A United States District Court in Washington, D.C., has directed key law enforcement bodies — the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) — to release information concerning President Bola Tinubu.
The order was issued by Judge Beryl Howell on Tuesday, following a motion by American activist Aaron Greenspan, who sought a review of a prior decision.
According to the report by Premium Times, Howell dismissed the rationale behind the agencies’ refusal to disclose the documents, stating that shielding the information from the public is “neither logical nor plausible.”
Greenspan had taken legal action against the agencies, accusing them of violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by not releasing documents “relating to purported federal investigations into” Tinubu and another individual, Abiodun Agbele, within the required timeframe.
In 1993, Tinubu was reported to have forfeited $460,000 to the US government after the funds were linked to alleged narcotics trafficking.
This forfeiture resurfaced during the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal when Tinubu’s eligibility for the 2023 presidential election was contested by Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi.
The court, however, ruled in Tinubu’s favor and upheld his election.
On Tuesday, Judge Howell ruled partially in support of Greenspan. She determined that the FBI and DEA’s use of the so-called ‘Glomar’ response — refusing to confirm or deny the existence of records — was “improper and must be lifted.”
The judge said the agencies had not justified their claim to such a response under the FOIA framework.
She wrote: “The claim that the Glomar responses were necessary to protect this information from public disclosure is at this point neither logical nor plausible.”
The judge further explained that a FOIA requester may challenge a Glomar response by either questioning the agency’s assertion that acknowledging records would cause harm under a FOIA exemption or by showing that the agency “has ‘officially acknowledged otherwise exempt information through prior disclosure”, thereby forfeiting the exemption.
In Greenspan’s case, Judge Howell noted that he made both arguments. According to her: “The plaintiffs’ argument that (1) DEA has officially confirmed investigations of Agbele’s involvement in the drug trafficking ring, (2) the FBI and DEA have both officially confirmed investigations of Tinubu relating to the drug trafficking ring, (3) any privacy interests implicated by the FOIA requests to the FBI and DEA for records about Tinubu are overcome by the public interest in release of such information, and (4) the CIA has officially acknowledged records responsive to plaintiff’s FOIA request about Tinubu.”
