Trump must give his tax returns to NY prosecutor: Judge
A US federal judge has ruled that President Donald Trump cannot block a prosecutor’s subpoena for eight years of his tax returns.
In a 103-page decision on Thursday, US District Judge Victor Marrero cleared the way for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance to get Trump’s tax returns.
The ruling rejected a last-ditch attempt by the president’s lawyers to challenge the subpoena issued to his accounting firm Mazars USA.
The lawyers argued that the subpoena was issued in bad faith, adding it might have been politically motivated and that it amounted to harassment of the president.
Marrero said that allowing Trump to block the subpoena issued last August would amount to an “undue expansion” of presidential immunity.
“Justice requires an end to this controversy,” Marrero wrote.
Trump immediately appealed the ruling and filed an emergency motion to delay turning over his tax returns.
He claimed that enforcing the subpoena could cause him irreversible harm by revealing his “private, confidential information.”
He told reporters at the White House that the case would be returned to the Supreme Court, which had rejected his earlier assertion that he, as president, was immune from state criminal probes.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court said Trump could still try to block the subpoena on other grounds. Marrero had also ruled last October that Vance, a Democrat, could enforce the subpoena.
“This is a continuation of the most disgusting witch hunt in the history of our country,” Trump told reporters. “This is the ultimate fishing expedition.”
Trump’s lawyers argued the request for tax records, which dates back to 2011, was retaliatory after the president’s company, the Trump Organization, challenged the scope of a subpoena demanding records from 1 June 2015, through 20 September 2018.
That time span relates to a probe pertaining to payoffs to two women, who allegedly had extramarital affairs with Trump, to keep them quiet about the affairs during the 2016 presidential campaign.
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