By the final day of testimony in the Energy Transfer versus Greenpeace trial, it's March thirteenth, and an early spring has melted the snow. Kelsey Warren is called as a witness. He's Energy Transfer's board chair and largest shareholder, and he was CEO when the Dakota Access pipeline was being built. Energy Transfer has spent a whole lot of time trying to keep Kelsey Warren's testimony out of the courtroom. Their lawyers tried to claim that Kelsey didn't have any useful
information about his own company's famously controversial pipeline. In interviews, Kelsey's made it clear that he has strong feelings about the standing Rock movement. Here he is on CNBC right after the original Greenpeace lawsuit was filed in twenty seventeen.
What happened to us was tragic coming that lies were being told. Tens of millions of dollars were being raised by Greenpeace and others based on these lies.
Kelsey's a pretty sensitive guy. In addition to his island and hunter and his collection of exotic animals, he also owns a record label and rates his own tender songs on the guitar. Jackson Brown is his idol. Kelsey has a reputation for using the legal system to lash out when he feels his company is unfairly being attacked, which is exactly what he thought was happening with the Standing Rock movement. It couldn't have helped that his hero, Jackson Brown,
publicly denounced Kelsey's company's pipeline. Jackson even gave a benefit concert in honor of the water protectors.
We got to do something. Everybody's afraid of these environmental groups and the fear that it may look wrong if you fight back with these people. But what they did to us is wrong and they're going to pay for.
At the Morton County Courthouse, Kelsey's face appears on the flat screen TVs around the courtroom. It's a pre recorded video deposition. He has a shock of white hair and his eyebrows are furrowed like he's concerned. The lawyer goes over how Donald Trump's executive order in twenty seventeen told the Army Corps to approve the Dakota Access pipeline's easement, and about midway through his testimony, Kelsey drops his first surprise.
That executive order that allowed energy transfer to start drilling. Energy Transfer actually drafted it. Energy Transfers lawyers turned back to the question at the heart of the case. Do you have any personal knowledge about anything Greenpeace did at all in relation to the protests, a lawyer asks from off camera. No, Kelsey replies, But then the lawyer asks
about a different nonprofit called Earth Justice. It's the public interest law organization that represented the Standing Rock tribe in the early days of its legal fight to stop the pipeline. At the name Earth Justice, Kelsey perks up, and I can start to see why Energy Transfer might not have wanted him to testify. Scumbags, Kelsey says of Earth Justice. To be clear, Earth Justice is not Green Peace. It's not the organization this suit is against. Why do you
say that, sir? The lawyer replies. By way of explanation, Kelsey begins to describe a meeting he had in December twenty sixteen with the Standing Rock Siue chairman, Dave oar Shambo. I went there with the intention of working out a financial transaction with the chairman, he says. Kelsey starts talking about how he tried to make a deal with the Standing Rock Sioux chairman to end the protests. As if the tribe, not Green Peace, was the one leading the protests.
Kelsey goes on, I said, Dave, I'm here to make a deal with you. Do you want cash? What do you want? I said, we own this land up there. Kelsey says he offered the chairman the ranch that the pipeline company bought, the one that held the sacred sites and the drill pad. We could build you a whole new school on your reservation. Let's make a deal. He says. He made it very clear. Kelsey says of the chairman that he could not accept any offer for me that
involved them backing down again. Kelsey is applying that it was the Standing Rocks Sioux tribe, not Green Peace, that had the power to end the uprising, and he has a surprising theory about why Chairman Davar Shambo refused. It was clear to me that he had struck a deal with the devil, Kelsey says, and the devil being Earth Justice.
