President Donald Trump addresses reporters as he departs for Minnesota from the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, USA, on October 10, 2019.
Jonathan Ernst | Reuters
Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns have been turned over to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. after the Supreme Court rejected the ex-president’s last-ditch effort to protect the documents.
A spokesman for Vance, Danny Frost, confirmed that a subpoena was taken on Monday against Trump’s old accounting firm, Mazars USA, hours after the country’s highest court dismissed Trump’s appeal.
The subpoena demanded Trump’s 2011 personal and business records, including his tax returns. Trump opposed the modern precedent by refusing to release his tax returns to the public, even as he ran two campaigns for the presidency.
A spokesman for the former president did not directly comment on Thursday. After the court approved the transfer, Trump pledged to “fight on” and said Vance was pursuing a “fishing expedition.”
The long-term research is closely monitored. Early reports suggested that the prosecutor was investigating hush money payments on Trump’s behalf to women who alleged affairs with the real estate magnate. Trump denied the cases.
More recent lawsuits have indicated that Vance Trump and his namesake company, The Trump Organization, may be investigating possible banking and insurance fraud. Trump has repeatedly dismissed allegations of financial impropriety and has accused investigators of having partisan motives.
The battle for Trump’s tax documents came to the Supreme Court twice. Both times, the panel refused to stop rulings from lower courts that sided with Vance. In July, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote an opinion to a 7-2 court rejecting Trump’s sweeping argument that he was immune from criminal investigation at the state level during his tenure.
‘In our judicial system’ the public is entitled to everyone’s evidence ‘. Since the early days of the Republic, “every man” has included the President of the United States, “said Roberts, who was appointed to the court by then President George W. Bush.
After that ruling, Trump’s lawyers continued to challenge the subpoena for being too broad and issued in bad faith, but lower courts rejected those claims. In October, Trump’s lawyers again asked the Supreme Court to intervene, but the court wrote in a one-line injunction Monday that it would not do so.
Vance’s possession of Trump’s tax records does not guarantee the public will ever learn what they contain. The data was obtained in connection with a grand jury investigation, and New York state law requires grand jury proceedings to be confidential. It is likely that the only way the public will be able to see the data is if Vance eventually files charges and includes parts of the data in prosecuting documents.