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United States federal judge on Monday dismissed President Trump’s lawsuit seeking to block the Manhattan District Attorney from obtaining the president’s tax returns as part of an investigation into hush-money payments during the 2016 campaign.
United States District Judge Victor Marrero according to Washington Post rejected Trump’s argument that the president makes him immune to any investigation by any prosecutor.
In his 75-page ruling, Marrero called such a claim “extraordinary” and wrote that “This Court cannot endorse such a categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process.”
The ruling allows District Attorney Cyrus Vance (D) to enforce a subpoena he sent to Trump’s longtime accountants, Mazars USA. Trump had filed an unorthodox lawsuit seeking to stop that subpoena, saying that he would suffer “irreparable harm” if prosecutors obtained his tax returns. The Justice Department also took Trump’s side in the case.
But moments after the ruling Monday, Trump’s private attorneys asked the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to temporarily put the case on hold, Washington post reported.
The decision marked a key setback for Trump, who has taken an unorthodox, aggressive approach to fighting off investigations from prosecutors and congressional committees, who have sought his tax returns and financial documents. He has sued the investigators and the companies they had subpoenaed, including Mazars and two of Trump’s banks.
Judges have already ruled against Trump twice in other cases, but those lawsuits are still tied up in appeals in New York and Washington, and the subpoenas have not been enforced.
⤕India sacks 48,000 workers over indefinite strike
In this lawsuit, Trump said that Vance did not need eight years of his tax returns to examine whether any laws were broken by the 2016 payments and called the subpoena to Mazars “a bad-faith effort to harass the President by obtaining and exposing his private financial information, not a legitimate attempt to enforce New York law.”
In his ruling Monday, Judge Marrero recognised that subjecting presidents to some aspects of criminal proceedings could interfere with presidential duties. But the judge rejected Trump’s claim of “absolute immunity from criminal process of any kind.”
“As the Court reads it, presidential immunity would stretch to cover every phase of criminal proceedings,” he wrote. “The constitutional dimensions of the presidential shield from the judicial process are virtually limitless.”
Marrero was appointed to the federal bench in 1999 by President Bill Clinton.
The Post reported that Vance is investigating payments made in the last weeks of the 2016 campaign to two women who said they’d had affairs with Trump years earlier. Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, later pleaded guilty to federal campaign-finance violations for arranging those payments, and said he’d been reimbursed by the Trump Organization, which the president still owns. Federal prosecutors later concluded their investigation into those payments without charging anyone beyond Cohen.
Now, Vance’s office is investigating to see if any state laws were violated. Its subpoenas asked for eight years of tax returns from Trump and his businesses, as well as other documents. Vance has said that, at this stage of the investigation, Trump “has not been identified as a defendant, nor is there an assumption he will be.” (AFP)
United States District Judge Victor Marrero according to Washington Post rejected Trump’s argument that the president makes him immune to any investigation by any prosecutor.
In his 75-page ruling, Marrero called such a claim “extraordinary” and wrote that “This Court cannot endorse such a categorical and limitless assertion of presidential immunity from judicial process.”
The ruling allows District Attorney Cyrus Vance (D) to enforce a subpoena he sent to Trump’s longtime accountants, Mazars USA. Trump had filed an unorthodox lawsuit seeking to stop that subpoena, saying that he would suffer “irreparable harm” if prosecutors obtained his tax returns. The Justice Department also took Trump’s side in the case.
But moments after the ruling Monday, Trump’s private attorneys asked the New York-based U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit to temporarily put the case on hold, Washington post reported.
The decision marked a key setback for Trump, who has taken an unorthodox, aggressive approach to fighting off investigations from prosecutors and congressional committees, who have sought his tax returns and financial documents. He has sued the investigators and the companies they had subpoenaed, including Mazars and two of Trump’s banks.
Judges have already ruled against Trump twice in other cases, but those lawsuits are still tied up in appeals in New York and Washington, and the subpoenas have not been enforced.
⤕India sacks 48,000 workers over indefinite strike
In this lawsuit, Trump said that Vance did not need eight years of his tax returns to examine whether any laws were broken by the 2016 payments and called the subpoena to Mazars “a bad-faith effort to harass the President by obtaining and exposing his private financial information, not a legitimate attempt to enforce New York law.”
In his ruling Monday, Judge Marrero recognised that subjecting presidents to some aspects of criminal proceedings could interfere with presidential duties. But the judge rejected Trump’s claim of “absolute immunity from criminal process of any kind.”
“As the Court reads it, presidential immunity would stretch to cover every phase of criminal proceedings,” he wrote. “The constitutional dimensions of the presidential shield from the judicial process are virtually limitless.”
Marrero was appointed to the federal bench in 1999 by President Bill Clinton.
The Post reported that Vance is investigating payments made in the last weeks of the 2016 campaign to two women who said they’d had affairs with Trump years earlier. Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen, later pleaded guilty to federal campaign-finance violations for arranging those payments, and said he’d been reimbursed by the Trump Organization, which the president still owns. Federal prosecutors later concluded their investigation into those payments without charging anyone beyond Cohen.
Now, Vance’s office is investigating to see if any state laws were violated. Its subpoenas asked for eight years of tax returns from Trump and his businesses, as well as other documents. Vance has said that, at this stage of the investigation, Trump “has not been identified as a defendant, nor is there an assumption he will be.” (AFP)