The lawyer replies, yes. Kelsey. Warren apparently believes that the thing that stopped Standing Rocks Chairman Davar Shambo from accepting energy transfers deal must have been another competing deal with Earth Justice. I read between the lines, and I believe that they made a deal and our shambo couldn't make a deal with me. He says. I asked Dave oar Shambo about this. He told me he did mean to discuss safety with Kelsey Warren, but he said he was
not there to negotiate ending the protests. Back in court, the lawyer asks, nothing was said about Greenpeace during that meeting? Was it not that I recall? Kelsey replies, we're at the finale of the trial. An Energy Transfer's board chair has just given us a whole new theory of the case which completely contradicts his company's lawsuit. After three and a half weeks of testimony and months of my own reporting,
this case is full of holes. To summarize, we've seen that Greenpeace donations in fundraising at Standing Rock only amounted to a small fraction of the millions in donations that poured into the movement from around the world. Only six employees from Greenpeace Inc. Visited Standing Rock out of well over ten thousand people who show, and no one from Greenpeace International or green Peace Fund ever went the whole
time this was all going on. The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other indigenous nations were very publicly fighting the pipeline in court. The pipeline company had no ability to drill under the river during the protests because they had no permission from the US Army Corps of Engineers to
do that. Meanwhile, Greenpeace's allegedly defamatory statements, including that police used violence against nonviolent demonstrators, that the pipeline passes through tribal land, and that Energy Transfer deliberately desecrated sacred sites, are assertions that the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and many others stand by to this day. Now today, on the last day of testimony, Energy Transfer's own board chair has a whole nother story of the movement. But will this
even matter to the jurors? This season of Drilled, we bring you slapped the story of an indigenous nation fighting for its water, an environmental nonprofit facing extinction, and an energy giant using the courts to punish protesters. I'm Alan Brown. The Monday after Kelsey Warren's testimony, Energy Transfers lawyer Trey Cox steps in front of the jury for his closing statement.
Trey tells the jurors that Greenpeace employees are master manipulators, and deceptive to the core volume on the courtroom drama has been turned way up. Think about the mafia, He suggests, I got to see a guy about a thing. Did you get the package? Sleeps with the fishes? These are the type of words that people in conspiracies use as
words to communicate other things. He says that Green Piece relies on similar code words to trick people, like campfire, nonviolent, art, tent, solidarity, out, solidarity, and indigenous leadership. These are some of the most deceptive words that they use. And when they stand up here and they try to use those words, I want you
to call them out as code words. Tray starts to get into the damages what Energy Transfer wants Greenpeace to pay them, and he reveals that Energy Transfer isn't just looking for the over two hundred and sixty six million dollars the company claims they spent on countering the protests. They want triple that total, including massive exemplary damages, extra money meant to make an example out of green Pieace. He tells the jury that ruling an Energy Transfer's favor
is about more than just this case. It needs to be done for Morton County. It needs to be done for Morton County's law enforcement, and more importantly, it needs to be done for the next community where Greenpeace exploits an opportunity to push its agenda at any cost. And I don't know whether that's going to be in Louisiana or Texas, or Oklahoma or Ohio, but you have the
responsibility of protecting those others. The Greenpeace organizations present their closing statements, a detailed outline of all the inconsistencies and holes in energy transfers lawsuit, and Judge gian sends the jury to begin their deliberations. And now all there has to do is wait. A decision could come in a few hours or even a few weeks. Even at this point I was not really sure what was going to happen, but I figured the best way to get a sense of how this might go was to talk to some
people who are from here. After all, this piece was in the hands of Morton County community members. As I was driving into Mandan a while back, I had noticed a digital sign advertising community Events Testicle Festival at the Moose Lodge. It flashed in Neon Red I knew what I had to do.
These are rocky mountain oys juices. Do I need to tell who Jim what they're actually made out of? Well, okay, well mature bulls, you know, hoof with Danngus whatever you want to call it a new big nuts.
He just made the shape like bigger than his head.
Well not quite that big, but anyways, Dennis slice them and a little.
That's a lot of.
Man. Dan's Moose Lodge is packed. The space is half dive bar, half events hall, and tonight there's a line of people waiting to order Bisenbergers and Rocky Mountain oysters. A bunch of tables and chairs are set up for people to eat. Dale, who doesn't want to use his last name, is a retired rancher. Alongside oil and gas, cattle, ranching is one of Morton County's biggest industries, and the Testicle Festival takes place every year during calving season.
I mean it's not terrible. It tastes like a fried thing, you know.
