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To: scion who wrote (12709)	2/22/2021 10:06:52 AM
From: scion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12881

Supreme Court again rejects Trump’s bid to shield tax returns, other financial records from Manhattan prosecutor By Robert Barnes Feb. 22, 2021 at 2:58 p.m. GMT washingtonpost.com The Supreme Court on Monday rejected former president Donald Trump’s last-chance effort to keep his private financial records from the Manhattan district attorney, ending a long and drawn-out legal battle. After a four-month delay, the court denied Trump’s motion in a one-sentence order with no recorded dissents. District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. has won every stage of the legal fight — including the first round at the Supreme Court — but has yet to receive the records he says are necessary for a grand jury investigation into whether the president’s companies violated state law. The current fight is a follow-up to last summer’s decision by the high court that the president is not immune from a criminal investigation while he holds office. “No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority in that 7 to 2 decision. But the justices said Trump could challenge the specific subpoena, as every citizen may, for being overbroad or issued in bad faith. A district judge and a panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit in New York found neither was the case. Trump’s complaints “amount to generic objections that the subpoena is wide-ranging in nature,” the unanimous 2nd Circuit panel wrote. “Again, even if the subpoena is broad, the complaint does not adequately allege that it is overbroad. Complex financial and corporate investigations are broad by default.” Similarly, the panel said, “we hold that none of the president’s allegations, taken together or separately, are sufficient to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass.” Vance is seeking eight years of the former president’s tax returns and related documents as part of his investigation into alleged hush-money payments made ahead of the 2016 election to two women who said they had affairs with Trump years before. Trump denies the claims. Investigators want to determine whether efforts were made to conceal the payments on tax documents by labeling them as legal expenses. But Vance says there are other aspects of the investigation that have not been publicly disclosed. Court filings by the prosecutors suggest the investigation is looking into other allegations of impropriety, perhaps involving tax and insurance fraud. Trump’s lawyers told the Supreme Court both of the lower court decisions were faulty. The subpoena was not narrowly tailored, but instead based on one issued by congressional committees. It would cross the line even if it was “aimed at ‘some other citizen’ instead of the president,” wrote Trump’s lawyers William S. Consovoy and Jay Alan Sekulow. “The court of appeals not only ignored how the district court stacked the deck against the president,” the petition continues. “But it also broke every rule and precedent applicable” to the legal procedure at issue, it said. Consovoy said it should be easy for the court to at least temporarily put the lower court rulings on hold and hear his case, which in the court’s language is called granting certiorari. “The President of the United States requests the opportunity to seek certiorari before his confidential financial records are disclosed to the grand jury and potentially the public,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “Once the records are produced, the status quo can never be restored.” The appeals court panel shot down his claim that the district attorney’s investigation is limited only to the alleged payments made by Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. It said that “bare assertion … amounts to nothing more than implausible speculation.” Vance and his lawyers have said the records are needed for a grand jury investigation, and pledged at the Supreme Court hearing that they would not be released publicly. Since those battles, the New York Times has published a number of stories about Trump’s tax payments and mounting debt based on records it says it has obtained. “Similarly,” the ruling says, “the President’s allegations of bad faith fail to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass.” Vance is seeking the records from Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars. In his response to the Supreme Court in the current fight, Vance said that the “obvious explanation for the subpoena’s breadth … is that the investigation had extended beyond the Cohen payments.” Vance said in his brief to the court that, since the subpoena was first issues more than a year ago, it was time to let the investigation run its course. “Applicant has had multiple opportunities for review of his constitutional and state law claims, and at this juncture he provides no grounds for further delay,” Vance wrote. “His request for extraordinary relief should be denied, and the grand jury permitted to do its work.” Headshot of Robert Barnes Robert Barnes Robert Barnes has been a Washington Post reporter and editor since 1987. He joined The Post to cover Maryland politics, and he has served in various editing positions, including metropolitan editor and national political editor. He has covered the Supreme Court since November 2006.Follow washingtonpost.com

To: scion who wrote (12709)	2/22/2021 5:08:02 PM
From: scion	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 12881

