President Bola Tinubu has approached a United States court to prevent the US Department of Justice, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) from releasing records linked to allegations of drug trafficking.
The records are being sought by American transparency activist, Aaron Greenspan, who filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against several US government agencies.
Greenspan is seeking documents relating to investigations involving Tinubu, including the FBI’s full file on him and FBI Form 302 interview records from 1992 and 1993.
The case also concerns an alleged record linked to a 1993 civil forfeiture case in the US involving about $460,000 connected to Tinubu.
Tinubu has consistently denied any wrongdoing.
In court documents filed on Friday and shared with Channels Television by Tinubu’s lawyers, Christopher W. Carmichael, Victor P. Henderson and Oluwole O. Afolabi, the President argued that releasing the records could violate his privacy.
Tinubu’s legal team said the earlier forfeiture proceedings did not make the details of any possible criminal investigation public.
“Submitted in that proceeding, did not reveal the details of a possible criminal investigation (or its results) involving Intervenor,” the lawyers argued.
They said Greenspan was seeking the information because it was not already publicly available.
The lawyers also argued that the fact that some information had previously been disclosed did not remove Tinubu’s right to privacy over the rest of the records.
“The purpose of Plaintiff’s motion is to obtain such information because it is not public,” the document stated.
The legal team referred to previous US Supreme Court decisions to support its argument that a person can still have privacy rights over an entire government file even when some information from the file has already been made public.
“While some information may appear in portions of public records, an individual still retains a privacy interest in the details that remain undisclosed,” they argued.
They further maintained that being linked to a previous investigation was different from having the contents of investigative files made public.
“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 stated.
Tinubu’s lawyers also challenged Greenspan’s arguments about the FBI’s search, the DEA’s records index and other issues concerning documents that were withheld or redacted.
They argued that Greenspan’s main objective was to obtain government records containing Tinubu’s name.
They urged the court not to allow Greenspan to use the FOIA case to obtain records that they said should remain private under US law.
