Lawyers for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance ripped the Justice Department Thursday for trying to stop him from obtaining President Trump’s tax returns.
“The DOJ has elected to insert itself into this private lawsuit to support [Trump’s] extravagant claim that, given his current position, he and all of his prior business associates and related companies are immune, not just from prosecution, but from any routine grand jury inquiry into transactions undertaken before he was a government employee,” according to court papers filed by Vance’s lawyers.
The filing comes in response to a DOJ letter Wednesday arguing that a federal judge should block Vance’s subpoena into Trump’s finances due to unspecified “constitutional issues.”
Vance also accused the DOJ of having a double standard, because it “conducted a highly publicized grand jury investigation into some of the very same transactions and actors that have been reported to be at issue in this matter” when it went after Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen.
Trump’s lawyers have repeatedly argued the president is “immune” from any sort of inquiry while in office, and Trump sued Vance last week to keep him from enforcing a subpoena on his accounting firm, Mazars USA, for personal and business records dating back to 2011.
Vance’s lawyers told Manhattan federal Judge Victor Marrero that Trump’s lawyers were just trying to “obtain as much delay as possible” so the statute of limitations runs out and charges can no longer be brought by a grand jury.
Marrero has yet to rule, though he temporarily stayed the subpoena’s enforcement last week.
Sources have previously indicated that Cohen is cooperating with Vance’s office, which is investigating hush-money payments made to two women who claim they had affairs with Trump prior to his presidency.