I want to know what people here thought about the protests against the Dakota Access pipeline. So I'm working my way around the room. I start chatting with Helena Reel and Betty Thompson. Both of them grew up on farms. I got my first bite of a Rocky Mountain oyster.
I'm lucky you and you're from where I'm from the Twin Cities.
Originally I grew up in Saint Paul and now I'm based in Brooklyn. I asked her about Mandan, North Dakota.
Man, it's good man. It's a small community that sticks up for its fellow Man. I mean, that's what we do.
What is it like when those protests were going on for this community.
We didn't like it, No, plain and simple, we didn't like it. That's all the protesting. And then then they closed the roads. You couldn't go anywhere. Then they come to Manden, they're marching down main street with dead pigs. Really, who does that?
Wondering what Betty and Helena think about Greenpeace's argument that people from here are too biased to be neutral jurors. Part of the reason I want to talk to people in Mandan is because one of the things they're trying to argue is that the trial should not be held here because there's it would be impossible to find someone who's totally unbiased on the subject.
Yeah, I agree, agree, Lena.
Says, there's another guy I should talk to. She introduces me to a rancher named Jim, who also doesn't want to use his last name. His family has a ranch not far from where the anti pipeline camps were located, and he says he and his neighbors felt unsafe.
I was repeatedly threatened, chased up and down the highway. They'd follow me from our rams thirty miles south all the way to town, follow me around town until I would stop to confronting. Then they'd take off. The I was spied on, threatened. In the middle of the night, they'd be in our yard. I'd catch him. I mean.
Jim says he's convinced that what he experienced didn't come from people from the standing rocks.
You tried and they say it was outside or string things up. That was our view of it, because there was never We never had issues with anybody that we knew locally. When you had issues and when I got you know, you'd catch people in my yard sneaking in there. It was always people from where are you from? Oh, I come up from Nebraska or I you know. It was never local people.
Right Dale is listening in he shares who he thinks those outsiders were.
Greenpeace was behind it. You know, they always take that anonymous thing, you know across the world, right, Jim, they take that honest. They always stand in the backgrounds and they agitate, is what they do.
What I mean, what makes you think that? What did you hear about them?
Well, because their name came up many times during the protests, Greenpeace, Did it came up?
Right?
Oh?
Yeah, yeah, that's why I believe they were behind it. But they were behind a lot of protests.
I asked Dale and his friend what they think of the damage. Claims we're trying to get green Peace to pay for everything, and they should.
I'm the point where they broke They had no business here.
No people I'm talking to are convinced that outsiders drove these protests. But it's also clear that what happened continues to impact relationships among people who are from here. For example, Dale says he doesn't go to Standing Rocks Prairie Night's Casino anymore. That tension is still there eight years later, especially between white and Native people. According to Dale.
He's just right under the surface right now.
You know, our conversation meanders and we start talking about what Morton County is like. I asked Dale about the oil boom that began in the mid two thousands.
When the boom happened, Oh yeah, oh man, it was crazy. I mean they came from all over. I mean I'd never seen hooko's walking on the street before. Yes, absolutely, it was crazy. I couldn't believe. It gives me goosebump just talking about it right now. The crime weight just went straight up. Yes, I mean, it brought in the riff raft, is what it did. All the towns were affected. Meth labs were popping up all over the place. Yes, yeah, oh yeah. The drugs were just crazy.
Dale says. Law enforcement eventually got a handle on it and things calmed down. I asked if there was good things that came out of the boom.
Oh yeah, the money, you know, the money. It's always about the money, you know.
Oh yeah.
Now all the cities get money, like Multon counties. I think you will impacted by the oil, so they get money out of that.
Dale's story about the boom makes me think during the Standing Rock Movement, a camp of ten thousand people popped up suddenly in the middle of the prairie. It was a different kind of boom town, and it kind of makes sense that that would result in some chaos for the existing community. And at the end of this boom, the people of Morton County didn't get rewarded with the kind of money that came with the oil boom. It's making more and more sense to me why people from
here feel so negatively towards the Standing Rock movement. But I am fully aware that the testicle festival folks aren't the only ones with a perspective on both the oil boom and protests. So I meet up with another local outside the courthouse. Candy moss at White works for the Indigenous Environmental Network. Her boss is that guy Tom Goldtooth who was talking to Green Peace about the settlement. You spent months at the anti pipeline camps and she sat
in on some of the trial. I'm just curious how long you've lived here and what this place is like.