Trump: Supreme Court tax return decision a ‘continuation of the greatest political witch hunt’ The Supreme Court declined to step in to halt the turnover of his tax records to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. Brooke SingmanBy Brooke Singman \| Fox News DONALD TRUMP Published 1 hour ago foxnews.com Former President Trump on Monday slammed the Supreme Court for declining to halt the turnover of his tax records to a New York prosecutor, calling it "a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country." The court's action is the apparent culmination of a lengthy legal battle that had already reached the high court once before. SUPREME COURT WON'T HALT TURNOVER OF TRUMP'S TAX RECORDS Trump's tax records are not supposed to become public as part of prosecutor's criminal investigation, but the high court's action is a blow to Trump because he has for so long fought on so many fronts to keep his tax records shielded from view. The ongoing investigation the records are part of could also become an issue for Trump in his life after the presidency. Trump has called it "a fishing expedition" and "a continuation of the witch hunt." Trump, in a statement Monday, slammed investigations that plagued his presidency—including former Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, which he called the "never ending $32 million Mueller hoax…where there was a finding of ‘No Collusion,’" and the "two ridiculous ‘Crazy Nancy’ inspired impeachment attempts where I was found NOT GUILTY." "It never ends!" Trump said. "So now, for more than two years, New York City has been looking at almost every transaction I’ve ever done, including seeking tax returns which were done by among the biggest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the U.S." Trump said that the Supreme Court "should never have let this ‘fishing expedition’ happen, but they did." "This is something which has never happened to a President before, it is all Democrat-inspired in a totally Democrat location, New York City and State, completely controlled and dominated by a heavily reported enemy of mine, Governor Andrew Cuomo," Trump said. The former president said that "the new phenomenon of ‘headhunting’ prosecutors and AGs—who try to take down their political opponents using the law as a weapon—is a threat to the very foundation of our liberty." "That’s what is done in third world countries," he continued. "Even worse are those who run for prosecutorial or attorney general offices in far-left states and jurisdictions pledging to take out a political opponent."Trump added: "That’s fascism, not justice—and that is exactly what they are trying to do with respect to me, except that the people of our Country won’t stand for it." Trump went on to slam crime in New York City, saying elected officials "don’t care," but instead, "all they focus on is the persecution of President Donald J. Trump." "I will fight on, just as I have, for the last five years (even before I was successfully elected), despite all of the election crimes that were committed against me," he said. "We will win!" The Supreme Court waited months to act in the case, with the previous written briefs filed in October. The court did not give an explanation for the delay, and the legal issue before the justices did not involve whether Trump was due any special deference because he was president. The court's order is a win for Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., who has been seeking Trump's tax records since 2019 as part of an investigation. Vance, a Democrat, had subpoenaed the records from the Mazars accounting firm that has long done work for Trump and his businesses. Mazars has said it would comply with the subpoena, but Trump, a Republican, sued to block the records' release. Vance's office had said it would be free to enforce the subpoena and obtain the records in the event the Supreme Court declined to step in and halt the records' turnover, but it was unclear when that might happen. The case the Supreme Court ruled in involves a grand jury subpoena for more than eight years of Trump's personal and corporate tax records. Vance has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records. In one court filing last year, however, prosecutors said they were justified in demanding the records because of public reports of "possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization." Part of the probe involves payments to two women — porn actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal — to keep them quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign about alleged extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs. In July, the justices in a 7-2 ruling rejected Trump's argument that the president is immune from investigation while he holds office or that a prosecutor must show a greater need than normal to obtain the tax records. Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump nominated to the high court, joined that decision. It was issued before Trump's third nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court. As part of its July decision, the high court returned the Vance case and a similar case involving records sought by Congress to lower courts. And the court prevented the records from being turned over while the cases proceeded. Since the high court's ruling, in the Vance case, Trump's attorneys made additional arguments that his tax records should not be turned over, but they lost again in federal court in New York and on appeal. It was those rulings that Trump had sought to put on hold. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Brooke Singman is a Politics Reporter for Fox News. Follow her on Twitter at @BrookeSingman. foxnews.com