President Bola Tinubu has asked a U.S. federal court to stop the further release of records relating to past investigations involving him.
Tinubu, who joined the case as an intervenor, made the request in a fresh filing before the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia.
He urged the court to dismiss a motion for summary judgment filed by Aaron Greenspan, founder of PlainSite, and allow the FBI and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to maintain redactions and withholdings in documents already released.
Greenspan had filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests seeking records relating to Tinubu, including what he described as the “entire FBI file” on the Nigerian president.
The requests also sought FBI interview records from 1992 to 1993 linked to a Chicago heroin trafficking investigation.
In April 2025, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered the FBI and DEA to search for and process non-exempt records responsive to Greenspan’s requests.
The agencies subsequently released thousands of pages, with some portions redacted, and provided a Vaughn index explaining the withheld information.
Tinubu’s lawyers argued that FOIA was intended to promote transparency in government operations and not to expose private information about individuals.
“Plaintiff’s motion should be denied because FOIA is not a tool for obtaining information the government collected about private individuals,” they argued.
The legal team invoked FOIA Exemption 7(C), which protects law-enforcement records where disclosure could constitute an unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.
The lawyers also argued that Greenspan’s requests were primarily aimed at obtaining personal information about Tinubu rather than exposing wrongdoing by U.S. government agencies.
They rejected the argument that Tinubu’s position as Nigeria’s president created a sufficient public interest to justify further disclosure.
Tinubu’s lawyers described claims of a secret prosecution or government cover-up as “unsubstantiated allegations”.
They therefore asked the court to dismiss Greenspan’s motion and allow the existing FBI and DEA redactions and withholdings to remain.
Greenspan filed the FOIA requests in 2022 and 2023, seeking records from six U.S. federal agencies.
Tinubu has consistently denied wrongdoing in connection with the allegations.
