial the appeal to the North
Speaker 1: Dakota Supreme Court, but I'm not so surprised when I
Speaker 1: learned that the appeal is denied. Our request for better
Speaker 1: media access is denied.
Speaker 7: Too.
Speaker 1: When I talked to trial monitor Natalie Segovia, she points
Speaker 1: out something funny. One of the state Supreme Court judges
Speaker 1: who weighed in on the trial relocation decision and the
Speaker 1: media access decision previously recused himself from being judge in
Speaker 1: this trial. He'd said before he had a conflict of interest,
Speaker 1: but that didn't stop him from weighing in this time.
Speaker 1: Everywhere I turn with this case, I run into another
Speaker 1: ethical hiccup. When I reach out to the court clerk
Speaker 1: for clarification about the recusal, the court refiles the decision,
Speaker 1: this time without that judge. As I get ready to
Speaker 1: listen to opening statements tomorrow, I want to believe these
Speaker 1: jurors sincere pledges that they will listen to the evidence
Speaker 1: and issue a fair judgment. But as an investigative journalist,
Speaker 1: I'm also supposed to follow the evidence. I know the
Speaker 1: makeup of the jury. I've read lawyer Trey Cox's own books.
Speaker 1: This case is stacked against Greenpeace. I want to believe
Speaker 1: that green Peace will only lose if Energy Transfer proves
Speaker 1: its case. And I haven't really seen yet what kind
Speaker 1: of dirt the pipeline company is dug up. But if
Speaker 1: Energy Transfer didn't find a smoking gun, if Greenpeace loses anyway,
Speaker 1: then I want to see how they pull this thing off.
Speaker 1: Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This season was
Speaker 1: reported and written by me Allen Brown. Our senior editor
Speaker 1: is Audrey Quinn. Additional editing by Tristan Attone Et Grist.
Speaker 1: Our producer and sound designer is Ray Payne. Mixing and
Speaker 1: mastering by Martin Saltz, Austwick and Peter Duff. Fact checking
Speaker 1: by Shilpa Jindia. Our first amendment attorney is James Wheaton.
Speaker 1: Our impact producer is Lindsay Crowder. Marketing by Maggie Taylor.
Speaker 1: Original artwork for this season was created by Victor Pascual
Speaker 1: of Digital Navajo. Our theme music is by Dear Lady.
Speaker 1: The show was created and executive produced by Amy Westervelt.
Speaker 1: The Center for Median Democracy supported Document Review for the season.
Speaker 1: For related stories and to support our work, check out
Speaker 1: drilled dot Media To follow my work, check out my
Speaker 1: newsletter Eco files at Allen Brown dot Ghost dot Io.
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