Speaker 1right we are on sir right so today we are honored to be joined by the mighty mr stephen donziger a human rights lawyer whose life became the stuff of hollywood thriller movies after he successfully challenged the big oil scumbag chevron in court for their crimes in ecuador in the 90s and who has been punished in the most despicable and kafka-esque ways ever since you will not believe what you're about to hear so let's not keep the man hanging any longer stephen thank you so much for giving us your time today how you doing brother thanks man i'd say i've been on a lot
Speaker 2of these things that's one of the more interesting intros i appreciate that fully fully accurate all
Speaker 1that well i appreciate that man i appreciate that because you as you said you do a lot of interviews and you've got a lot of stuff going on right now which we want to get into before we jump into that i just want to ask you i want to check in how you're doing man how you're doing your life has been should we say you you said the word interesting i think that definitely applies to
Speaker 2your life generally how are you doing right now man well i'm doing well thanks for asking you know look this is the bottom line i'm a i've been a hunted man for 12 years by an oil company and by an industry they want me silenced if not worse and you know the the the work and tenacity and support i needed to get through all that um really came to define you know the last decade of my life in a way that i never thought i would have to do that just to get through it but here i am and like i'm actually as strong as i've ever been in terms of how i feel about the case in ecuador and and you know just my personal situation my family so i'm doing great i didn't expect this to sort of be my life yeah but now that it is we're making the most of it and we're really fighting you know hard to uh to ultimately get a you know compensation for the indigenous groups in ecuador that i represent as a lawyer that chevron owes money to be after they poison their ancestral lands down in the amazon so you know we're doing well but thanks for asking well i'm
Speaker 1glad to hear that i must say you're looking well as well now for some of the things you've already mentioned there um for some of the people that don't know your story and i can't imagine that's many people because this is a massive scandal that's been going on for a long time now but just to set a bit of context for the rest of the conversation if you don't mind for the 10 000th time could you just give us the brief history of your story and your in your words not mine
Speaker 2yeah thank you by the way what i'm about to say the best summary of it is a story in the guardian written by aaron brockovich published in 2022 so if you google aaron brockovich stephen donziger you can get like a lot of what i'm about to say documented so the fundamental story is when i got out of law school in the early 1990s i'm kind of an old dude now um i was invited to go down to the amazon of ecuador with a team of lawyers and doctors to investigate what we've been told was this massive oil pollution we went down there in april of 1993 we were shocked at what we saw there were like massive pools of oil gouged out of the jungle floor that texaco now chevron had left behind when it abandoned the company a year earlier in 1992 so you know being lawyers we decided to represent a lot of the communities indigenous communities and farmer communities in this area many of them were obviously suffering they were they had lost access to the forest you know these are these are the indigenous groups had been had relied on the forest for you know millennia i mean these are these are people with no money as we understand it in the uk or the united states yet they're wealthy and they're prosperous um you know their medicines came from the forest their food their water their shelter um they didn't need money but once the pollution began in the 1960s when texaco went in there and by the way texaco made a decision to pollute as a way to save money this was not we're not we're not talking about an accidental oil spill we're talking about a system of oil extraction designed to offload literally millions of gallons of cancer-causing oil waste every day into rivers and streams that local communities were relying on for their drinking water their bathing and their fishing and by the time we got there in 1993 it was very evident this has been had been going on for 25 years at that point it was very evident that these communities were decimated and were literally on the verge of extinction um one group the tetete indigenous group had already disappeared for a combination of reasons oil pollution being one of them that happened in the late 1960s early 1970s so you know i entered a situation as a young american lawyer with the highest stakes imaginable like literally the survival of cultures was in play so we filed a lawsuit back in the united states where texaco made the decision to pollute in ecuador in federal court actually here in new york where i live for 10 years texaco and then chevron because chevron ended up buying texaco fought our lawsuit they fought to get it dismissed into the courts of ecuador and they that took 10 years ultimately they won that battle but they as a condition of that they had to accept the jurisdiction of ecuador's courts so starting in the early 2000s we had to organize a legal team in ecuador and reopen the case in ecuador's courts that's what they wanted so we did that over the next eight or nine years they did everything they could to sabotage the trial they delayed every proceeding they