This was not the heroic ending that Steven Donziger had envisioned, wanted, deserved. The Harvard-educated environmental lawyer and liberal activist — the scourge of Big Oil, the Left’s rainmaker — was, after all, the moral mastermind behind one of history’s most staggering legal judgments. He was going to land a blow for Mother Earth, crush the evil Polluters, make them pay — a lot — and then take bows.
They make movies about guys like Steven Donziger, don’t they?
They do. And they did.
In hindsight, they probably wish they hadn’t, because what the filmmakers left on the cutting-room floor ended up not as debris in a trash barrel but as evidence in a federal courtroom. And Steven Donziger ended up not as a liberal hero who brought a corporate giant to its knees but as a broke attorney, his license suspended, his ankle clamped with an electronic bracelet, his passport confiscated, his reputation recast as that of a champion scammer in the annals of American jurisprudence. Once the Oscars beckoned. Now it’s the jailhouse.
To read the full article on National Review, click here.
