WASHINGTON — President Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday renewed their year-long effort to block Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance from subpoenaing eight years of Trump’s private tax returns.
In a submission filed to a federal judge in Manhattan who originally presided over the case, the president’s attorneys argued that Vance’s subpoena was politically motivated and too broad.
The letter comes after the Supreme Court last week paved the way for Vance to obtain Trump’s personal financial records, ruling that the president is not immune from subpoenas and criminal investigations and that a grand jury can seek his records.
On Wednesday, Trump’s legal team wrote: “The President should not be required, for example, to litigate the subpoena’s breadth or whether it was issued in bad faith without understanding the nature and scope of the investigation and why the District Attorney needs all of the documents he has demanded.”
In a small win for the president, the high court deferred the final decision on the issuing of a subpoena to a lower court, making it likely the records will remain under wraps until after the November presidential election.
The court also dismissed a similar request from congressional investigators.
Vance’s office last September subpoenaed Trump’s longtime accounting company Mazars USA for eight years of his financial records and tax returns as part of an investigation into whether he paid hush money before the 2016 election to several women with whom he allegedly had affairs.
The president tried to fight the subpoena and sued Vance’s office to block him from enforcing the subpoenas, but Manhattan federal Judge Victor Marrero threw out the lawsuit.
The decision was quickly appealed by Trump’s lawyers to the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which also ruled against him, resulting in the appeal to the Supreme Court that came to a head last week.