filed hundreds of motions in a single day to tie up the judge with you know frivolous decisions and ultimately they attacked me they attacked all of our lawyers and newspaper advertisements i mean they didn't really go to court to litigate on the issues they went to court and they tried to weaponize it to destroy the case that sort of was their legal strategy and over eight long years and during this time i went to ecuador for my home in new york you know probably 10 15 times a year and i've been there by the way over 250 times since the early 1990s um we prevailed and ultimately the case was affirmed by ecuador supreme court in 2013 in an in a unanimous opinion and chevron and chevron owes at that time owed around 10 billion dollars to the affected communities it's now gone up because of interest because it's obviously now you know 12 years later but what they did instead of paying is they attacked me with the most vicious well-financed corporate retaliation campaign ever targeting a lawyer in the history of the united states they literally used 60 law firms 2 000 lawyers and legal personnel chevron spent probably two three billion dollars in fees to try to destroy me and my family and my colleagues down in ecuador and they basically decided that that was the the move that they would they have a better chance of not having to pay the communities that they poisoned in the amazon if they drove the lawyers off the case and that was their plan so i got ended up in 2013 getting sued personally here in new york for 60 billion dollars i got sued by chevron for the most amount of money anyone's been sued for or any company's been sued for in the history of the united states and i live this is my apartment by the way where i live with my family my wife and my son we have a two-bedroom apartment like i'm a human rights lawyer i don't have any kind of wealth and ultimately chevron the little money i had they took that because they got a judge to order me to reimburse them for their own legal fees that they used to pay lawyers to persecute me and all this went on for several years and ultimately when i wouldn't give up and we wanted a bunch of very positive court decisions in canada canada's supreme court by the way in 2015 issued an opinion in favor of the ecuadoran communities allowing them to go see chevron's assets in canada to force compliance with the ecuador judgment and i think that's a very good point and i think that's a very good point that they won so when that happened they got this u.s judge here in new york where i live to order me to turn over my computer to chevron and i said you know i'm not going to do that because on that computer is all our confidential case file and i've never seen such an order it's illegal and i appealed it and while i was appealing this with order that i believed was illegal the judge had me locked up on a criminal contempt of court charge and in the united states by the way judges can charge criminal contempt but like that's the only crime they can charge it's the executive branch the same in the uk that charges crime in the uk is the prosecutor it's not the judge same in the united states but this judge charged this crime the department of justice in the united states the the entity that does all federal criminal cases refused to prosecute me and the judge at that point appointed a oil and gas corporate law firm a private law firm that had chevron's insurance as a client to step into the shoes of the prosecutor and prosecute me directly so at that point after i've been sued for the most money ever in u.s history i then became the first person in u.s history to be targeted with a private corporate prosecution in this case by chevron by the very oil company that i and our legal team had just vanquished in ecuador's courts to the tune of a 10 billion dollar judgment they essentially these lawyers i beat in a fair proceeding came back and did this corrupt thing and prosecuted me directly as part of that they had me locked up for almost 1 000 days i was locked up for 993 days on a misdemeanor contempt of court charge that had been rejected by the Department of Justice. I mean, it's batshit crazy. I tell you, it's never happened before. It's obviously a violation of the rule of law. It's obviously illegal. Five U.S. judges, federal judges, have ruled it is unconstitutional. The United Nations Working Group on Arbitrary Detention issued a unanimous opinion that it violates international law. But in the meantime, I lost three years of my liberty, and they took my passport, so I cannot travel out of the country. That is, I cannot go visit my clients in the Amazon rainforest that I've represented for 30 years who need legal help to be able to clean up their ancestral lands and stave off extinction. So my current situation is they took all my money, they took my bank accounts, they took my law license, and they took my passport, okay? I started a legal defense fund, which I would urge people to take a look at because I basically survived. My wife has a modest job. She works for a nonprofit arts organization, okay? I don't have a job because I can no longer work as a lawyer because they took my law license. So I had to start a legal defense fund and basically make an appeal to the world for people to help. And thank God, I'm so incredibly moved and grateful that literally thousands of people all over the world have all sums of money into this fund that allows us to live at the modest level we do and pay very significant legal fees I still have to pay to kind of deal with this. There's still all sorts of residual legal issues. Chevron is still attacking me with PR