by The Atlantic Digest World Desk
Friday, September 4, 2026
Von Batten-Montague-York, L.C., the Washington lobbying firm retained by ADC presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar, confirmed on Friday that its proposed amicus curiae filing has been formally received by the Clerk of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia in Greenspan v. Executive Office for U.S. Attorneys et al., escalating a dispute that erupted just 24 hours earlier when the Nigerian Presidency issued its most detailed public statement yet insisting President Bola Tinubu’s American records case is a civil, not criminal, matter.
What the firm is asking the court to do
In its Friday statement, the firm said it is seeking the court’s permission “to present an additional perspective on Nigerian President Bola Tinubu’s asserted privacy interests and the Nigerian Presidency’s extraordinary decision to issue an official Statehouse Statement publicly discussing the very FBI and DEA records President Tinubu is asking a U.S. federal court to protect.” The firm’s central legal argument is straightforward in its framing, though its ultimate persuasiveness before Judge Beryl A. Howell remains untested: “You cannot have it both ways. You cannot invoke privacy before a United States federal court while using the power of the Nigerian Presidency to publicly characterize those same investigative records and tell the world what they supposedly contain.” The firm says it is asking the court to weigh the Presidency’s own public actions when balancing Tinubu’s asserted privacy interests, protected under FOIA Exemption 7(C), against what it characterises as the public’s legitimate interest in understanding what the FBI, DEA and Department of Justice did in connection with the underlying drug-trafficking investigative records.
According to a separate account of the filing, Von Batten’s motion, filed under Local Rule 7(o)(2), lists Greenspan, the original plaintiff, and the Executive Office for US Attorneys among the defendants, with Tinubu named as an intervenor in the case. The firm has said it notified Greenspan, the US Department of Justice, and Tinubu’s own legal counsel of its intention to seek leave to file, a procedural step it says was completed before the filing was received by the court clerk on Friday.
The firm anticipates a fight over standing
Notably, the firm’s Friday statement pre-empted the most obvious counterargument it expects to face: that neither it nor Atiku has any formal standing in the case. “We fully expect President Bola Tinubu and the other parties to challenge this filing for one reason or another. That is entirely expected,” the statement read. The firm was explicit that its “primary objective is to ensure that the Court is made aware of the Nigerian Presidency’s public statement” and its argument that the statement “potentially weakens President Tinubu’s asserted claim of privacy,” adding: “Regardless of the outcome of our motion, we have placed this significant development before the Court so that it can be considered, if the Court deems appropriate, when ruling on the issues before it.” In other words, the firm has structured its filing so that even a rejection of its amicus request would still, in its own framing, have placed the underlying argument on the court’s record.
Why this filing exists: the Presidency’s Thursday statement
To understand Friday’s filing, it is essential to understand what triggered it. On Thursday, September 3, Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy Bayo Onanuga issued a detailed statement, reported in this newspaper’s previous edition, insisting: “For clarity, the matter is a civil records-disclosure dispute under the United States Freedom of Information Act. It is not a criminal case against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, nor has the court found him guilty of any criminal wrongdoing.” That statement disclosed that the FBI and DEA have produced 399 pages of records with portions redacted, laid out the case’s procedural history in detail, and explicitly dismissed Von Batten’s public commentary, stating that “neither he nor his client, former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, is a party to the case” and that recent commentary “inaccurately portrayed him and his client as central to the proceedings.” Onanuga added pointedly that the case would be decided by Judge Howell “based on the evidence, applicable law, and the parties’ arguments, not the wishful preference of Alhaji Atiku Abubakar or his agent.”
It is precisely this statement, a formal, on-the-record Statehouse communication publicly discussing the content and status of the very sealed and redacted records at the centre of the litigation, that Von Batten’s firm is now arguing before the court itself as a legally significant development. The firm did not respond quietly. In a separate statement issued Friday, before the amicus motion’s formal receipt was confirmed, the firm accused the Presidency of attempting to “mislead the world”: “The Nigerian Presidency’s attempt to mislead the world has opened the door for us to step in officially.” The firm went further still, describing the underlying records as “alleged heroin trafficking records” and reiterating its stated intention to argue affirmatively for the disclosure of the material rather than simply weighing in on the privacy question in the abstract.
Where the case actually stands, procedurally
Stripping away the dueling public statements, the underlying case remains exactly where this newspaper reported it stood as of Thursday’s edition. Greenspan’s original FOIA requests, filed with several US agencies in 2022, sought criminal investigative records concerning four individuals allegedly associated with a Chicago heroin ring active in the early 1990s: Tinubu, Lee Andrew Edwards, Mueez Abegboyega Akande, and Abiodun Agbele. After the requests were rebuffed, Greenspan filed Civil Action No. 23-1816 on June 12, 2023, naming the FBI, DEA, IRS, Executive Office for US Attorneys, State Department and, later, the CIA as defendants. Judge Howell ruled in April 2025 that the agencies’ refusal to confirm or deny the existence of responsive records was “neither logical nor plausible,” ordering a proper search and processing of the material. Tinubu was subsequently permitted to join the case as an intervenor to protect his personal privacy interests.
As previously reported, the FBI submitted the disputed records to Judge Howell on August 28, 2026, under seal, ex parte, and in camera, pursuant to an August 20 court order, meaning the material has been reviewed privately by the judge but not released publicly. A firm timeline now governs the case’s remaining steps: Greenspan has until September 11, 2026, to file his opposition and reply to the filings already submitted by the defendants and Tinubu; the FBI, DEA and Tinubu’s legal team then have until September 18, 2026, to respond to whatever Greenspan files. The ultimate legal question before Judge Howell remains narrow and technical: whether the redactions applied to the 399 pages already produced are lawful under the relevant FOIA exemptions, not whether Tinubu committed any crime.
What is, and is not, established by Friday’s development
This newspaper must be precise about what Friday’s filing actually changes. It does not, on its own, alter the case’s underlying legal timeline or its narrow FOIA-redaction focus. It does not constitute any finding by Judge Howell on the merits of either Von Batten’s amicus argument or the Presidency’s privacy claim; the court has not yet ruled on whether to accept the firm’s brief at all. What it does represent is a genuinely novel legal argument now formally before a federal judge: that a government’s own public characterisation of sealed investigative records, made through official channels while simultaneously asserting privacy protection over those same records in court, may be a relevant factor in weighing the strength of that privacy claim. Whether Judge Howell finds this argument persuasive, or even finds Von Batten’s firm to have sufficient standing to raise it at all, remains entirely unresolved, and this newspaper considers both outcomes to be currently unpredictable given the genuinely unusual procedural posture the case has now taken.
Why it matters
Friday’s filing represents a significant tactical escalation in a controversy that, as this newspaper has tracked across several recent editions, has moved from a purely Nigerian domestic political dispute into an increasingly active feature of live American federal litigation. The Presidency’s own Thursday statement, intended to reassure Nigerian audiences that the case was merely procedural and non-criminal, appears to have instead handed Von Batten’s firm precisely the argumentative hook it needed to formally insert itself, and by extension Atiku’s broader political narrative, directly into the court record Judge Howell will consult when issuing her eventual ruling. Whether this backfires, by strengthening the perception that Atiku’s camp is deliberately manufacturing legal drama around a narrow records dispute, or succeeds in genuinely complicating Tinubu’s privacy argument before the court, will likely become clearer only once Judge Howell rules on whether to accept the amicus brief at all, a decision that could come before or alongside her broader rulings on the September 11 and September 18 filings already scheduled.
