Ah, yes, a functional court system is one that can be “pissed off” rather than, you know, carry out its mandate to be impartial.

There is no precedent to support Kaplan or Preska not recusing themselves, or at least letting the legal procedures as written play out (i.e. random assignment of a judge)

Nevertheless, the alleged “evidence” of such a bribe is verifiably traced itself to… a bribe, by Chevron. For a case brought by an official and presided over by an US judge who accept bribes (sorry, lobbyist money) from… Chevron.

From a comment above:

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/mar/28/chevron-lawy... > In one of the stranger episodes in this saga, Chevron relocated Alberto Guerra, an Ecuadorian judge, and his family to the US, paid for his health insurance and a car while meeting with him more than 50 times before he provided testimony that Donziger discussed the bribe with him at a Quito restaurant. Guerra has since admitted that his testimony was exaggerated in parts, untrue in others.

> "an US judge who accept bribes (sorry, lobbyist money) from… Chevron."

What is this part referring to?

Loretta Preska is a high ranking member of the Federalist Society, which is heavily contributed to by Chevron

https://fedsoc.org/contributors/loretta-preska

This is a tweet from Donzinger himself, so obviously don't take it at face value if you don't want to, but this provides a good jumping off point for further research:

https://twitter.com/sdonziger/status/1376676895001997312?lan...

Why should the court not be “pissed off” if you deliberately try to interfere with the process?

I guess by your logic the judge also shouldn’t be pissed off if you start blasting music in the courtroom?

The wikipedia page on Donziger [1] says that the main witness to those bribe accusations retracted his statement and gives [2] as a source for that retraction. It seems, that the US courts did not consider that retraction, though [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steven_Donziger#Kaplan's_2014_...

[2] https://www.vice.com/en/article/neye7z/chevrons-star-witness...

And if you read the second source you provide, it states the following:

* "Guerra on many occasions has acted deceitfully and broken the law […] but that does not necessarily mean that it should be disregarded wholesale."*

The star witness was playing both sides. It’s hard to take his word on anything. This was a judgement call. The judge decided that the evidence brought-forth was substantial enough in nature.