campaigns. They're hunting me. They don't want me to do my work. They don't want me to travel. They don't want me to go organize lawsuits to enforce the judgment in other countries. So I'm really, really hobbled. Final thing I'm going to say, my game plan right now is I'm seeking a pardon for this misdemeanor contempt of court conviction, which happened in a non-jury trial based on this Chevron prosecution. I'm seeking this from President Biden, who now has four more days in office. He leaves office at noon on Monday. So I have been fortunate to get 34 members of our Congress of the House of Representatives, and I have the support of many lawyers, 68 Nobel laureates, and many, many prominent people who, regardless of their politics and regardless of what they think of my work or me as a person, recognize that it is just plain wrong for a corporation to be able to directly criminally prosecute a critic and jail him or her. That's just wrong. That's illegal. So a lot of people have rallied to my cause. And, you know, my argument to President Biden is the same. It's like, what are we doing in the United States of America if a corporation can lock someone up? You know, there's some extreme stuff happening, by the way, around the world now, as everybody knows, including in the United States. Okay. But that's just over the top. And I think, you know, regardless of one's political orientation, people agree it's wrong. So I'm really urging the president to pardon me. It would allow me to much more easily get my law license back and continue my work as a human rights lawyer, travel again, work again, earn an income, et cetera, et cetera. I'm not free, even though I no longer have my ankle bracelet. When I was detained all that time, I was mostly in this house with an ankle bracelet. I couldn't leave. They would monitor my whereabouts everywhere I moved from. I've moved from one side of the couch to the other. They knew that. Okay. I was monitored electronically for three years. Even though I no longer have that ankle bracelet, I still can't fully function as a citizen in the United States of America. Because of all these restrictions, Chevron has put on me as a result of this corporate prosecution. Wow. Well, I mean, I said I would say that quickly. I don't know. It probably took like 10 minutes, but it's a hell of a story. And it's really hard to explain in five seconds.
Speaker 1Well, exactly. Exactly. And you've just, I must say, you've eviscerated about 10 of my next questions. So that's great. But I mean, I'm familiar with all of that. But even then, just listening to it, it fucking blows my mind. It is just unheard of. It is unprecedented. And it is absolutely mind-blowing that this can happen. And it's happening right now. So for anyone that's hearing this for the first time, I can't imagine how getting all of that in one go is just going to fucking smash their mind open. I mean, we know that the priority right now for yourself and everyone that is behind this is the pardon. Because if you get the pardon, that changes everything, doesn't it? If you don't get it, and obviously with the new guy, taking the job on Monday, what does that mean for you? And what would the next step be in this
Speaker 2campaign? Well, I decided a long time ago when they started to attack me that even, you know, we won the case in Ecuador. By the way, just please understand, everyone, that these attacks are happening because we won. They're happening because we won. The communities of Ecuador won a landmark $10 billion environmental judgment, the largest in world history, against an American oil company over deliberate pollution. Okay, so I'm carrying that to my grave. Like, the main legal case I worked on in my life was victorious. And I'm really proud of the work our team did. I'm proud of the leadership down in Ecuador. By the way, it's not my case. I'm just the lawyer. Like, it's the communities affected by Chevron's pollution that won the case. So I'm really proud of that. And, you know, we're going to take that to the bank. Now, the problem is they haven't paid the judge. So there's a whole other, you know, kind of bucket of legal work that needs to be done around the world by various lawyers to force them to comply with this judgment, which includes filing lawsuits in countries where they have oil assets, refineries, you know, reserves, you know, you know, marketing lubricants, whatever they have, whatever assets they have, say, in Canada. Or Australia, or Brazil, or, you know, because Chevron operates in dozens and dozens of countries around the world. We need to go get those assets and force them to give them to the people of Ecuador, where they can be sold with the money used to clean up. Now, what would happen in this, these kinds of, they're called, you know, judgment enforcement cases, is if it was clear to Chevron that it was going to lose even one of these cases, rather than deal with the tumult and the humiliation of losing, they would then come to our legal team, and we'd figure out a solution where they could pay a settlement to the communities that they have harmed for so many years. So that's the next phase of the battle in the case. The next phase of my battle, personally, is to get the pardon, you know, get my law license back, and get my life back in order so I can focus, instead of focusing on things like give me a pardon, I can focus on getting my life back in order. So I can focus on getting my life back in order. And that's actually on the human rights work that my clients engage me to do over 30 years ago. I also want to say, if President Biden does not pardon me, I'll be very disappointed in