President Trump’s attorneys on Thursday asked the Supreme Court to let him keep his tax returns private, setting up a landmark fight in the highest court of the land.
If the Supreme Court agrees to hear the case, it will make history as the first time a president’s financial dealings made their way to the highest court — if the Supreme Court declines to hear the case, then Trump will likely be forced to disclose his tax returns.
Last month Trump’s lawyers and the crooked Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance reached a deal to pause the subpoena for Trump’s tax returns until the Supreme Court either declines to hear the case or issues an opinion.
The DC Circuit Court of Appeals in early October upheld a subpoena for Trump’s financial records to his accounting firm, Mazars USA.
President Trump hit back and filed an emergency appeal — a federal judge granted the president a stay and the case got bounced back to the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals.
“We have filed a petition with the U.S. Supreme Court seeking to overturn the Second Circuit decision regarding a subpoena issued by the New York County District Attorney,” Trump’s lawyer Jay Sekulow wrote. “The Second Circuit decision is wrong and should be reversed.”
Manhattan DA Cy Vance Jr. in August also subpoenaed “documents and communications” related to ‘hush payments’ made by Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen to two women in 2016.
The DA in August opened a criminal investigation into Trump’s role in the ‘hush payments’ made to porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.
A shell company formed by Trump’s former lawyer-turned-snake Michael Cohen made payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal during the 2016 election to allegedly buy their silence about affairs they had with Donald Trump more than a decade ago — Trump denies the affairs.
CNBC reported:
The president’s legal team has put forward a sweeping view of presidential immunity in the case. They have argued that Trump is immune from criminal investigation while in office.
In the petition, Sekulow asks the court to address this question: “Whether this subpoena violates Article II and the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution.”
“This subpoena subjects the President to criminal process under any reasonable understanding of the concept,” it says. “It demands the President’s records, names him as a target, and was issued as part of a grand-jury proceeding that seeks to determine whether the President committed a state-law crime.”
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did not address that issue, but instead held more narrowly that any immunity afforded to the president does not bar the enforcement of a subpoena on a third party. Trump’s attorneys immediately vowed to bring the case to the Supreme Court, saying the issue raised “goes to the heart of our Republic.”
Sekulow wrote in the petition that the fact that the petition was issued to a third party “does not alter the calculus.”
To be clear, there is a separate case brought by House Democrats over Trump’s tax returns that is currently pending in a DC court and Sekulow has vowed to take that case to the Supreme Court as well.
The Constitution does not require that a presidential candidate or a sitting US president release their tax returns, however the Democrats have been gunning for the tax docs to continue their witch hunt against Trump.
