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President Bola Tinubu filed a challenge in a U.S. court to block the Department of Justice, FBI, and DEA from releasing investigative records regarding historic drug trafficking allegations.
According to reports from Channels Television, transparency activist Aaron Greenspan requested the documents through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit, targeting the FBI’s complete file on Tinubu, including 1992–1993 interview records and files linked to a 1993 civil forfeiture case involving $460,000.
Tinubu, who denies all wrongdoing, submitted a 16-page motion through his legal team—Christopher W. Carmichael, Victor P. Henderson, and Oluwole O. Afolabi—arguing that public release would violate his personal privacy rights.
His legal team asserted that prior partial disclosures do not strip an individual of their right to privacy under established legal precedents.
Citing Supreme Court case law, the filing noted that “an individual retains a privacy interest in an entire file or document being produced, even where there are ‘scattered’ disclosures of information from that same file.”
The court documents further stressed that prior public references to an investigation remain distinct from exposing the underlying investigative contents, maintaining that “an individual retains a privacy interest even if they were previously publicly associated with criminal activity.”
See Copies Of Court Documents Below:
Greenspan’s objections
President Bola Tinubu’s legal team filed court documents urging the U.S. court to reject transparency activist Aaron Greenspan’s request for federal investigative files.
Defence attorneys argued that Greenspan’s legal challenges against the FBI and DEA stem from a narrow motive rather than a legitimate public interest. They stated that “Plaintiff’s filings, overwhelmingly, demonstrate that his singular focus is obtaining documents with Intervenor’s ‘name on them’.”
The legal team emphasised that Greenspan’s objections regarding agency searches, exemptions, and document segregability should not bypass statutory privacy protections.
They asserted that secondary procedural arguments “should not allow Plaintiff to access documents that should otherwise be withheld or redacted under Exemption 7(C) or the Privacy Act.”
Directing their argument to the judge, Tinubu’s lawyers maintained that private citizens deserve protection from indiscriminate record searches under the Freedom of Information Act.
“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,” the filing stated.
Defence counsel concluded by requesting that the court deny Greenspan’s motion for summary judgement and uphold all redactions and withholdings applied by the FBI and DEA.
