He was sentenced to six months in jail last month and has begun serving his sentence.ĭonziger claims in his appeal that the special prosecutors who secured his contempt conviction lacked constitutional authority to pursue the charges under the appointments clause because they were acting as officers of the United States without higher government supervision.īut the DOJ in its filing said the special prosecutors were not acting as officers of the United States because they were vested with federal authority on a temporary basis.
District Judge Loretta Preska in Manhattan found Donziger guilty of six counts of criminal contempt following a May bench trial. Special prosecutor Rita Glavin, one of the private lawyers who was appointed to prosecute the case, declined to comment. The Justice Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Circuit Court of Appeals that Donziger's argument that "unsupervised" private special prosecutors lacked the constitutional authority to prosecute him was "wrong in its inception."ĭonziger's lawyer Martin Garbus said the government's position wasn't a surprise. In a friend-of-the-court filing, the DOJ told the 2nd U.S. Department of Justice on Friday told a federal appeals court reviewing the contempt conviction of disbarred environmental lawyer Steven Donziger that it should reject his argument that his prosecution by private attorneys violated the U.S.
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