Von Batten-Montague-York, a US-based political consultancy and lobbying organization, has accused the Nigerian Presidency of peddling a distorted narrative regarding a recent United States court verdict on records connected to President Bola Tinubu. The firm issued the condemnation in response to a public statement shared by Sunday Dare, which claimed a US court had blocked a discovery attempt against the Nigerian leader in a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.
While acknowledging that the court indeed halted a request by Aaron Greenspan to compel discovery from Tinubu in a separate legal battle involving hacking allegations, the firm asserted that this specific outcome had no bearing on the separate FOIA litigation seeking access to historical files linked to drug investigations. According to the advisory agency, the official communications deliberately omitted unfavourable judgments handed down against the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
What did the US court rule regarding the FBI and DEA?
In its detailed critique released via social media, Von Batten-Montague-York highlighted several key dimensions of the judicial decision that were allegedly glossed over by government defenders. The firm stated that the presiding judge rejected summary judgment motions filed by both the FBI and the DEA concerning a vast majority of their withheld documents.
Furthermore, the court reportedly faulted both American security agencies for employing generalized and imprecise justifications to keep records concerning President Tinubu and an associated individual, Agbele, under wraps. The bench emphasized that because a comprehensive 1993 Department of Justice asset- forfeiture affidavit detailing historical drug and money-laundering inquiries is already part of the public domain, the agencies cannot lawfully rely on broad privacy exemptions to maintain identical redactions.
How were the agency defenses handled?
The court reportedly dismissed single-sentence, generalized explanations put forward by the DEA concerning wiretaps and pen registers, ruling that the agency failed to discharge its legal burden. Consequently, the judge directed both the FBI and the DEA to re-examine their files against existing public disclosures and submit more granular, substantiated explanations for any continued secrecy by November 27, 2026.
Concluding its assessment, the advisory firm urged the public to exercise caution regarding official interpretations of the legal battle, describing the broader court verdict as a major setback that authorities are attempting to obscure by focusing exclusively on the dismissal of Greenspan’s questioning request.