So, first of all, I was born and raised in North Dakota.
Candy is a member of the Mandan, Hidatsa and a Ricara tribe. Specifically, she's a Mandan, part of the indigenous nation that this town was named after. Now she lives in Bismarck, but she grew up on the Fort Bertold Reservation northwest of here.
Well, that's in the heart of the backan where the oil is coming from that flows through the pipeline.
She has another view of what an oil boom can do.
I'm myself am a cancer survivor for some reason. I survived a stage four s Orkoma tumor when I was like twenty and a lot of my people, are my relatives, are people back home, didn't win that battle, And there's so many cancers. Everybody's sick, every single kind of cancer that you can imagine.
Candy blames a lot of this on the oil and gas industry. Bismarck is home for Candy, but she says it's not always an easy place.
There's racism here. There's a mentality that, oh, those natives, there's those drunks, and there's no I shouldn't say there's no. But there's a lack of understanding of boarding schools and what had happened and how we had a whole lost generation of elders who were hurting very very very bad.
Candy's referencing how the US government used to take Indigenous children from their families and send them to far away schools to strip them of their culture. Overall, this community was fertile ground for the pipeline company's divisive strategies.
What this industry sought to do was divide and conquer even us as tribes, to pit us against each other as nations, and to pit definitely white people against Native people, because when they do that, they control the narrative. When they control the narrative, they win.
Despite all that, Candy is holding onto hope that maybe the jury saw what she saw, that the evidence didn't support energy transfers, claims, I'm.
Trying not to be pessimistic about things. I'm really trying really hard. I want to be there for one of those times in history where the correct, accurate, and right decision was made and there was a wind for humanity.
On Wednesday, March nineteenth, just two days after closing statements, there's a rumor that the jury might be about to deliver a verdict. The Green Piece people say can hang out at their workspace, a storefront a couple blocks from the courthouse so that I'll know right when the verdict comes in. They send me into an empty echoing room that they're not using, so that they can't listen in on their legal strategy. From my solo folding table and chair, I can see into the other part of the office
through a window. Occasionally someone comes and visits me. Sorry, I keep every time I see someone like walking quickly, I'm like, what's going on right exactly? Candy pops in. She starts theorizing that maybe the jurors are in there fighting with each other. Maybe there's one person who's holding out hung jury, she says, putting it out there. Both of our heads flip to our right. Through the window, there's a rush of people moving in the other room.
Candy dashes out. It's time. The courthouse is right there, I think. Inside the courtroom, there's a swish of clothing as everyone rises for Judge Gian. The court has received word that the jury has reached a verdict, he says. The jurors file in. One woman has a spark of excitement in her eyes. Another looks kind of miserable. The court clerk stands up to read their decision. Did defendants trespass on energy transfers land Green Pieace Fund, no, Greenpeace International,
no Green Pieace Ink. Yes? How much do you award to energy transfer in compensatory damages for trespace to land. Over the next ten or so minutes, there's a blur of numbers, and all of them have million at the end. Each is a blow to Greenpeace. Someone in the room is quietly crying when it's over. Not even the lawyers have done the math to determine the exact total. But what's clear is that Greenpeace has lost badly. Outside the courtroom, Energy Transfers lawyer Trey Cox poses with a huddle of
lawyers from his firm, Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher. He has an American flagpin to the lapel of his suit. His colleagues look satisfied in their sunglasses as Trey delivers his victory speech.
Today, the jury has delivered a resounding verdict declaring green Piece's actions wrongful, unlawful, and unacceptable by societal standards. Green Peace maliciously misrepresented events within this unity in an unrelenting attempt to stop, by any means possible, the construction of a pipeline that had already obtained all of the necessary legal approvals. These are the facts, not the fake news
of the Greenpeace propaganda machine. This is a resounding win for the people of Bismarck, the people of Manden and Morton County, as well as law enforcement officers who across this state diligently worked and risked their lives to maintain order in increasing chaos. This verdict serves as a powerful affirmation of the First Amendment. Peaceful protest is an inherent American right. However, violent and destructive protest is unlawful and unacceptable. This verdict clearly conveys.
