In a 15-page memo, ACLU volunteer attorneys Neal McNamara and Jessica Jewell, from the law firm of Nixon Peabody, argue that the DEA has wrongfully withheld thousands of pages of evidence shown during the 2011 trial of Dr. Paul Volkman, whom the Department of Justice calls “the largest dispenser of oxycodone in the country from 2003 to 2005” and who is currently serving four consecutive life terms in prison.

Requesting the prompt release of this trial evidence, McNamara and Jewell write, “The government cannot on the one hand hold this case up as an example of how it investigates and prosecutes diversion cases and on the other state that the majority of the evidence used to convict such a defendant is not actually available to the public.  FOIA is meant to prevent such ‘secret law.’ The general public clearly has an interest in knowing how Volkman was investigated and prosecuted.”

In support of the motion, the memo further notes that the federal government itself has uploaded to a publicly accessible judicial records website some of the documents it continues to withhold from Eil.

The ACLU’s legal memo was accompanied by an eight-page affidavit from Eil, in which he describes an array of obstacles he faced while covering the Volkman trial. Before the trial began, Eil says a DEA agent told him he could be charged with witness tampering for conducting interviews with potential witnesses. In 2011, while attending the trial, in Cincinnati, he was subpoenaed for testimony by the lead prosecutor and barred from re-entering the courtroom, though he was never actually called to testify. When he filed his FOIA request with the Department of Justice in February 2012, the agency took more than three years to fully respond, and withheld more than 85 percent of the pages it processed. Many of the pages released were significantly redacted.

“In 2009, when I learned of Volkman’s indictment, I set out to tell the story of a highly-educated man – my father’s former classmate – who became one of the most notorious prescription drug dealers in U.S. history,” Eil states in the affidavit. “As we approach the five-year anniversary of the verdict in that case . . . I am astonished that the vast majority of evidence from his trial remains sealed off to that case’s plaintiff: the American public.”

ACLU of Rhode Island executive director Steven Brown stated: “I am hopeful that the court will put a stop to the DEA’s flippant attitude towards the Freedom of Information Act.  The agency’s siege mentality in trying to wear out Mr. Eil through years of delays amounts to an appalling attack on the public’s right to know.”

The DEA (represented by the office of Rhode Island U.S. Attorney Peter Neronha), has until May 4th to respond to the ACLU’s motion, with rebuttal memos due in June and July. Oral argument will likely be heard before U.S. District Judge John McConnell, Jr. sometime later this year.

These filings take place during Sunshine Week, a week designated to educate the public about the importance of open government, and at a time of heightened criticism of President Barack Obama’s transparency record.  In 2015, the Associated Press reported that the Obama administration had “set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them” in 2014. And, last week the Freedom of the Press Foundation reported that “the Obama administration – the self described ‘most transparent administration ever’ – aggressively lobbied behind the scenes in 2014 to kill modest Freedom of Information Act reform that had virtually unanimous support in Congress.”

Eil is an award-winning freelance journalist who served as the news editor and staff writer at the Providence Phoenix until the paper’s closing in 2014. He has since contributed to VICE, Salon, the Atlantic, Rhode Island Monthly, and elsewhere. He has conducted more than 100 interviews, across 19 states, for his book about the Volkman case.

Brian Moynihan’s turn as this year’s guest of the Darrell West Lecture Series was interesting for all the wrong reasons.

Moynihan is the CEO of Bank of America, an institution suffering from an abundance of controversies. The lecture series “was founded to provide an open forum on the intersection between religion and politics” and in the past has hosted Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Elaine Pagels. Moynihan was invited to talk about his philanthropic work in the context of being the CEO of one of the most powerful financial institutions in the world. The event was billed as a discussion about “the role of philanthropy and corporate social responsibility” in today’s society.

Outside the Central Congregational Church where the event was held, police shooed away peaceful protesters handing out informational flyers critical of Moynihan and Bank of America. The Brown Student Labor Alliance’s Stoni Tomson sent a letter acknowledging the churches “best intentions” in inviting Moynihan while decrying “Bank of America’s track record of predatory lending schemes that targeted people of color which directly contributed to the financial crisis of 2008, the financing of ecocidal practices like mountaintop removal mining, and the exploitative treatment of its call-center workers.”

Tomson said, “We believe that Moynihan’s lecture on Corporate Social Responsibility will inevitably be fraught with hypocrisy that effectively makes congregation members pawns in a Bank of America Public Relations Stunt.”

The interview conducted by Darrell West avoided negativity and focused on Moynihan’s philanthropic efforts in Haiti, and the questions too often allowed Moynihan to deliver corporate spiels that sounded more like advertisements for Bank of America than serious considerations of the issues involved. For instance, in answer to a question regarding the controversial nature of large financial institutions like Bank of America in the light of the financial meltdown, Moynihan talked about the excellent ratings the bank receives from satisfied customers, saying “We do lots of customer research. Our customer satisfaction is as high today as it was in 2007.”

