A United States federal judge has ruled that the FBI and the Drug Enforcement Administration did not give adequate legal reasons for keeping secret most of the records from a 1990s investigation into an alleged Chicago-based heroin trafficking and money laundering operation involving Nigeria’s President, Bola Ahmed Tinubu.

Judge Beryl A. Howell of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia issued the ruling on October 30, 2026, in a suit brought by Aaron Greenspan against the Executive Office for United States Attorneys and other federal agencies.

The case, Civil Action No. 23-cv-1816, concerns Freedom of Information Act requests for investigative files connected to an alleged drug trafficking and money laundering network that operated in the Chicago area during the early 1990s.

In her memorandum opinion and order, Howell concluded that the two agencies had failed to explain adequately why the bulk of the requested material should remain secret, particularly given that significant details of the investigation had already surfaced in public court documents dating back to 1993.

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The agencies were ordered to supply further explanations covering information already in the public domain, the prospect of releasing non-exempt portions of the files, and whether continued secrecy could cause reasonably foreseeable harm.

How the requests began

Greenspan, who represented himself without a lawyer, submitted 12 FOIA requests between 2022 and 2023 addressed to the FBI, the DEA, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Internal Revenue Service, the Executive Office of United States Attorneys and the Department of State.

He was seeking criminal investigative documents produced during a joint investigation involving the FBI, the IRS, the DEA and the United States Attorney offices for the Northern District of Indiana and the Northern District of Illinois.

That investigation centred on a Chicago-based heroin trafficking and money laundering operation believed to have been active from roughly 1988 until 1994 or later.

Four people were named in the requests: Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Abiodun Agbele, Lee Andrew Edwards and Mueez Abegboyega Akande. Tinubu is now Nigeria’s president, while Agbele was identified during the investigation as an alleged associate. Claims concerning Edwards and Akande were later narrowed or waived under agreements between the parties.

Only four requests, involving the FBI and the DEA, remain in dispute.

On July 21, 2022, Greenspan asked the DEA for records held at its Hammond, Indiana, or Washington, DC, offices concerning the Nigerian heroin distribution organisation allegedly linked to Tinubu and Edwards. The request pointed to a civil forfeiture complaint and an IRS affidavit filed in Northern District of Illinois Case No. 1:93-cv-04483. The DEA logged the application as 22-00892-F but declined to confirm or deny that responsive records existed.

On March 29, 2023, he sought the FBI’s entire file on Bola Ahmed Tinubu, born March 29, 1952. The bureau assigned Request Number 1588244-000 and answered with a neither-confirm-nor-deny position, invoking privacy exemptions.

In May 2023 he filed a further request for FBI 302 interview reports concerning Tinubu from FBI Case No. 245-IP-71386 during 1992 and 1993. It was registered as 1593615-000, and again the FBI would neither confirm nor deny that records existed.

On December 5, 2023, Greenspan requested the DEA’s case file on Abiodun Agbele for the period January 1, 1990, to December 31, 1995, in the Northern District of Indiana or the Northern District of Illinois. Registered as 24-00201-F, the request drew the same refusal to confirm or deny.

Intervention, dismissals and the 1993 affidavit

Greenspan sued on June 12, 2023, after encountering difficulty in obtaining the records.

In October 2023 he sought emergency relief, referring to arguments before Nigeria’s Supreme Court about Tinubu’s election. The court turned down that application.

Tinubu then applied to intervene, citing privacy interests in confidential tax records and law enforcement documents, and the court allowed him to take part in the proceedings. Other federal agencies were later dismissed from the case.

In April 2025 the CIA obtained summary judgment after the court found that Greenspan had not shown the agency had officially acknowledged the existence of responsive records.

A turning point came on April 8, 2025, when Howell rejected the FBI’s and the DEA’s use of neither-confirm-nor-deny responses to sidestep the requests.

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She relied on public court documents from the early 1990s that had already revealed the existence of criminal investigations involving Tinubu and Agbele. Prominent among them was a verified civil forfeiture complaint that the United States Department of Justice filed on July 26, 1993, in the Northern District of Illinois, seeking forfeiture of funds held in a First Heritage Bank account in the name of Bola Tinubu.

Attached to the complaint was an affidavit by IRS Special Agent Kevin Moss. It set out details of the investigation and stated in at least four paragraphs that the DEA had investigated Agbele. The affidavit also described the basis for probable cause to believe that funds in bank accounts controlled by Tinubu were tied to financial transactions that violated Sections 1956 and 1957 of Title 18 of the United States Code, the money laundering provisions, and said the funds represented proceeds of drug trafficking.