That the jury found Greenpeace Inc. Was liable for all of energy transfers on the ground damage claims, Green Pieace Ink, and Greenpeace International were guilty of conspiracy, and they said all three green Peace organizations committed tortious interference as well as defamation when they made their statements on police violence, tribal territory, and desecration of sacred sites. But we still don't know the dollar total of the damages, And another reporter asks.
Thank you, mister Cox, you have what's total number?
It's close to seven hundred million dollars.
I kind of can't believe my ears. Wait did he say, I mean I recorded it? Did he say sex seven hundred million?
Okay, yeah, over twice the amount of the actual lawsuit.
That's Candy mossit white again. Can you share your reaction to all of this.
It's absolutely bullshit one hundred percent. None of these people that are leaving are from here for one thing.
They're all going back to Texas, Louisiana.
I'm from here.
Nobody asked us times what we wanted to do.
This is absolutely bullshit.
This verdict was absolutely biased one hundred percent. And yes, I'm emotional because my kids go to school here, because I'm from here and I have to deal with the after effects.
I know some of those people.
I've seen them around bismark Mannon before. That is our historic lands that were destroyed, and this company got money for defamation for Greenpeace or for other peoples allegedly saying that they destroyed sacred sites.
They did. I was there.
I just don't understand how.
They can get away with it, other than North Dakota's a huge fossil fuel state. It's just really really upsetting to me that these people get to leave and go back to their respective states and not have to deal with everything we have to continue to deal with as.
A result of these kinds of industries like energy transfer.
They stood here in front of the press and said they had all the permits necessary and they didn't.
They didn't have the easement to go under LAKEWA.
That had nothing to do with green Peace, nothing.
And now they're getting thrown into the bus for something they didn't even do. And they're treating us a Native people like we're not competent enough to organize and strategize something to protect our airlines and water. It's sick.
Green Peace takes its turn to speak to the press. They look like they're at a funeral. Deepa Pedmanaba, green Peace's senior legal advisor, addresses the crowd.
We should all be concerned about the attacks on our First Amendment and lawsuits like this that really threaten our rights to peaceful protest and free speech. The work of green Peace is never going to stop. That's the really important message today. And we're just walking out and we're going to get together and figure out what our next steps are.
No one lingers long. We all get into our cars and drive away. After the trial wrapped up, I headed back home to New York, and in the weeks after, I kept thinking back to when I first started covering the Standing Rock movement back in twenty sixteen, just as Donald Trump was elected to his first term, Standing Rock provided the opening scenes for a new era of repression against protest. In the years that followed, we saw anti protest laws spread across the US and around the world,
especially targeting environmental movements. The laws were developed and spread by industry, initially in response to Standing Rock. At the same time, after uprisings like the George Floyd movement popped off, a kind of storytelling took cold that started to erase what we'd been taught in school, that protests are a noble tool of democracy that afforced some of the most important changes in US history. A new story replaced that one, and it said that protest is bad and maybe changes
bad two. Now, the energy transfer versus Greenpeace verdict is landing at the beginning of a shitty sequel. In Trump's second term, the same strategies used against the Standing Rock movement are being put into practice at a much bigger scale. We're seeing the National Guard brought in against anti deportation protesters,
this time called by the President himself. The head of the Department of Homeland Security has said the IRS is looking into protest funding and Republican members of Congress have launched an investigation. I'd wager that if Standing Rock had happened today, the FBI, rather than Tiger Swan, would have been investigating the movement's funding. With Trump back in office, we've also entered a whole new era of bad deal making.
Media outlets, universities, and law firms are being presented with deals from the Trump administration that demand they either reel back challenges to the president and abandon the most vulnerable people, among them immigrants or trans people or Palestinians, or face the possibility that their institution will be drained of resources and destroyed. This round, it's not a law firm or a CEO working for a private company that's making the offers.
