It may have been a judge that appointed the firm, but it's kind of suspicious that he would appoint a firm that had previously represented Chevron to represent the US Government. That seems like a pretty big conflict of interest.

That’s not a conflict of interest - the prosecution is supposed to be “against” the defendant.

Maybe so, but on behalf of its client, the government? The court? Not on behalf of someone else who is not paying. Hard to imagine there was no other law firm that would take this job, and if not then that’s one more negative sign for validity of prosecution, right?

The judge’s selection is the conflict of interest, not the prosecution itself. Selecting a private firm that’s financially entangled with the aggrieved party to discharge the duties of the Department of Justice is extremely unusual and concerning.

see the interview https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKbpptFKaXc

I've never heard of this kind of thing happening before. I wonder how close Kaplan is to Chevron.

It’s very rare for a disbarred lawyer to spend 7 years ignoring court orders. Kaplan is really pissed off and wants consequences.

I find it weird that in the US law system a private company can prosecute someone. What's next? Hiring private judges and juries?

Not that surprising when you remember the private prisons.

It can't. The NYT article says:

> After the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York declined to prosecute the case, Judge Kaplan took the rare step of appointing a private law firm, Seward & Kissel, to prosecute Mr. Donziger in the name of the U.S. government.

So the real problem here is people not reading the article, jumping to conclusions, and spreading misinformation in the comments (on HN?!). And probably the SDNY being too biased to enforce the law against a lawyer who cheated in a case against an oil company. Anyone who's been following the SDNY in the news for a while shouldn't be surprised about that.