A federal judge on Thursday shot down President Trump’s bid to hide his tax records from the Manhattan district attorney — the latest blow to the president in his legal battle to keep the records from public view.
In the ruling, Judge Victor Marrero dismissed an amended complaint by the president’s legal team, who claimed District Attorney Cy Vance’s subpoena of his tax returns was a fishing expedition and “wildly overbroad.”
Marrero wrote that if the subpoena was rejected, it would essentially make the executive branch immune from the judicial process — and leave open the possibility for that loophole to extend to other figures.
“At its core, it amounts to absolute immunity through a back door, an entry point through which not only a President but also potentially other persons and entities, public and private, could effectively gain cover from judicial process,” the judge wrote.
Vance is reportedly investigating Trump for hush-money payments made by his 2016 campaign adviser Michael Cohen to women who claim they had affairs with Trump.
The president’s lawyers argued the subpoena of his tax returns is overbroad, in part, because it is not confined to the payments made by Cohen — an argument Marrero rejected in his ruling Thursday.
“In general, the President’s allegations fail to adequately rebut the presumption of legitimacy that accords to grand jury subpoenas, even at the pleading stage,” Marrero wrote.
He added that Vance is “under no obligation to affirmatively describe the scope of his investigation.”
Earlier this summer, the US Supreme Court shot down an appeal by Trump’s lawyers seeking to block the release of his tax documents in a previous complaint filed by his lawyers against Vance’s subpoena.
“The President is neither absolutely immune from state criminal subpoenas seeking his private papers nor entitled to a heightened standard of need,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the opinion.
Hours after the ruling was handed down, Trump’s lawyers filed an emergency appeal of the decision to the Second Circuit Court of Appeals.