(CNN) – The United States Supreme Court on Monday paved the way for a New York district attorney to obtain former President Donald Trump’s tax returns. This is a major defeat for Trump, who has fought fiercely to protect his financial records from prosecutors.
The documents are subject to the investigative jury’s confidentiality rules that restrict their disclosure.
The ruling is a bitter defeat for Trump, even if tax records are protected from disclosure, after consistently arguing that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance’s subpoena was too broad and issued in bad faith.
It means that the investigation jury’s investigation into the alleged secret cash payments and other matters will no longer be hampered by Trump’s struggle to keep the documents secret.
The ruling was made without comment or dissent.
Trump’s tax case to court
Last July, the Supreme Court, which voted 7-2, rejected Trump’s extensive immunity claims from a state criminal subpoena requesting his tax return, saying that as president he was not entitled to any high standard other than available to ordinary citizens. The judges returned the case to the lower court so that the president could raise more specific objections about the scope of the subpoena.
In October, a federal appeals court said that “there is nothing to suggest that these are more than current documents and typically relevant to a jury investigation into possible financial or business misconduct.”
Trump’s personal lawyers then took the case to the Supreme Court, urging judges to suspend the lower court’s ruling, while the judges considered accepting the appeal.
WATCH: ANALYSIS | The end of Trump’s impeachment is conjuring up an oppressive cloud in Washington
“The quote is geographically extensive, temporarily expansive, and current borderless – all attributes suggesting an illegal fishing expedition,” wrote William Consovoy. “Even if disclosure is limited to the investigative jury and prosecutors,” he said, “once they are delivered confidentially, the documents will be lost forever.”
The subpoenas cover documents from January 2011 through August 2019, including his tax returns, from Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars. The documents relate to the employment of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen by the Trump Organization and the payment of classified money Cohen allegedly made to two women who claimed to have had extramarital affairs with Trump.