President Bola Tinubu has filed a legal challenge in a US court to block the release of records held by the Department of Justice, the FBI, and the DEA that are linked to allegations of drug trafficking against the Nigerian president.
The records are being sought by Aaron Greenspan, an American transparency activist who filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against several US government agencies seeking documents related to investigations involving Tinubu.
Greenspan’s requests include the FBI’s entire file on Tinubu and FBI Form 302 interview records covering the period between 1992 and 1993, according to court documents shared Saturday by Tinubu’s legal team.
The case also involves an alleged record connected to a 1993 civil forfeiture proceeding in the United States involving approximately $460,000 linked to Tinubu. The president has consistently denied any wrongdoing in the matter, and his lawyers have maintained that the forfeiture did not constitute an admission of guilt.
The 16-page court filing was shared with journalists by Tinubu‘s lawyers, Christopher W. Carmichael, Victor P. Henderson, and Oluwole O. Afolabi, who argued that releasing the records would infringe on Tinubu’s privacy rights.
“The purpose of Plaintiff’s motion is to obtain such information because it is not public,” the legal team stated in the court document, adding that Greenspan’s argument did not align with established legal precedent on individual privacy interests.
Tinubu’s lawyers cited the US Supreme Court’s decision in Reporters Committee, arguing that an individual retains a privacy interest in an entire file or document even where there are scattered disclosures of information from that same file.
“While some information may appear in portions of public records, an individual still retains a privacy interest in the details that remain undisclosed,” the legal team stated, referencing Judicial Watch, Inc. v. United States Department of Justice, a 2012 ruling from the District of Columbia.
The lawyers also cited a 2021 appellate court ruling involving the Electronic Privacy Information Center, which held that individuals named in public portions of a document retain a privacy interest in avoiding disclosure of the details of the investigation.
“Regardless of the prior disclosure in the forfeiture proceeding, Intervenor retains a privacy interest in potential disclosure of the investigative files sought by Plaintiff,” the document stated, using the court’s designation for Tinubu as the intervening party in the case.
The filing further argued that Greenspan’s submissions overwhelmingly demonstrate that his singular focus is obtaining documents with Tinubu’s name on them and characterized the FOIA action as an attempt to mine government files about a private individual.
“If this Court finds that Plaintiff cannot use FOIA to mine information in government files about a private individual, he should not be able to access documents with Intervenor’s name on them,” Tinubu’s lawyers argued in the filing.
The legal team also addressed Greenspan’s criticisms of the FBI’s search efforts, the DEA’s Vaughn Index, document segregability, and the applicability of FOIA exemptions to deceased individuals and confidential sources named in the records.
Tinubu’s lawyers asked the court to deny Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment and to allow redactions or withholdings made by the FBI and the DEA to stand under Exemption 7(C) of FOIA and the Privacy Act.
The case, filed as Case 1:23-cv-01816-BAH, shows the most recent document was filed on Thursday in the District of Columbia federal court, placing the legal battle between the transparency activist and Africa’s most populous nation’s sitting president squarely before a US federal judge.
Tinubu’s legal intervention in the American FOIA proceeding marks one of the most direct engagements by the Nigerian president with the long-running dispute over drug trafficking records and the 1993 civil forfeiture proceeding linked to his name in US court files.
