President Donald Trump lost Monday in his effort to stop the release of his personal and corporate tax returns as part of a criminal investigation in New York.
Trump’s attorneys immediately appealed the ruling handed down in U.S. district court in lower Manhattan.
In August, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. subpoenaed eight years of the president’s tax returns from accounting firm Mazars USA. The prosecutor is probing hush money payments made to two women, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, ahead of the 2016 election.
In trying to block the production of his tax returns, Trump’s lawyers had argued he was immune to the criminal process while in office. In tossing out the president’s lawsuit, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York rejected Trump’s view, saying it could “frustrate the administration of justice” in regard to conduct by a president.
“Hence, the expansive notion of constitutional immunity invoked here to shield the President from judicial process would constitute an overreach of executive power,” wrote District Judge Victor Marrero in a 75-page order.
www.cnbc.com/2019/10/07/trump-loses-new-york-court-fight-to-keep-his-tax-returns-secret.html
A federal judge Monday rejected President Donald Trump’s claim that he was immune from criminal investigations as part of his bid to block a subpoena from the Manhattan district attorney seeking eight years of personal and business tax returns.
The judge, Victor Marrero, tossed the lawsuit Trump’s legal team brought against District Attorney Cyrus Vance that argued Vance should not receive Trump’s tax returns because “‘[v]irtually all legal commenters agree’ that a sitting President of the United States is not ‘subject to the criminal process’ while he is in office.”
In a 75-page order, Marrero called the presidential immunity Trump invoked in the lawsuit to stop the production of tax documents “unqualified and boundless.”