President Bola Tinubu has asked a United States federal court to block the release of records held by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) that are being sought in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
The records are being sought by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan, who has filed a FOIA case against several US government agencies seeking documents relating to investigations involving Tinubu in the early 1990s.
Tinubu’s legal team, led by lawyers Christopher W. Carmichael, Victor P. Henderson and Oluwole O. Afolabi, filed a 16-page document before the US District Court for the District of Columbia on August 28, 2026.
The President is participating in the case as an intervenor and is asking the court to reject Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment and allow the FBI and DEA to maintain redactions and withholdings on the records.
Greenspan’s requests include the FBI’s entire file relating to Tinubu and FBI Form 302 interview records concerning the period between 1992 and 1993.
The dispute also involves records associated with a 1993 US civil forfeiture proceeding involving approximately $460,000 linked to Tinubu.
Latest Court Filing
In the latest filing, president Tinubu ‘s lawyers argued that previous public disclosures concerning the forfeiture proceeding did not eliminate Tinubu’s privacy rights in the broader investigative files.
According to the legal team, the fact that portions of information may already have appeared in public records does not mean that the government can disclose the entire investigative file.
“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 lawyers argued.
They also argued that Greenspan’s FOIA requests were primarily aimed at obtaining government documents containing Tinubu’s name.
“Plaintiff’s filings, overwhelmingly, demonstrate that his singular focus is obtaining documents with Intervenor’s ‘name on them,’” the filing stated.
Tinubu’s lawyers further argued that the court should not allow Greenspan to use FOIA to obtain information about a private individual where the records are otherwise protected by FOIA’s privacy exemptions or the US Privacy Act.
The legal team urged the court to deny Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment and permit the redactions and withholdings made by the FBI and DEA to remain in place.
“For all the foregoing reasons, Intervenor requests that this Court deny Plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment and allow the redactions or withholdings made by the FBI and DEA to stand,” the lawyers said.
Greenspan’s efforts to obtain the records have been part of a broader, long-running legal dispute over access to US government documents concerning Tinubu’s activities in the United States in the early 1990s.