It's government attorneys working for the president, although to be clear, many of them come from the private sector. Former lawyers for both Gibson Dunn and Energy Transfer have been appointed to high level positions in the Trump administration. Here's deepa Greenpeace Incs Senior legal advisor.
You know, the verdicts came at a time when we have just been seeing institutions crumbling, where rather than fighting head on people, individuals, law firms, universities, they're all crumbling.
Greenpeace has become one of the institutions that is fighting back and is finding out how severe the blowback can be. By the end of July, Greenpeace have offered us stuff voluntary buyouts. The organizations lost twenty percent of their employees. Was it worth it to not accept the deal given how huge the verdict is?
Listen, there was no choice.
Right.
Is our existence our ultimate mission just the existence of an entity? Or is there something in our mission that's bigger than that?
I asked the Standing Rocks to tribe's current chair, Janet al Kayer, what she thought of the verdict. Will this verdict impact Standing Rock and if so, how.
I'm thinking definitely it will impact because it's there for the record.
Right.
What I'm hopeful about is that Greenpeace it doesn't end there, that they're going to move this beyond and fight it.
The Standing Rock Sioux Tribe knows way more than any environmental organization about standing up to bad deals. It's woven into their entire history. That lawsuit they filed against the Army Corps was dismissed a few weeks after the green Peace verdict, and they've already filed an appeal to Janet. Regardless of the odds, the fight for the Ochetti Chakoine people's water is too important to give up.
Even if we do not win in court. What history will say about us is more important. Are what our children will say is more important that we always stood up for them, because if we just give up, then of course they win. So I'm hoping down the road that I can I can be at peace knowing that I tried. I think I couldn't. I couldn't live with
myself if I didn't try. The Green Peace organizations are getting ready to appeal the verdict in the North Dakota Supreme Court, and I've heard mixed predictions from legal experts I've talked to. Meanwhile, Greenpeace International is leaning on the European Union's anti slap law to strike back at Energy Transfer in a court in the Netherlands. They're hoping to recover the money they spent dealing with the lawsuit, but the US has no federal anti slap law, neither energy
Transfer nor Gibson Dunn Krutcher answered a detailed list of questions. However, they repeatedly shared a statement, we are very pleased that Greenpeace has been held accountable for its actions against energy Transfer, and in the months since the trial, lawyer Trey Cox has said that other companies are already expressing interest in repeating what Energy transferred it to green Peace.
He told the Daily Caller, I'm getting calls from the oil and gas industry. I'm getting calls from any number of other industries that have been similarly affected. Still, where it comes to the fight for the Ochechi Chakoyne's water, there's not a clear winner. Will the company Kelsey Warren co founded may have gotten its day of reckoning in court, and they may have even imprinted a new story of Standing Rock in the minds of many Americans. There's some
things that can't be erased. Standing Rock activated a whole generation of Indigenous organizers who went home and continued to fight to protect their own communities. I talked to Cody, who was originally named in the lawsuit one last time.
Was it worth it?
Yeah?
It was.
It was because we needed it, not just as Indigenous people, but just people as a whole. Grandfather spoke of it best, you know when he said everything was for the people.
Remember that.
I guess we endured a lot for the people. We did a lot for the people, not just indigenous people, but everybody you know, so it was it was worth it.
Drilled is an original Critical Frequency production. This season was reported and written by me Allen Brown. Our senior editor is Audrey Quinn. Additional editing by Tristan Attone at Grist. Our producer and sound designer is Ray Pang. Mixing and mastering by Martin Saltz Austwich and Peter Duff. Fact checking by Sarah Sneath. Our First Amendment attorney is James Wheedon of the First Amendment Project. We're also a member of
Reporters Shield. Our impact producer is Lindsay Crowder. Marketing by Maggie Taylor. Original artwork for this season was created by Victor Pasqual of Digital Navajo. Our theme music is by Dear Lady. The show was created and executive produced by Amy Westervelt. The Center for Media and Democracy supported document review for the season. You can find a companion feature story to this season at Chris dot org. For related stories and to support our work, check out Drill dot Media.
To follow my work, check out my newsletter eco files at Ellen Brown dot ghost dot Iote.
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