Activist seeks dismissal from pipeline racketeering lawsuit

BISMARCK, N.D. — An American Indian and environmental activist named in a federal racketeering lawsuit says her opposition to the Dakota Access oil pipeline was constitutionally protected free speech, not an attempt to incite violence as the company alleges. Krystal Two Bulls asked a judge in a court filing last month to dismiss her from the lawsuit filed by Texas-based Energy Transfer Partners, which built the $3.8 billion pipeline to move North Dakota oil to Illinois. The company’s $1 billion lawsuit filed in August 2017 and revised in August 2018 claims environmental groups and five individuals, including Two Bulls, interfered with company business, facilitated crimes and acts of terrorism, incited violence, targeted financial institutions that backed the project, and violated defamation and racketeering laws. ETP’s lawyers maintain that Two Bulls was a key player in the Red Warrior Camp, an aggressive faction of pipeline protesters the company labels “a front for eco-terrorists.” The Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Council ultimately asked the group to leave the protest area near its reservation in southern North Dakota in late 2016. Two Bulls denies hiding, saying in an affidavit that “the effectiveness of my work as an activist demands that it gain public attention.” ETP late last month asked the judge for more time to track down and serve the three defendants who still haven’t been served.