NEWS
US Court Rejects Motion Seeking Discovery From Tinubu in Ongoing FOIA Litigation
The United States District Court for the District of Columbia has denied a motion filed by Aaron Greenspan seeking permission to obtain limited discovery from Nigerian President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and DCI Group in an ongoing legal battle involving the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
In its ruling delivered on October 30, the Court held that the proposed discovery concerning alleged cyberattacks against Greenspan’s website was not sufficiently relevant to the central issues in the FOIA lawsuit involving the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
The decision represents a procedural setback for Greenspan, who had sought to expand the scope of the litigation by pursuing information from Tinubu and DCI Group over the alleged cyberattacks. However, the Court determined that the proposed line of inquiry did not meet the relevance threshold required for discovery in the case before it.
Reacting to the ruling, attorney Christopher W. Carmichael said the decision underscored the need to keep FOIA proceedings focused on the legal questions they were initiated to resolve.
“The Court’s decision makes clear that this Freedom of Information Act proceeding cannot be used to pursue discovery unrelated to the legal questions before it. By denying the request for discovery against President Tinubu and DCI Group, the Court reinforced the importance of keeping this litigation focused on the issues properly before it,” Carmichael said.
The Court also rejected a separate application by Karl Von Batten, a nonparty to the litigation, seeking permission to submit an amicus curiae brief, commonly referred to as a friend-of-the-court brief. Such briefs allow individuals or organisations that are not directly involved in a case to offer arguments or perspectives that may assist a court in considering the issues before it.
In addition, the judge denied Greenspan’s related request for judicial notice, another procedural mechanism through which a party may ask a court to accept certain facts without requiring them to be formally proved.
In a further development, the Court denied Greenspan’s motion for summary judgment, meaning his request for a judgment without proceeding through the remaining stages of litigation was unsuccessful at this stage.
Attorney Oluwole Afolabi, commenting on the series of decisions, said the rulings had clarified the procedural limits governing the case, even as the underlying FOIA questions remained unresolved.
“The Court also denied the plaintiff’s motion for summary judgment and rejected a separate request to introduce an amicus brief. While the underlying FOIA issues remain before the Court, these rulings establish important procedural boundaries and clarify which matters are appropriate for consideration in this litigation,“ Afolabi said.
The latest decisions highlight the distinction between the specific questions a court is asked to resolve and other allegations that a party may wish to investigate during the course of a lawsuit. Under the Court’s ruling, the alleged cyberattacks and the proposed discovery involving Tinubu and DCI Group were not sufficiently connected to the FOIA dispute to justify the requested action in the proceedings.
Despite the denial of Greenspan’s motions, the underlying lawsuit involving the FBI and DEA remains before the Court. The latest ruling does not, by itself, resolve the substantive FOIA dispute, nor does the denial of the discovery request amount to a judicial determination on the truth or falsity of the allegations concerning the alleged cyberattacks.
The case therefore continues to centre on the outstanding Freedom of Information Act issues, with the Court’s latest decisions establishing limits on the additional matters and procedural requests it will consider as the litigation progresses.