US Court Orders FBI to Release Tinubu’s Records
On Tuesday, U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell ordered the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to disclose investigative records concerning Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that originated from an alleged narcotics trafficking investigation carried out in the 1990s.
The development followed an Aaron Greenspan motion for the reconsideration of an earlier ruling.
The requests sought details of the federal investigation into a heroin trafficking network alleged to involve Tinubu and others, including Abiodun Agbele, Mueez Akande, and Lee Andrew Edwards.
The FBI, DEA, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Department of State, Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys (EOUSA), and Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) all rebuffed Greenspan’s FOIA requests, using Glomar responses.
Greenspan alleged in his suit that the withholding of the information was improper and truly of high public interest.
He also pointed to a verified complaint by the U.S. Department of Justice dated 1993, in which the forfeiture of $460,000 attributable to Bola Tinubu was sought as drug trafficking proceeds, as being in the public interest.
The court documents included the affidavit of Kevin Moss, who at the time was a Special Agent with the IRS and had elaborated on the operations of a heroin ring in the Chicago area.
The affidavit suggested that Tinubu was under investigation with respect to financial transactions suspected to have been laundering the proceeds of the narcotics trafficking.
“There is probably cause to believe that funds in certain bank accounts controlled by Bola Tinubu were involved in financial transactions in violation of U.S. laws and represent the proceeds of drug trafficking,” said Moss in his sworn affidavit.
The affidavit further linked Tinubu with Mueez Akande and Abiodun Agbele, referring to Agbele, who was arrested after selling white heroin to an undercover DEA agent, as having cooperated with investigators to provide additional leads within the network.
Tinubu intervened in October 2023, alleging privacy concerns against the FOIA lawsuit and objecting to the release of “confidential tax records” and “documents from federal law enforcement agencies.”
However, Judge Howell ruled that the public interest in understanding the records surrounding Mr. Tinubu’s alleged involvement outweighed the President’s claimed privacy interests.
“The public interest in learning about a sitting president’s possible connection to a major drug investigation is undoubtedly significant,” the judge wrote.
Though the CIA successfully defended its Glomar response – with the court ruling that Greenspan failed to show that the agency had officially acknowledged the existence or nonexistence of responsive records – the judge ordered all other agencies, except for the CIA, to jointly file a report concerning the status of all outstanding issues in this case, by May 2.
The ruling, analysts of law hold, could set the release in motion of sensitive documents that have for long remained the subject of speculation-and-political-controversy in Nigeria.
During the 2023 Nigerian presidential elections, the $460,000 forfeiture resurfaced as Tinubu’s opponents questioned his eligibility.
But the Nigerian election tribunal ultimately dismissed those challenges.
“Transparency must be greater than secrecy with respect to public officials. The American public and Nigerians deserve to know the truth!” Greenspan had reacted to the ruling of the U.S. court.
Background
In November 2024, SaharaReporters reported U.S. law enforcement agencies had reportedly used the Glomar response to deny requests for criminal investigative documents on President Tinubu and others.
This followed several Freedom of Information Act requests filed by the Plaintiff Aaron Greenspan with the FBI, CIA, DEA, Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys, Department of State, and the Department of Treasury, Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
Greenspan vs. U.S. Attorney Executive Office and others is the case before the District of Columbia, number 1:23-cv-01816-BAH.
Criminal investigative documents were sought in relation to third parties, including Tinubu, Lee Andrew Edwards, and Mueez Akande Agbele, said by the Plaintiff to have been involved in “an international drug trafficking and money laundering ring with operations in Chicago, Illinois.”
The agencies insisted that revealing any information about Nigerian president Bola Tinubu “could cause damage to U.S. national security.”
This position was articulated in a memorandum submitted by the CIA, FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration in respect of the US District Court for the District of Columbia.
In 2023, it denied an emergency application compelling the highest arms of law enforcement in the US to accelerate the release of confidential information bearing on President Tinubu.
However, in the meantime, the three US agencies had responded to the motions for summary judgment regarding the investigation records of President Bola Tinubu.
The CIA stated further on its Glomar response that “the CIA does not reveal the identity of its human sources [because] revealing the identity of a confidential source could expose Agency tradecraft, other human sources, and specific intelligence interests and activities.”
Mary C. Williams, the Litigation Information Review Officer for the Information Review and Release Division at the CIA, further elaborated, “Human sources can be expected to furnish information to the CIA only when they are confident the CIA can and will do everything in its power to prevent the public disclosure of their cooperation.
In the case of a person who has been cooperating with the CIA, official confirmation of that cooperation could cause the targets to take retaliatory action against that person or against their family or friends.
“The haphazardness of one of the sources in an intelligence source chain can damage the source spectrum; it puts in jeopardy all contacts of the cooperating person.
It is like confirmation or denial of the existence of records on a particular foreign national, like Tinubu, reasonably could be expected to cause damage to U.S. national security by indicating whether or not the CIA maintained any human intelligence sources related to Tinubu.”
The court documents state that the remaining controversies involve Defendants’ Glomar responses to Plaintiff’s request for records about Tinubu and the DEA’s Glomar response to Plaintiff’s request for records about Agbele.
He also sued the Executive Office for U.S Attorneys, Department of State, and the Department of Treasury, Internal Revenue Service but voluntarily dismissed those on August 13, 2024.
The phrase “Glomar response” originated from a FOIA case seeking information about a ship known as the “Hughes Glomar Explorer,” and the CIA refused to confirm or deny any connection to the Glomar vessel as doing so would jeopardize national security or disclose intelligence sources and methods.
“Such Glomar responses are proper if the fact of existence or nonexistence of records lies within a FOIA exemption,” says the court document.
FBI and DEA properly Glomar responded under FOIA Exemptions 6 and 7(C), as the requests seek criminal investigative documents pertaining to third parties that, if they existed, would interfere with the third parties’ substantial privacy interests in not being associated with law enforcement investigative records.
On September 6, 2023, SaharaReporters reported that the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in Abuja on Wednesday struck out several paragraphs in the petition on which Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) relied to push President Tinubu out of office.
Also, the Tribunal rejected and discredited a number of exhibits and witness statements tendered by the former Vice President to substantiate his claims of irregularities and malpractices in the February 25 elections.
The ruling on some objections argued Chief Wole Olanipekun (SAN) on behalf of Tinubu, and on its part Justice Moses Ugoh stated that several aspects of Atiku’s petition lacked legs upon which they could stand and survive and were, consequently, not competent.
Atiku did not furnish several facts that fundamentally needed to be pleaded in support of the petition, a position equally taken by the court concerning the petition by his counterpart in the Labour Party, Peter Obi.
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