Tinubu's US Drug Case: Court Orders Release of Information

A United States Court for the District of Columbia has ordered major law enforcement agencies to make public all information concerning President Bola Tinubu's narcotics ordeal in the state.

 In a judgement on Tuesday by Beryl Howell, the order was delivered in response to a motion filed by Aaron Greenspan, an American citizen.

 According to Howell while responding to Aaron Greenspan who applied for a review of an initial ruling, protecting the information from public disclosure is “neither logical nor plausible.”

It is gathered that Greenspan had accused the law enforcement agencies of violating the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by refusing to release within the statutory time “documents relating to purported federal investigations into” President Tinubu and one Abiodun Agbele.

Recall that Tinubu was said to have forfeited $460,000 to the American government in 1993 after authorities linked the funds to proceeds of narcotics trafficking.

A major allegation which raised eyebrows during the Presidential Election Petition Court, when his opponents – Atiku Abubakar of the Peoples Democratic Party and Peter Obi of the Labour Party candidates – questioned Mr Tinubu's eligibility to run for the number one seat.

Although the election court gave its verdict by outright dismissal of the suits, affirming Tinubu’s election.

However, on Tuesday, Judge Howell ruled partly in favour of Greenspan.

The judge declared that the ‘Glomar’ responses asserted by the Federal Bureau of Investigation(FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) are “improper and must be lifted.”

He said the FBI and DEA failed to show that they properly invoked the FOIA.

While giving the judgement, Howell informed, since it was acknowledged that Tinubu was a subject of an investigation involving both the FBI and DEA, “the claim that the Glomar responses were necessary to protect this information from public disclosure is at this point neither logical nor plausible.”

While giving further remarks, the judge established 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 instance, Howel said Mr 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.”