The company behind the Dakota Access pipeline, Energy Transfer Partners, is suing Greenpeace, EarthFirst!, and BankTrack for “manufacturing a media spectacle” against the intensely controversial project and harming the company’s “critical business and financial relationships”.
The 231-page filing in U.S. District Court in Bismarck, ND accuses the groups of launching an “eco-terrorism” campaign against a project that rallied determined opposition from affected First Nations and their supporters across North America.
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“The company said environmentalists approached the Standing Rock Sioux tribe, the public face of the months-long fight against the pipeline, and used it to wage a battle against the project,” Reuters reports. “ETP said environmental groups ‘cynically planted radical, violent eco-terrorists on the ground amongst the protesters, and directly funded their operations and publicly urged their supporters to do the same.’”
The law firm behind the suit, Kasowitz Benson Torres & Friedman, is the same one that is representing Resolute Forest Products in a defamation suit against Greenpeace—and whose founding partner Marc Kasowitz is an attorney to Donald Trump.
