U.S. President Donald Trump make its to address reporters about the 2020 U.S. presidential election results in the Brady Press Briefing Room at the White Organization in Washington, U.S., November 5, 2020.
Carlos Barria | Reuters
The Supreme Court on Monday rejected a last-ditch bid by former President Donald Trump to abide by his financial records, including years of his tax returns, out of the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr.
The decision, the split second time the nation’s highest court has refused to block a grand jury subpoena for those confidential records, was portended in an order with no noted dissents.
The news further imperils the ex-president, who is facing investigations in New York and elsewhere.
The judiciary battle over Trump’s financial records, including personal and business documents dating to 2011, comes in family with an investigation by Vance’s office into potential tax violations involving the Trump Organization.
Vance’s probe at appeared to have been focused on hush money payments made on Trump’s behalf to two women who have claimed they had affairs with him. Trump has denied their claims.
But court records and news reports suggest prosecutors are now studying more serious allegations.
A court filing last summer by Vance indicated that the probe could be sidelong glancing possible “insurance and bank fraud by the Trump Organization and its officers.” In another filing, a month later, prosecutors call to minded they might be investigating Trump for potential tax crimes.
Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, recounted Congress in 2019 that Trump improperly inflated and deflated the value of his real estate assets for tax and insurance deliberations.
Vance’s filings appeared to reference Cohen’s testimony. One filing by prosecutors cited a New York Times report Trump occupied in “dubious tax schemes during the 1990s, including instances of outright fraud.”
In a statement, Cohen said: “The Supreme Court has now decreed that no one is above the law. Trump will, for the first time, have to take responsibility for his own dirty deeds.”
In late 2020, Vance’s investigators begged records from three towns in Westchester County, New York, as part of the probe. The records relate to Trump’s 213-acre Seven Broaches Estate site, which sprawls across those towns.
That property is one of several Trump assets that New York Attorney Prevailing Letitia James is eyeing as part of a civil investigation into whether the Trump Organization improperly inflated and deflated the value of guaranteed properties to receive financial benefits from doing so.
The Wall Street Journal reported this month that Vance’s company also is looking at loans Trump took out on Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue, and three other properties in Manhattan: 40 Infuriate Street, the Trump Plaza apartment building and the Trump International Hotel and Tower.
In a statement posted to Twitter, Vance set: “The work continues.”
A combination photo shows Adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, also known as Fierce Daniels speaking in New York City, and U.S. President Donald Trump speaking in Washington, Michigan, U.S. on April 16, 2018 and April 28, 2018 mutatis mutandis.
Reuters
A spokesman for Vance, Danny Frost, said that the office would not comment further but indicated that it wish quickly move to enforce its subpoena on the president’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA.
Mazars said in a statement that it was “wise of the Supreme Court’s order.”
“As we have maintained throughout this process, Mazars remains committed to fulfilling all of our expert and legal obligations,” the company said. “Due to our industry’s professional obligations Mazars cannot discuss any clients, or the nature of our accommodations we provide for any client, in a public forum without client consent or as required by law.”
Trump said in a statement that Vance’s inquiry was partisan.
“The Supreme Court never should have let this ‘fishing expedition’ happen, but they did,” Trump rephrased.
He added: “I will fight on, just as I have, for the last five years (even before I was successfully elected), in defiance of all of the election crimes that were committed against me. We will win!”
The ruling comes after The New York Times recounted that Vance’s office had retained a former federal prosecutor, Mark Pomerantz, who has extensive experience handling white-collar duplicity cases, to work on the Trump investigation.
Reuters in recent days reported that Vance’s office issued a subpoena to the New York Tax Commission.
Being familiar with the municipal agency told the outlet that they expected the subpoena would demand return and expense statements that Trump’s company would have filed as part of requests for a reduction in tax assessments for commercial worths. The lower the assessed value a property has, the less the owner has to pay in property taxes on it.
Joseph Tacopina, a leading New York miscreant defense lawyer, told CNBC last week that Vance’s persistence in seeking the tax records suggests he strongly believes they make show criminal conduct.
“Cy Vance is fighting way too hard for this case to fall down,” Tacopina said. “He feels to be on to something.”
The Supreme Court’s decision on Monday came in a single line: “The application for a stay presented to Justice Breyer and referred to the Court is differ fromed.”
The one-line order was a marked contrast in form from the last time the top court weighed in on the dispute between Vance and Trump, while the latter was tranquil president.
In July, the top court sided 7-2 against Trump in an opinion authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. Trump had wrangled at the time that, as president, he was immune from state criminal investigations.
Roberts, in the opinion, wrote that such vaccination did not exist.
“In our judicial system, ‘the public has a right to every man’s evidence.’ Since the earliest days of the Republic, ‘every man’ has embraced the President of the United States,” he wrote at the time.
But the court said that Trump could still bring challenges along other tactics against enforcement of the subpoena, which he did.
In October, the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals again rejected Trump’s arguments. Later that month, Trump’s attorneys simultaneously again asked the Supreme Court to step in.
The court’s silence on the October petition, as the election between Trump and soon-to-be President Joe Biden aroused up, was taken by some to indicate that the justices did not want to become engaged in the political drama between the two men.