The court held that the Justice Department’s public filings amounted to official acknowledgment of the relevant information and bound the FBI and the DEA. The agencies could not go on invoking broad privacy arguments to refuse to confirm or deny material the government had itself placed on the public record. Howell also found that they had not established a valid privacy interest capable of sustaining their earlier responses in light of those disclosures.

Most secrecy arguments rejected

After the April 2025 decision, the FBI and the DEA began processing hundreds of pages of responsive documents, making a series of interim releases to Greenspan between February 13 and June 1, 2026. Most of the material, however, was withheld in full or in part, and none of the documents handed over included Tinubu’s name.

The FBI also produced a redacted version of the Kevin Moss affidavit with Tinubu’s name and other details removed, even though the same affidavit had appeared without those redactions in public court records in 1993 and again before the court in 2024. That discrepancy became a central issue in the latest proceedings, since the agencies were expected to explain why information already available to the public was still being withheld from the requested files.

In the October 30 ruling, Howell denied Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment in its entirety, but she also rejected the FBI’s and the DEA’s bids for summary judgment on several major exemptions.

The judge sided with the FBI on two points: that the bureau had carried out an adequate search for the requested records, and that it was legally entitled to withhold certain materials under Exemption 5, which shields attorney work product and related privileged information.

She declined, however, to grant the agencies summary judgment on Exemptions 3, 6, 7(C), 7(D), 7(E) and 7(F). Those provisions cover material protected by other federal laws, personal privacy, confidential sources, law enforcement techniques and information whose release could endanger someone’s life or physical safety. They also take in restrictions on grand jury material under Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), the Pen Register Act, Title III wiretap provisions and Section 6103 of the Internal Revenue Code.

Howell found the evidence the agencies offered too thin to justify continued reliance on those exemptions. Their explanations, she found, did not adequately confront the age of the investigation or the fact that important information about Tinubu and Agbele had been publicly available for decades. The agencies must therefore explain why material already disclosed in the 1993 court filings could not be separated from genuinely protected material and released.

A further issue concerned the FBI’s reliance on Exemption 7(F), which permits withholding where disclosure could reasonably be expected to endanger life or physical safety. The agencies had filed a confidential declaration with the court containing claims about violent acts abroad.

Howell found that the incidents described were unconnected to the case and were not credibly likely to increase because of the release of decades-old information that had long sat in the public domain. The agencies’ explanations were not sufficiently tied to the actual facts of the case, she concluded. Federal agencies, the ruling indicates, cannot rest on general claims of possible danger without showing how release of the particular information at issue could create a reasonably foreseeable risk.

Howell directed the parties to confer and file a joint proposed schedule by November 27, 2026, for any renewed cross motions for summary judgment. The FBI and the DEA must back any renewed arguments with supplemental declarations giving detailed explanations for each exemption they intend to maintain.

The new filings must show that the agencies have thoroughly reviewed the responsive records and considered whether publicly disclosed information can be separated and released without exposing genuinely protected material or causing reasonably foreseeable harm. The court said particular attention must be paid to information already on the public record, and the agencies may submit both public and confidential versions of their explanations.

The date does not mean the records must be released by November 27. It requires the agencies to propose a schedule for the next stage of proceedings and to supply stronger legal justifications for any continued withholding.

Other applications refused

The October 30 ruling dealt with several other applications in the case. Howell rejected Greenspan’s bid to impose additional procedural safeguards on confidential submissions the FBI makes to the court. She also refused a request by non-party Karl Von Batten for leave to file an amicus brief.

Another decision concerned Greenspan’s attempt to serve limited discovery on President Tinubu and DCI Group over alleged distributed denial of service attacks on his website, which he said is a source of personal income and a place where he publishes documents relating to the litigation. His proposed discovery included interrogatories, requests for admission, a request for production of documents and a subpoena.

The judge found the allegations unrelated to the FOIA dispute, explaining that establishing who was responsible for the alleged cyberattacks would not help determine whether the FBI and the DEA had conducted adequate searches or lawfully withheld the requested records. The request to question Tinubu was denied. A related application asking the court to take judicial notice of certain information was also denied as moot.

Where the case stands

The ruling leaves the case active against the FBI and the DEA over the outstanding requests concerning Tinubu and Agbele. Although the court accepted the FBI’s search methods and some attorney work product redactions, it found that the agencies had not adequately justified most of their other withholding decisions. They must now return with stronger explanations, particularly about information already disclosed in public court records.

For now, the court has neither ordered the wholesale release of the records nor made any finding of criminal wrongdoing against Tinubu. The next major step is the November 27, 2026, deadline, when the parties must present their proposed schedule for renewed arguments and further examination of the disputed records.