A legal battle over United States government records relating to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has taken a fresh turn, after a US-based political advisory and lobbying firm said new court filings have been formally docketed in the case.
Von Batten-Montague-York said the US District Court for the District of Columbia accepted its Motion for Leave to File a Brief Amicus Curiae and Supplemental Notice of Evidentiary Exhibits in Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys et al., Case No. 1:23-cv-01816-BAH.
The firm announced the development in a statement posted on its verified X account, saying the submissions are now officially part of the federal court record and available for the judge’s consideration.
An amicus curiae filing, meaning a “friend of the court” submission, allows a person or organisation that is not a direct party to a case to present information or arguments that may assist the court.
Von Batten-Montague-York said its filings seek to draw the court’s attention to public statements allegedly made by Nigerian government officials and people connected to Tinubu concerning the controversy.
The firm argued that such public statements are relevant because Tinubu has also sought protection of his privacy in the US litigation.
The development comes against the background of a long-running Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit filed by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan.
Greenspan is seeking records from US agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), concerning investigations into an alleged early-1990s drug-trafficking and money-laundering operation.
A 2025 ruling by Judge Beryl Howell found that the FBI and DEA could not rely on so-called Glomar responses a legal mechanism allowing an agency to refuse to confirm or deny whether records exist in the circumstances before the court. The judge upheld the CIA’s Glomar response.
The court record shows that Greenspan had sought, among other materials, Tinubu’s entire FBI file and FBI interview records allegedly covering 1992 and 1993.
Tinubu was allowed to intervene in the case in November 2023 after asserting privacy interests in confidential tax and federal law-enforcement records.
More recently, Tinubu asked the US court to reject Greenspan’s bid for additional disclosure and argued that privacy protections under US law should prevent the release of certain records.
The latest filings by Von Batten-Montague-York therefore add another layer to the dispute, but they do not establish that Tinubu committed drug trafficking or any related offence.
Rather, the underlying litigation is principally a dispute over whether US government records sought under FOIA should be disclosed, withheld or redacted.
The firm described the docketing of its submissions as a victory, saying the court now has material concerning what it characterises as inconsistencies between public statements by Nigerian officials and Tinubu’s position in the litigation.
The case remains pending before the US District Court for the District of Columbia. The docketing of the new submissions does not mean the judge has accepted the allegations contained in them as proven facts, nor does it constitute a finding of criminal liability against the Nigerian president.
