A federal appeals court in New York rejected a bid from President Trump to avoid having eight years of his tax returns handed over to state prosecutors.
The unanimous decision from the three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit is the latest loss for the president, who has sought to stop his longtime accounting firm from complying with subpoenas for the financial records. The ruling says financial records can be handed over by Mazars USA.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance sought the president’s tax returns from 2011 and beyond, along with other financial records as part of state prosecutors’ investigation into hush-money payments made to two women, former adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, who claim to have had affairs with Trump in the early 2000s.
“The only question before us is whether a state may lawfully demand production by a third party of the president’s personal financial records for use in a grand jury investigation while the president is in office,” the 2nd Circuit said in its ruling. “With the benefit of the district court’s well-articulated opinion, we hold that any presidential immunity from state criminal process does not bar the enforcement of such a subpoena.”
Jay Sekulow, the president’s lawyer, said Trump will appeal the ruling, setting up a showdown before the Supreme Court. Vance’s office will not enforce the subpoena while the president petitions the high court, which has a 5-4 conservative majority.
Vance issued a subpoena to Mazars in August for a wide variety of financial records, including the tax returns, for Trump, the Trump Organization, and other related entities. But the president asked a federal district court in Manhattan in September to stop the subpoena while he is in office.
[Also read: Joe Biden demands to see Trump tax returns: ‘Even Nixon released his taxes’]
Trump’s attorneys claimed he had broad presidential immunity from state investigations. But the lower court rebuffed the president’s argument and said the records had to be turned over.
Trump’s argument, U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero wrote in his ruling, was “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.”
Enforcement of the subpoena, however, was delayed as the president’s lawyers appealed to the 2nd Circuit.
The 2nd Circuit heard arguments in the dispute last month, during which Trump’s attorneys argued he would be shielded from prosecution even if he shot someone on Fifth Avenue, a reference to the president’s claim during the 2016 campaign that he could “stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody and wouldn’t lose any voters.”
The ruling from the federal appeals court affirmed the district court’s order rejection of Trump’s claims of “temporary absolute presidential immunity.”
Trump, 2nd Circuit Chief Judge Robert Katzmann said, “has not persuasively explained why” the subpoena to Mazars must be stopped “despite seeking no privileged information and bearing no relation to the president’s performance of his official functions.”
“We are not faced, in this case, with the president’s arrest or imprisonment, or with an order compelling him to attend court at a particular time or place, or, indeed, with an order that compels the president himself to do anything,” the three-judge panel said.
Rather, the subpoena, issued to Mazars, does not require the president to do or produce anything, and would not impair Trump’s ability to perform his official duties as president, the 2nd Circuit said.
The judges added that even assuming the president can’t be prosecuted while in office, “it would nonetheless exact a heavy toll on our criminal justice system to prohibit a state from even investigating potential crimes committed by him for potential later prosecution.”
The legal battle over Vance’s subpoena to Mazars is one of several that have been brewing, as the president vowed to fight all subpoenas issued for his financial and business records. In a similar case involving a subpoena from the House Oversight Committee issued to Mazars, a divided three-judge panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled Congress has the authority to seek eight years’ worth of financial records.