him and his administration, which, you know, they ran on a platform of upholding the rule of law, protecting the Amazon. By the way, the president was just down in Brazil a few weeks ago after Trump won the election. Mr. Biden went to Brazil, met with indigenous groups and promised to protect the Amazon. Well, what could be more important than protecting a lawyer who's dedicated the bulk of his legal career to protecting Amazon peoples from the ravages of the fossil fuel industry? You know, so, you know, he needs to do this pardon, in my opinion. I mean, I need it for personal reasons, because I need to, I need to be able to live, bro. But, you know, he also needs to see my request as an opportunity for him to send a clear message to the world, to the United States of America, to people in the United States of America, to people in the United States of America, to the corporate sector across the world, that private corporate prosecutions will never again be tolerated. You know, we have professional prosecutors for a reason. How the heck can a private entity take over the function, the public function of the government to lock up its critic? I mean, it's just its main critic in my case. It's just astounding. By the way, it's not like this is a in the United States before it happened to me. And it hadn't happened since. And frankly, I've never seen it in another country. I mean, usually when a prisoner of conscience, a person, a dissident, a person who, you know, confronts the power structure a little too effectively, when they need to get rid of that guy, it's usually the government doing the dirty work, you know, like what happened with Julian Assange, you know. So for a company to do it, it's just, again, it's like, it's like the system has really gone off the rails. And by the way, you know, if there was a new rule that a private corporate corporate prosecution could never again happen in the United States, like, we still have a problem, like corporations have way too much power. There's a massive amount of corporate capture of governmental functions in the United States. I mean, I've been doing this work, human rights work, justice work, my entire career, it's been almost 40 years now. And I'm just the trajectory is not good. Like, especially with Trump coming in. But I want to say this. If Mr. Biden does not pardon me, I'm not going to stop. I'm going to try to get a pardon from the next occupant of the White House. And no matter what people think of Donald Trump, I actually believe that he could seriously consider a pardon to me for many, many reasons, including the fact there's a strand of his politics that is very anti-corporate. You know, it's very, you know, like, for example, pointing Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to a cabinet position. I mean, Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s entire perspective when it comes to the pharmaceutical industry and the government, the National Institute of Health of the United States is fundamentally to call out corporate abuse. Yeah. And, you know, so Trump has this streak in his overall governing philosophy. To the extent there is one that really gets what happened to me, you know, the weaponization of the law to target someone who speaks uncomfortable truths. So while I really disagree with Mr. Trump on pretty much everything he proposes to do, I don't disagree with it, with all of it, because like what RFK is going to do, I believe, is really set a new tone about really holding some of these pharmaceuticals accountable for. For their abuses. So, you know, maybe it'll happen. Bottom line is I decided long ago to try to fight everything they threw at me, if for no other reason than to call it out and point out the hypocrisy. So I'll keep fighting and I'll do what I can without a pardon to ultimately be able to travel, get a passport and, you know, help the people of Ecuador who I'm very close to that I represent for many, many years and also help. So I'll keep fighting and I'll do what I can without a pardon to ultimately be able to travel, get a passport and, you know, help the people of Ecuador who I'm very close to that I represent for many, many years and also help. So I'll keep fighting and I'll do what I can without a pardon to ultimately be able to travel, get a passport and, you know, help the people of Ecuador who I'm very close to that I represent for many, many years and also help. So, you know, but I'm, you know, there's four days left, bro, you know, for Biden and I, he pardoned 39 people plus his son back in, it was, I think it was in November, early December. He hasn't pardoned a single person since. I do know. I mean, they've as much as said in the White House, he is going to pardon more people before he leaves office. So there's some list that he's going to announce any day now, might even be Monday morning. You know, often presidents announce the final pardons literally the morning of the last day. You know, so I'm hopeful. I'm cautiously optimistic. This makes a lot of sense to do for him and for any president, regardless of politics. So I really. Given what I put up with, it's like, it's like, it's crazy, but I haven't actually lost faith in the good faith of human beings and even in the even in the ability of the system to deliver justice in certain instances, you know, so I'm not giving up, you know, believe in the rule of law, you know, it was corrupted in my situation. It's been corrupted in many other situations, you know, in the United States and other countries. But man, I'm going to fight. I'm going to fight for the aspirations of what the law promises for as long as I'm alive.