When asked about the role of faith in his life, Moynihan invoked the Golden Rule in a way I never thought possible when he claimed that the principle of being customer focused in business “is not all that different from treating others as you want to be treated yourself.”

During the question and answer period things got edgier as Central Congregational Church member Paul Armstrong said, “Let me quote a few lines from a press release issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission last August as they settled a $245 million case which was part of a larger $16.5 billion settlement which Bank of America reached with the Department of Justice to resolve various investigations involving violations of laws relating to the sale of toxic mortgage backed securities. The regional director of the SEC’s office said, ‘Bank of America failed to make accurate and complete disclosure to investors and its illegal conduct kept investors in the dark. Requiring an admission of wrongdoing as part of Bank of America’s agreement to resolve the SEC charges filed today provides an additional level of accountability for its violation of the federal securities laws.’

“My question to you is this,” continued Armstrong, “What is the relationship between the illegal conduct the organization you lead has engaged in and your personal philanthropy? Is philanthropy morally tainted if it’s funded by illegal acts? Can philanthropy redeem wrongdoing behind the fortunes you make possible?”

Tough questions, which Moynihan awkwardly sidestepped as he maintained that it would take days to walk the audience through the complexities of the mortgage crisis. He then claimed that Bank of America “ended up trying to help people keep their homes,” before adding “We do lot’s of good work… it’s all consistent with what we do [as a company.]”

The kind of good work Bank of America is known for can be seen in this Huffington Post piece, where “former employees said they were told to falsify electronic records and string homeowners along in foreclosure as long as possible.” I suppose that’s one way to keep people in their homes.

Moynihan also backed away from accepting a “level of accountability” for Bank of America’s illegal actions, saying that his company only settled with the government because it was the cheaper course of action. “We settled,” said Moynihan, “because it was in the best interest of or customers to do so.”

Armstrong’s question deserves better answers from proponents of corporate philanthropy. Serious questions have been raised about the “charitable industrial complex” with even multi-millionaires such as Peter Buffett, Warren Buffett’s son, asking, “Is progress really Wi-Fi on every street corner? No. It’s when no 13-year-old girl on the planet gets sold for sex. But as long as most folks are patting themselves on the back for charitable acts, we’ve got a perpetual poverty machine. “

If there is a perpetual poverty machine, then Bank of America is a huge part of it, because while Moynihan’s efforts in providing education for exceptional Haitian youth are indeed laudable, the CEO, making well over $13 million a year, runs a company in which one-third of its bank tellers rely on public assistance and “has had more complaints filed with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau than any other American financial institution.”

Working conditions at the Bank of America call center are so bad there’s an online petition demanding “adequate job training that keeps jobs and customers safe” that everyone reading this should consider signing.

I’d like to believe that Moynihan was invited so as to expose the hypocrisy and self-serving nature of so-called corporate philanthropy, but unfortunately, I think the invitation was sincere, and therefore misguided.

“No person or organization shall be deprived of their ability to connect to others at will without due process of law, with the presumption of innocence until found guilty. Neither governments nor corporations should be allowed to use disconnection from the Internet as a way of arbitrarily furthering their own aims.”

The Internet Blacklist Bill — S.968, formally called the PROTECT IP Act — would violate those principles by allowing the Department of Justice to force search engines, browsers, and service providers to block users’ access to websites that have been accused of facilitating intellectual property infringement — without even giving them a day in court. It would also give IP rights holders a private right of action, allowing them to sue to get sites prevented from operating. Demand Progress’s new mash-up, posted here, explains the bill in more detail.

S.968 has passed the Senate Judiciary Committee, but Ron Wyden (D-OR) is temporarily blocking it from getting a floor vote by using a procedural maneuver known as a hold, noting that “By ceding control of the internet to corporations through a private right of action, and to government agencies that do not sufficiently understand and value the internet, PIPA represents a threat to our economic future and to our international objectives.”

The House is expected to take up a version of the legislation in coming weeks.

“We encourage Americans to mark this 20th birthday of the World Wide Web by defending the principles that underpinned its creation — now under persistent threat by overzealous governments and corporate interests across the globe,” said Demand Progress executive director David Segal. “In particular, the Internet Blacklist Bill would undermine the basic integrity of the Web, and we expect Congress to take it up when they return from their summer break.”

More than 400,000 Demand Progress members have urged their lawmakers to oppose the Internet Blacklist Bill. You can email your Senators and Representatives and ask them to oppose S.968 by clicking here.