A federal judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton denied President Donald Trump’s attempt to keep a Democrat District Attorney fr...
A federal judge appointed by former President Bill Clinton denied President Donald Trump’s attempt to keep a Democrat District Attorney from looking through eight years of the president’s tax returns.
Judge Victor Marrero of Federal District Court in Manhattan denied Trump’s appeal on an earlier ruling ordering him to turn over his tax returns. The New York Times reported that this ruling came after the Supreme Court ruled in July that Trump, as a sitting president, did not have immunity from criminal prosecution. That ruling, however, “opened the door for the president to return to the lower court in Manhattan and raise other objections to the subpoena,” the Times reported.
The case returned to Manhattan, where Judge Marrero dismissed Trump’s claim that District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., a Democrat, wanted the president’s tax returns as part of a politically motivated fishing expedition.
“The Mazars subpoena is so sweeping,” Trump’s attorneys wrote in court papers, referring to the name of Trump’s accounting firm, “that it amounts to an unguided and unlawful fishing expedition into the president’s personal financial and business dealings.”
Marrero wrote in his ruling that “established judicial process” didn’t “automatically transform into an incidence of incapacitating harassment and ill-will merely because the proceedings potentially may implicate the president.”
After the Supreme Court ruling, Trump and his attorneys began arguing that the information sought by Vance was “wildly overbroad” and beyond the jurisdiction of the local district attorney. Marrero rejected that argument, claiming, as paraphrased by the Times, that “throwing out the subpoena would effectively amount to shielding the president and his associates from an investigation, potentially allowing the statute of limitations to expire on any potential crimes.”
It is unclear what, specifically, Vance is investigating that requires Trump’s tax returns. Vance has been investigating Trump and his businesses, trying to figure out if any New York State laws were broken when two women were allegedly paid off to stay silent about their affairs with Trump. In a recent court filing, the Times reported, Vance wrote that he was also investigating potential bank and insurance fraud within the Trump world.
The filing does not mention anything specific the district attorney is investigating, relying on broad claims and politically biased media reports of the same variety used to claim Trump colluded with Russia to steal the 2016 election.
“The prosecutors, defending their subpoena for Mr. Trump’s records, cited undisputed “public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.” Mr. Vance’s office made it clear in court recently that it viewed the tax returns as central evidence in its investigation,” the Times reported.
Vance also issued a separate subpoena to Deutsche Bank seeking records relating to Trump and his businesses there as well.
When the subpoena for the tax returns arrived at Trump’s accounting firm, the president filed a lawsuit to stop it. Marrero last October rejected the president’s attempts to block the subpoena. Marrero also claimed in that ruling that he didn’t believe the district attorney “was acting in bad faith,” the Times reported.
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