A United States federal judge has granted the FBI permission to submit records relating to an investigation involving President Bola Tinubu for private review in a case seeking their release.
Judge Beryl Howell of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia also gave the FBI, the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the U.S. Department of Justice and Tinubu until August 28, 2026, to file their opposition to the release of the records.
The FBI had asked the court to allow it to submit confidential declarations explaining why some of the records requested under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) were withheld.
The agency said it could not publicly disclose the full reasons for withholding certain information because doing so could reveal law-enforcement techniques and potentially endanger individuals.
The records sought include Tinubu’s FBI file and FBI interview records from the 1990s.
One of the FOIA requests, filed by Aaron Greenspan, sought the entire FBI file on Tinubu, while another requested FBI Form 302 interview records involving Tinubu from a 1992–1993 investigation.
The FBI cited several FOIA exemptions, including provisions protecting personal privacy, confidential sources, law-enforcement techniques and information whose disclosure could threaten an individual’s safety.
The agency said it could not provide the full basis for relying on exemptions 7(E) and 7(F) on the public record, prompting its request for an ex parte, in-camera review by the judge.
The case dates back to requests filed by Greenspan between 2022 and 2023 for records held by the FBI, DEA, IRS and other US agencies concerning investigations involving Tinubu.
The records have drawn renewed attention because of their connection to a 1993 civil forfeiture in which $460,000 linked to an account in Tinubu’s name was forfeited to the US government.
Tinubu has never been criminally charged in connection with the matter and has consistently maintained that it was a civil forfeiture case rather than a criminal prosecution.