Speaker 1Love it. Love it. Well, more power to you, man. And you've got the support of many, many people around the world. And on that note, I'd like to ask, how can people support you? You said you've got your your defense fund. Where can people find that and how can they support you and support this this campaign moving forward?
Speaker 2So the best place to go online is our campaign website, and it's called FreeDefense. FreeDefense.com, not dot org. My name is spelled D-O-N-Z-I-G-E-R. So it's one word, FreeDefense. You know, because I'm not free. So I want to be fully free. And on that website, you can learn a ton about the case. There's articles. There's my pardon petition. And at the top, there's a button where you can donate money to my legal defense. And if you click the donate button, it goes to the defense fund. And just to be clear, the money is used so we can live, survive, me, my wife and son, and also to pay legal fees. So, you know, part of part of what I like. I mean, look, we need money. We always need money to do this work since because I can't I don't have a job. So the support of people around the world allows me to continue advocating, you know, both for the people of Ecuador and broader human rights issues. If you can't give. Don't worry about it. I get it. It's hard times for a lot of people go anyway to the site and pop in your email and you will get on our list and we'll give you a bunch of, you know, every now and then letters updates about the case. And, you know, part of what we try to do is enlist as many people as possible, you know, and it just helps. It helps them so many ways to get support like that and for Chevron to see that support that I have makes it much less. Likely they will attack me again. It's actually provides protection to me. Yeah. So give us your email. And by the way, if you can only give one quid that you guys call a pound a quid, do it because it's not just the money. It's the number of people enlisting that really counts. So anyway, it's free Donziger dot com and, you know, join the campaign. Because this is also a, you know, it's not just a Steven Donziger thing. Like we're truly building a campaign around broader human rights issues, mostly related to corporate silencing of activists, which is now happening in your country. It's happening in the UK, happening in the United States to a frightening extent. I mean, I'm kind of the canary in the coal mine. Like my case was like the first one back in 2000. I mean, obviously, there's been tons of efforts to silence activists over mail. Many, many years in both our countries. But like this was kind of a new animal, like a private corporate prosecution. So, you know, we're seeing these trends, you know, in lots of areas, particularly in the climate justice field, you know, where companies and government prosecutors are going after activists, locking them up for draconian periods of time. And we need to be aware that this is part of the playbook of the fossil fuel industry in particular. But also. But also the other big powerful industries, the pharmaceutical industry, the insurance industry, they want the tools in place legally to try to intimidate people who would hold them accountable for their abuses. And they want to use my example of having spent almost, you know, three years in detention to weaponize that, to try to basically tell people, man, you do this work at the level this guy did it. You start getting billions of dollars of judgments, legal judgments against us. You're going to jail. And it's really designed to discourage people from even doing the work, discourage people from becoming lawyers who have the vision of holding these companies accountable on a scale that would really matter and might actually change their behavior. They don't want that to happen.
Speaker 1Yeah. Yeah. Hundred percent. Well, in the last few minutes that I've got you for me, you pretty much covered this already. But I wanted to finish with what are the larger lessons from your story? I mean, you've already mentioned a bunch of them. But to you, it's such a crazy, like, unparalleled situation. I mean, expanding it out beyond the Ecuadorian situation and your personal situation. What are the larger lessons that all of us can take from this to arm ourselves moving forward with whether it's an oil company or a climate campaign or whatever it might be? What can we take from this?
