Details of why US Court ordered fot the release of Bola Tinubu probe report has emerged.
NewsOnline Nigeria reports that barely two years after concerted efforts by certain persons, including former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, to get reports of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) probe on President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the United States District Court for the District of Columbia has ordered top US law enforcement agencies to release confidential information generated on him during a “purported federal investigation in the 1990s.”
But the Presidency said the information being sought was not new and that it did not indict Tinubu.
This is just as lawyers, who spoke to Daily Trust, noted that the order by the US are amenable to appeals.
A report by Premium Times yesterday quoted the judge, Beryl Howell, to have made the order on Tuesday, saying that protecting the information from public disclosure is “neither logical nor plausible.”
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The ruling followed a suit filed an American, Aaron Greenspan, in June 2023 under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) against the Executive Office for US Attorneys, Department of State, FBI, Internal Revenue Service (IRS), Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Greenspan had accused the law enforcement agencies of violating the FOIA by failing to release within the statutory time “documents relating to purported federal investigations into” President Tinubu and one Abiodun Agbele.
Between 2022 and 2023, Greenspan filed 12 FOIA requests with six different US government agencies and components seeking information about a joint investigation conducted by the FBI, IRS, DEA, and the US Attorney’s Offices for the Northern District of Indiana and Northern District of Illinois.
Between 2022 and 2023, Greenspan filed 12 FOIA requests with six different US government agencies and components seeking information about a joint investigation conducted by the FBI, IRS, DEA, and the US Attorney’s Offices for the Northern District of Indiana and Northern District of Illinois.
According to Greenspan, the records being requested involved charging decisions on the activities, including money laundering, of a Chicago heroin ring that operated in the early 1990s.
In each FOIA request, the American sought criminal investigative records about four named individuals “allegedly associated with the drug ring: Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and Abiodun Agbele.”
After the requests, all five US agencies issued “Glomar responses”, refusing to confirm or deny whether the requested records exist.
Greenspan contested those responses at the Department of Justice’s Office of Information Policy (“OIP”). The OIP, however, affirmed the agencies’ refusal to confirm or deny the existence of the requested records.
The American then filed a lawsuit on 12 June 2023, naming the FBI, DEA, IRS, EOUSA, and Department of State as defendants and challenging each agency’s response to the separate FOIA requests.
Court documents show that the CIA was later added as a defendant in the First Amended Complaint, along with a challenge to that agency’s glomar response to the plaintiff’s FOIA request.
On 20 October 2023, Greenspan filed an emergency motion seeking a hearing to compel the US agencies to immediately produce records responsive to his FOIA requests. He cited the Nigerian Supreme Court’s plan to begin hearing arguments in three days’ time in a litigation contesting Tinubu’s 2023 election as the president of Nigeria.
Three days later, on 23 October 2023, Greenspan’s emergency motion was denied for failing to “satisfy any of the requirements for emergency injunctive relief.”
Also on that same day, President Tinubu moved to intervene in the case, citing his privacy interests in his “confidential tax records” and “documents from federal law enforcement agencies that fall within the Privacy Act or exceptions to FOIA and should not be disclosed.”
In 1993, Tinubu was said to have forfeited $460,000 to the American government after authorities linked the funds to proceeds of narcotics trafficking.
The issue of Tinubu’s forfeiture of the funds featured prominently at the Presidential Election Petition Court when his opponents, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, challenged the president’s eligibility to contest Nigeria’s presidency. But the election court, in a unanimous decision, dismissed the suits, affirming Tinubu’s election.
However, on Tuesday, Judge Howell ruled partly in favour of Mr Greenspan in the US case.
‘Why the FOIA request should be granted’
Explaining his judgement further, Howell establish that a FOIA requester may challenge the propriety of an agency’s Glomar response in two ways: first, by “challenging the agency’s assertion that confirming or denying the existence of any records would result in a cognisable harm under a FOIA exemption,” and, second, showing that the agency “has ‘officially acknowledged otherwise exempt information through prior disclosure,” meaning that the agency “has ‘waived its right to claim an exemption with respect to that information.”
In this case, the judge said Greenspan asserts both types of challenges to defendants’ Glomar responses: “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.”
Meanwhile, the CIA has the judgement entitled in its favour in this case. The judge ruled that Mr Greenspan has failed to show that the “CIA has ever officially acknowledged the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to his FOIA request. Therefore, the CIA’s Glomar response must be sustained.”
Tinubu, Agbele’s records cleared for release
Five of Mr Greenspan’s FOIA requests are still at issue in the parties’ pending cross-motions for summary judgement.
During the hearing, the plaintiff agreed to narrow the issues for summary judgement briefing to defendants’ Glomar responses, redactions, and withholdings as to Mr Tinubu and Mr Agbele only.
This is why in its judgement, the judge ordered that the remaining parties, apart from CIA, to file jointly, by 2 May, a report on the status of any outstanding issues in this case, as described in the accompanying order.
