New York, NY – An independent committee of prominent advocates today issued a scathing report documenting extensive due process violations in the Greenpeace trial in North Dakota, including a "staggering" level of judicial bias and outright jury manipulation that the group says resulted in an unprecedented $660 million jury verdict now threatening the survival of the legendary environmental group.

Although the trial court later reduced the judgment to $345 million, Greenpeace leaders say the organization still faces potential bankruptcy if a pending appeal and post-trial motions do not go its way. Considered a founder of the modern environmental movement with offices in 25 countries, Greenpeace built a global reputation in the 1970s with spectacular actions to stop nuclear testing and industrial-scale whaling in the North Pacific, before turning its attention to the fossil fuel industry.

Energy Transfer (ET), the nation's largest pipeline company, targeted Greenpeace USA and two affiliate organizations — Greenpeace International and the Greenpeace Fund — with a lawsuit in North Dakota after it was confronted with the largest Indigenous-led protests in history at Standing Rock in 2016–2017. The protests, which attracted more than 100,000 people over several months, sought to block construction of an oil pipeline across ancestral lands that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe said threatened its sacred cultural sites and water supply.

Several lawyers and law students monitored each day of the three-week trial, which took place in 2025 in Morton County, a remote rural area of North Dakota. There is still no public transcript of the proceedings, which the presiding judge refused to livestream despite repeated requests from independent journalists and members of the trial monitoring group.

Members of the monitoring team — who came together in early 2025 amid concerns that Greenpeace's fair trial rights were being violated — were unanimous in their condemnation of what they saw as significant flaws in the proceedings. They also underscored the case's importance to the rule of law and free speech rights in the United States for all activists, regardless of political orientation.

"This is unequivocally one of the most important cases in American history — it's far bigger than the survival of Greenpeace or even the environmental movement as a whole," said Marty Garbus, the veteran U.S. civil rights attorney who has represented Nelson Mandela and Vaclav Havel over a storied six-decade career. "If this outrageous verdict is allowed to stand, this case will likely impair the advocacy of activists, religious groups, political organizations, churches, charities, and anyone exercising a constitutional right to speak on an issue of public importance, regardless of where they fall on the political spectrum.”

"Based on our own observations, the court in North Dakota abdicated its sacred duty to conduct a fair trial," Garbus added. "I've been a part of or observed more than 100 trials in my life. This was probably the most unfair one I've ever witnessed in the United States."

"We documented pervasive bias in the jury pool in favor of Energy Transfer, which completely blocked Greenpeace's ability to get a fair trial," said attorney and trial monitor Jeanne Mirer, former president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. "Juror after juror conceded they had ties to the very oil and gas industry that was prosecuting the case, and the judge refused to remove them. Not a single Native American or person of color was seated on the jury, even though Indigenous rights motivated the Standing Rock protests — adding to the unfairness.

"In addition, multiple efforts to change venue away from the protest site — which we considered an absolute necessity to ensure a fair trial — were rejected by the court," Mirer added. "The bottom line is that Greenpeace did not get a fair trial."

The report is based on in-person trial observation, document review, and examination of publicly available information to ensure a comprehensive and accurate account of the proceedings. It identifies numerous due process violations throughout the trial and finds that the verdict sets a legal precedent posing grave threats to free speech, the rule of law, judicial fairness, and Indigenous rights.

The monitoring committee identified the following serious problems with the trial:

• Judge James Gion, the presiding judge, failed to change venue despite clear evidence that Energy Transfer's lawyers tainted the jury pool through a paid advertising blitz in the community and by sending a fake pro-industry newspaper to all county residents.

• Judge Gion consistently made evidentiary rulings that blocked Greenpeace from presenting its full defense.

• Judge Gion gave the jury misleading and confusing instructions that led to an exorbitant verdict unsupported by the facts or the law.

• The case bore several telltale signs of a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) — a harassment lawsuit designed primarily to chill free speech and political activity rather than litigate meritorious claims. SLAPP suits violate the First Amendment and are outlawed in most U.S. states.

• The driving force behind the case was Kelcy Warren, the billionaire founder and CEO of Energy Transfer, who has publicly said the purpose of the lawsuit was to "send a message" to the environmental movement, and who separately said he wanted activists "removed from the gene pool." Warren has been a major donor to Donald Trump's campaigns.

Steven Donziger, a human rights advocate and attorney who won the largest environmental damages lawsuit in history on behalf of Amazonian communities in Ecuador, was also part of the monitoring committee. He said he was disturbed that ET attributed all of its alleged damages to Greenpeace despite the group having had only six staff members at a protest that drew more than 100,000 people over several months.

"This was a targeted legal attack on maybe the largest environmental organization in the world, designed to weaken the environmental movement as a whole," said Donziger, who was himself targeted by Chevron in a notorious SLAPP case after helping his clients win a $10 billion judgment affirmed by the supreme courts of Ecuador and Canada. He noted that ET used the same law firm, Gibson Dunn, that Chevron used to target the legal team in the Ecuador case.

"Watching the trial against Greenpeace in North Dakota shows yet again that fossil fuel corporations are using a playbook to weaponize the law against their adversaries," he said. "These companies go out of their way to steer these illegitimate harassment lawsuits to judges who — either out of malice or ignorance — allow them to proceed to trial, burdening defendants with years of exorbitant costs and psychological stress even if they ultimately prevail."

"I have observed human rights abuses and sham trials across the globe under some of the world's most repressive regimes, but the myriad violations of fair trial rights I witnessed in that North Dakota courtroom shocked me to the core," said Wade McMullen, Esq., Distinguished Fellow of the Human Rights Institute at the Georgetown University Law Center. "The analysis presented in this report will serve as a case study in how to expose judicial malpractice and demand accountability from those in power."

"I recognize this playbook from Chevron's attacks on the Indigenous peoples of Ecuador and their lawyers: a fossil fuel corporation fabricates a false narrative to undermine Indigenous rights and evade accountability for its pollution," said Paul Paz y Miño, Deputy Director of Amazon Watch. "It is no surprise that Gibson Dunn — the same law firm that weaponized the U.S. legal system against the people of Ecuador and their advocates — is once again designing this assault and profiting from it. I witnessed the same tactics in both cases."

Post-Verdict Developments

In October 2025, Judge Gion reduced the $660 million jury verdict to $345 million. He issued a final judgment in February 2026 ordering Greenpeace to pay an additional 11% interest on that sum until it is paid in full. Greenpeace has posted a $25 million bond to secure its right to appeal.

The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe has denounced the verdict on multiple grounds. As Greenpeace appeals in North Dakota, Greenpeace International — a defendant in the North Dakota case, headquartered in Amsterdam — has separately filed a landmark anti-SLAPP lawsuit against Energy Transfer in the Netherlands. That case is pending.

About the Trial Monitoring Committee

The Energy Transfer v. Greenpeace trial monitoring committee includes veteran civil rights attorney Marty Garbus; Jeanne Mirer, president of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers; Wade McMullen, Distinguished Fellow at the Georgetown Law Human Rights Institute; Terry Collingsworth, founder and executive director of IRAdvocates; Nadia Ahmad, associate professor at Barry University School of Law; Paul Paz y Miño, deputy director of Amazon Watch; Simon Taylor, co-founder of Global Witness; Ayisha Saddiqa, climate advisor to the United Nations Secretary-General; and Steven Donziger, the human rights advocate and attorney targeted by Chevron after helping Amazonian communities in Ecuador win a landmark pollution case. Law students from Georgetown University and Columbia University also supported the committee's work.

To learn more about the committee, visit trialmonitors.org.

For a summary of the committee's findings and recommendations, click here.

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