Speaker 2Well, you know, look, we got to do the work or we're going to lose the planet and we're going to lose any hope of creating a just society. So, you know, the number one lesson to me is engage and don't be cynical, even though we're seeing a lot of very disturbing trends right now in the world. Like, be earnest, be smart and design campaigns that may or may not include legal, a legal component, but like design campaigns to call out the abusers and try to use those campaigns to mobilize people, organize people, give people an opportunity. There's so many young people now who are like, what do I do? What can I do? And like, you know, do something, engage in something, some campaign in your community or some campaign on the national level or the international level. Get involved and figure out what your role can be and how it can be productive. And, you know, the other thing I can say is if you're going to organize a campaign, events, a well-resourced adversary like an oil company. Be smart about it. What we need to do is organize teams of people so not one person is sticking out, you know, which makes the campaign vulnerable because if the company can get rid of that one person, the whole campaign can really suffer. So it's critical to work in teams and collaborations and also to build solidarity support for what you do, because these companies, when they, you know, they don't want to be in. court, by the way, you know, they want to knock out the case before you can get to trial. if you do a lawsuit. So it's very important that they, when they assess your strength, they see a lot of people involved, and they see a lot of public support for what you do, if you can organize that. And then, you know, you know, and really, the most important thing is be prepared to be attacked. Expect it, it's actually a sign of your success. And in all those attacks, I have found in my long career, there are huge opportunities to turn the tables. So you know, these attacks are designed to psychologically unsettle advocates, so they leave what they stop doing what they're doing. You know, and trust me, they can be very unsettling. That's why you need solidarity, you need to work in groups, you support each other, and you keep going. Because once you call a bully out, and once you show a bully, you're not going to quit. They often backfire. And so, you know, I think it's important to be prepared to be attacked. So, you know, when you're attacked, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. It means you're being effective. They would not attack you if they weren't bothered by you, if you weren't creating risk for them. So understanding the dynamics of change of power, how these entities are going to react to your progress and your success, so you can keep going to get to your to reach your goals is really, really important. By the way, much of what I'm saying is, you know, I'm not saying now is not taught in any university, any law school. I speak a lot of law schools, the students like, wow, we wish you could be on our faculty. But the reality is most law professors have never done this type of work. Yeah. And they don't know how to teach it. And of course, law schools aren't set up to teach people to do this. They were set up to teach young lawyers how to serve wealth and power. You know, that's what the function of a law school is in American society, with maybe 5% of the students doing public law. And so, you know, I think it's important to be prepared to be attacked by the public interest work. But they want 95% of the students to really, you know, generate as much money as possible for themselves and their clients. Yeah, you know, so understand what you're getting into. You know, educate yourself on how to do the work, build solidarity, and be smart about your objectives. And don't give up. That's my advice.
Speaker 1Love it. What a beautiful way to end and what an example you are of that very sentiment as well. So Stephen, thank you so, so much for giving us your precious time today. You've got a lot happening right now. So I really appreciate you taking the time. Thanks for having me, man. I
Speaker 2really, really, really appreciate it. I want to just say before I go, it's people like you and others who do podcasts, what I would call the independent media that has enabled me to survive. No lie, the corporate media has completely ignored this story for the most part. And it's individuals like yourself who keep it alive. So we have more power than we realize. So let's just keep trucking. You keep doing what you're doing. I'll do what I'm doing. And, you know, we're making progress.
Speaker 1Appreciate you, brother. We'll get that link out in the show notes as well. We'll smash that hard and see if we can get as much support behind this. And let's hope Biden gets a spine and does the right thing. He's got four days of Will's watching. So we're rooting for you, brother. Thanks so much. Really appreciate the time. Speak to you soon, Stephen. Best wishes, mate. Speak to you soon. Thanks, man. Okay. Bye-bye. Donziger, ladies and gentlemen, put it together for him. Now, usually I do a bit of top and tailing on this podcast, but this is an emergency episode that we're putting out with some gusto today. This conversation literally finished about an hour ago and we are smashing this out in super quick speed because this is the first guest we've ever had on this podcast who was actually hoping to be pardoned by the president of America within the next three or four days. So we are smashing this out. We are chucking the production value to the back burner and just getting this out as a on Apple or Spotify or anywhere other than YouTube. If you go to YouTube, you can actually see for the first time on the James Kennedy podcast, the video version of this, where you can see two handsome motherfuckers talking about important shit. We are back in a podcast saddle, ladies and gentlemen. So if you want to hear more of these chats and boy, we've got some good ones coming up, please do subscribe to the podcast, wherever you're listening to it from whatever platform, all you got to do is click that button and it really helps us out. Obviously share the, the links and the clips and everything as well. It really does help the cause, not just for myself, but for the guests that I have speaking to me. Um, and most importantly of all, please go to free Don's a good.com as Stephen asked you to. And if nothing else, just check out the information there, educate yourself on the issues. And please, if you can't donate and support the guy directly, please do share and amplify the content and the work and the message. Cause it is so, so important on that. I'm going to leave you to it. Get clicking. I'll see you next week. Love you loads and come on Biden, baby, do the right thing.