President Bola Tinubu has asked a United States federal court to reject a request by American transparency activist Aaron Greenspan to introduce additional records in an ongoing lawsuit involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
According to court documents, Tinubu’s lawyers opposed Greenspan’s request for the court to take judicial notice of public records relating to alleged hacking activities, criminal proceedings and media reports.
The objection was contained in a filing dated October 15, 2026, before the United States District Court for the District of Columbia.
Greenspan is pursuing access to historical investigative records held by the FBI and DEA concerning investigations involving Tinubu and Nigerian businessman Abubakar Agbele in the 1990s.
He filed his application on October 8, asking the court to consider the additional materials in support of his separate request for permission to seek limited discovery from Tinubu.
Discovery is a legal process through which parties to a case can request relevant documents or information from other parties. Greenspan argues that the records he submitted provide grounds for investigating possible attacks against him and his website.
Tinubu’s lawyers, however, maintain that the request should be rejected because the materials do not establish the connection Greenspan is attempting to draw between the alleged hacking activities and his ongoing legal dispute.
The lawyers also challenged the timing of the application, arguing that Greenspan submitted it more than a week after filing his reply in support of his request for limited discovery.
They further argued that the 176 pages of additional materials referenced in the October 8 filing had been available earlier and should have been presented in his previous submissions.
A significant part of Tinubu’s objection concerns Greenspan’s reliance on news reports and allegations contained in court documents. The lawyers argued that such materials cannot automatically be treated as proof of the claims they contain.
“News articles are not appropriate for judicial notice for the truth, content, or veracity of their claims,” they argued.
They maintained that although a court may acknowledge the existence of a public document or court record, that does not mean the allegations contained in it have been established as facts.
The lawyers also questioned Greenspan’s reliance on criminal indictments, noting that indictments contain allegations that may not have been proven.
Greenspan’s request centres partly on records concerning an alleged hacking campaign that targeted climate activists and criminal proceedings involving Israeli nationals Amit Forlit and Aviram Azari.
Forlit was charged in the United States with conspiracy to commit computer hacking, conspiracy to commit wire fraud and wire fraud. Azari pleaded guilty to offences including conspiracy to commit computer hacking and wire fraud and was sentenced to 80 months in prison in 2023.
In his October 8 filing, Greenspan cited the proceedings and other records alleging that hackers targeted climate activists and that information obtained through the alleged operation was passed to a Washington-based lobbying firm.
The materials cited by Greenspan identify the firm as DCI Group and its alleged client as ExxonMobil.
DCI Group has denied involvement in hacking, describing the allegations as “false and unsubstantiated,” according to a National Public Radio report included in Greenspan’s filing.
Explaining the purpose of his request, Greenspan wrote: “Plaintiff asks the Court to notice the existence of these records and what they state, and by whom, not the truth of any allegation they contain.”
He also acknowledged that no DCI entity had been charged in connection with the allegations.
Greenspan further referred to DCI Group AZ, LLC, a related entity that he alleges receives $750,000 monthly from Tinubu’s government.
He claimed that an account managed by the entity published a post attacking him on August 5, 2026, and argued that the additional records could help establish whether the alleged hacking activities described in the earlier proceedings were connected to possible attacks against him.
“These records further demonstrate that Plaintiff’s request for discovery rests on quite a bit more than that,” Greenspan wrote.
He said the subpoena he seeks would be limited to documents concerning him, the current lawsuit or alleged attacks on his website.
However, the materials cited in the filing do not establish that DCI Group AZ, the Nigerian government or any other party ordered or carried out attacks against Greenspan. They also do not establish a connection between the alleged hacking campaign involving climate activists and the attacks Greenspan says he experienced.
Tinubu’s lawyers have therefore argued that Greenspan’s attempt to link the historical hacking allegations to his current case is speculative and has not been sufficiently supported by the materials he submitted.
They also questioned whether the alleged activities were connected to the issues before the court, rather than other subjects Greenspan discusses publicly, including artificial intelligence, OpenAI, Elon Musk and Jeffrey Epstein.
The lawyers asked the court to reject Greenspan’s request. Alternatively, they urged the court to limit any judicial notice to court records from the separate Azari case, while making clear that the allegations contained in those records had not necessarily been proven.
The response also referred to a government registration document indicating that DCI Group AZ, LLC was retained by Aster Legal in December 2025 for six months to lobby on behalf of the Republic of Nigeria on West African security issues.
The latest dispute forms part of a broader Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case through which Greenspan is seeking historical records from American law-enforcement agencies.
As previously reported in September, the US government had defended the DEA’s decision to withhold portions of investigative records connected to a long-running investigation involving Tinubu.
In a court filing dated September 23, 2026, the government said the withheld information could expose confidential sources, reveal non-public investigative methods and disclose other sensitive details relating to law-enforcement activities.
The government identified several categories of investigative documents, including DEA-6, DEA-292 and DEA-210 reports, and argued that the agency had adequately explained its reasons for withholding portions of the records under exemptions provided by US FOIA law.
The dispute over the records dates back to requests submitted by Greenspan to several US federal agencies for historical documents relating to investigations involving Tinubu, Agbele and other individuals.
Tinubu’s name appears in the proceedings because of records sought by Greenspan concerning a US investigation dating to the late 1980s and early 1990s, as well as a 1993 civil forfeiture proceeding involving money held in an account associated with Tinubu.
In April 2025, US District Judge Beryl Howell ruled that the FBI and DEA could no longer rely on a so-called “Glomar” response to refuse to confirm or deny the existence of relevant records.
A Glomar response allows a government agency, in certain circumstances, to decline to confirm whether records responsive to a request exist.
Judge Howell found that the existence of the relevant investigation had already been officially acknowledged, meaning the agencies could not rely on that response under the circumstances before the court.
The agencies were subsequently required to search for and process records that were not exempt from disclosure, leading to the release of some materials while other portions remained redacted.
