Trump files new effort to protect tax records from 'wildly overbroad' subpoena
Trump team claims subpoena was issued in 'bad faith'
President Donald Trump’s lawyers filed a new effort Monday to protect his tax records from a subpoena by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
This comes just weeks after the Supreme Court decided in a 7-2 ruling that sitting presidents are not immune to investigation by state prosecutors, potentially opening President Trump up to the subpoena by Vance.
The president’s lawyers argued Monday that the subpoena is “wildly overlybroad.”
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“The subpoena demands voluminous documents that relate to topics and entities far beyond the District Attorney’s limited jurisdiction under New York law,” the lawyers wrote. “This is not a properly tailored subpoena for the President’s records.”
They also argued that the subpoena was issued “in bad faith,” at least in part because the district attorney “cut-and-pasted the House Oversight and House Ways and Means subpoenas into a document and sent them to” Trump’s accounting firm.
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“It was drafted by a congressional committee purportedly to investigate issues of national concern. In other words, the District Attorney issued a grand-jury subpoena he knew was overbroad and sought irrelevant records,” the lawyers argued. “That the District Attorney dubiously claims he did this for ‘efficiency’ reasons does not save the subpoena from invalidation. It confirms that he lacked a good faith basis and that the subpoena amounts to harassment of the President.”
These arguments are a shift for President Trump’s team, who argued in a court filing last year that “because the Mazars subpoena attempts to criminally investigate a sitting president, it is unconstitutional.”
The Manhattan District Attorney’s office argued that it has already been nearly a year since the subpoena was first filed and that President Trump is just seeking to “delay.”
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“I think that’s the entire strategy here. Every day that goes by the president wins the type of absolute temporary immunity he’s been seeking in this case,” Carey R. Dunne, a lawyer in Vance’s office, told Judge Victor Marrero on July 16th.
Dunne said then that after Trump’s team files the latest challenge, the district attorney will address it “immediately with a motion to dismiss,” which they believe will be “successful.”
Fox News reported when the subpoena was first filed that Vance is investigating hush money payments that Trump’s former lawyer, Michael Cohen, made to adult film star Stormy Daniels in 2016. Trump has denied a sexual relationship with her.
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Fox News's Marta Dhanis contributed to this report.