The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday refused to prevent a New York grand jury from receiving President Donald Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, a decisive defeat in his lengthy legal battle to keep his tax returns out of the hands of investigators.
The ruling does not mean that the reports will be made public anytime soon and that they may never be made public. Under state law, materials handed over to a grand jury must be kept secret. But Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance can now require Trump’s accountants to turn over the documents the president has steadfastly refused to surrender to prosecutors or Congress.
“The work continues,” Vance said in response to the Supreme Court order.
Trump issued a lengthy statement denouncing the order as the continuation of a politically motivated witch hunt and pledging to “keep fighting.”
“The Supreme Court should never have allowed this ‘fishing expedition’ to happen, but it did,” the statement said. “This is something that has never happened to a president, it’s all Democrat-inspired in a completely democratic location, New York City and the state, completely controlled and dominated by a heavily reported enemy of mine, Governor Andrew Cuomo.”
Vance is seeking eight-year tax returns for a jury investigation into hush money and other financial transactions. The investigation began after it was announced that former Trump attorney Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels $ 130,000 to remain silent about her allegation that she was having an affair with Trump, an accusation the former president has denied.
Cohen also alleged to Congress that the Trump Organization sometimes lied about its financial condition in order to avoid taxes or obtain favorable loan terms.
In July, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s claim that as the sitting president he is immune from any part of the criminal justice system, including grand jury investigations. But according to the decision, he could go back to the lower courts and make the same arguments available to anyone trying to defeat a subpoena.
A month later, a federal judge in New York ruled against Trump’s renewed attempt to throw out the subpoena, describing the legal attack as just a repackaged version of his original immunity argument. The 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the ruling.
Trump’s legal team said the subpoena was far too broad and issued in bad faith to harass him. If Vance only looked at Cohen’s payments, they said, that wouldn’t explain why Vance simply copied a much broader subpoena from a congressional committee.
A state’s initial subpoena for the administration of a sitting president should have been appropriately amended, they told the Supreme Court.
“Its almost limitless reach – in time, scope and geographic reach – has all the hallmarks of a fishing expedition,” his lawyers told the Supreme Court. “And the fact that the subpoena was issued to an outside custodian while tensions were running high between the Trump Organization and the prosecutor, and for questionable efficiency reasons, only makes the allegation of bad faith much more plausible.”
But in recent lawsuits, Vance has hinted that the scope of his work may be wider than just the hush money payments.
“The investigation involves a variety of business transactions and is based on information gathered from public sources, confidential informants and the grand jury process,” and may include falsification of corporate records, insurance fraud and tax fraud, Vance told the court of profession.
With the Supreme Court now clearing the way for Vance to enforce the subpoena, the president has exhausted his legal options to block it. The entire tax return documents, or parts of them, would only become public if Vance files criminal charges at a later date and tries to enter them as evidence.
Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, said it was aware of the Supreme Court order and “remains committed to fulfilling all our professional and legal obligations.”
The company added that it could not publicly discuss the services it provides to customers without their consent or as required by law.
Tom Winter contributed.