Trump must turn over tax returns
New York judge rules Trump must turn over tax returns for hush money investigation
President Donald Trump lost his bid Monday to shield his tax returns from the Manhattan District Attorney’s office, which subpoenaed them as part of an investigation into “hush payments” to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal.
In a 75-page decision Judge Victor Marrero said he could not endorse “such a categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process as being countenanced by the nation’s constitutional plan.”
Trump had argued he was immune from any criminal proceeding while in office. The judge said the president was entitled to no such “protective shield.”
“The notion of federal supremacy and presidential immunity from judicial process that the president here invokes, unqualified and boundless in its reach as described above, cuts across the grain of these constitutional precedents,” Marrero wrote.
The judge dismissed the president’s lawsuit that was meant to stop the subpoena from being enforced.
President Trump’s legal team filed an immediate notice of appeal to the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals, and the 2nd Circuit at least temporarily agreed to block the president’s accounting firm from immediately having to hand over the requested tax returns in an emergency administrative stay Monday.
“Whether or not the Court ultimately agrees with the President’s constitutional challenge to the subpoena, he is entitled to appellate review before his papers are forcibly disclosed to a state grand jury,” the president’s lawyer Patrick Strawbridge wrote.
The 2nd Circuit’s order said the stay is granted “pending expedited review by a panel of the Court.”
“We are very pleased that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit has issued a stay of the subpoena issued by New York County District Attorney Cy Vance,” Trump lead counsel Jay Sekulow told ABC News.
Earlier Monday, in response to the judge’s ruling that the president’s tax returns are subject to subpoena, Trump took to Twitter to respond.
“The Radical Left Democrats have failed on all fronts, so now they are pushing local New York City and State Democrat prosecutors to go get President Trump,” the president tweeted Monday morning. “A thing like this has never happened to any President before. Not even close!”
Source ABC News
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