The Manhattan district attorney’s office Thursday accused President Trump of deliberately prolonging a court battle over a subpoena seeking eight years of his tax returns in an attempt to effectively protect himself from the criminal investigation.
Carey R. Dunne, an attorney for the prosecutor’s office, told a federal judge that the longer the president disputes the subpoena, the greater the chance that the statute of limitations expires for any possible crime that has been committed.
The office is seeking the president’s personal tax returns and those of his family business, the Trump Organization, as part of an investigation into the secret money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 election. The president has been struggling. against subpoena for almost a year.
“What the president’s attorneys are looking for here is delay,” Dunne said. “I think that is the whole strategy here.”
He added: “Let us not allow the delay to kill this case.”
The prosecutor’s claim came during a virtual hearing before federal judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan. Trump’s attorneys did not respond directly to the accusation in court and did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat, issued the subpoena to Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, in August.
Trump initially battled the subpoena last year with a bold and unproven argument: that an acting president was immune to a state criminal investigation. Judge Marrero supervised that case and ruled against the president, and his decision was confirmed by an appeals court.
The case went to the Supreme Court, which last week also rejected the president’s argument. Still, the higher court left open the possibility that Trump could raise new objections to the subpoena.
The case was returned to Judge Marrero, who called the hearing this week so that both parties can present their positions.
At the hearing, an attorney for the President, William S. Consovoy, made clear that Mr. Trump is likely to pose challenges to the scope of the subpoena, which Mr. Consovoy characterized as “broadly comprehensive,” and raised the issue. if there was a political motivation to issue it.
After the Supreme Court ruling was issued last week, White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany called the citation “frivolous and politically motivated.”
Mr. Consovoy also said the president should be able to learn more about the district attorney’s investigation, which has largely been kept secret, and that it was unfair for him to have to challenge a subpoena without access to “at least some information on its nature and scope. “
At the hearing, Judge Marrero noted that in his ruling last year rejecting the president’s claim for immunity, he also discovered that the district attorney was not acting in bad faith.
Arguing that the delay could prevent a grand jury from considering the evidence before the statutes of limitations are exhausted, Dunne said the president was effectively obtaining immunity from the criminal investigation that the Supreme Court denied him. Other people and entities could also escape scrutiny, Dunne said, without elaborating.
Trump’s attorneys must expose their new objections to the subpoena before July 27, and Vance can respond.
Vance has been investigating the money payments Michael D. Cohen, the president’s attorney and former repairman, made in 2016 to Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who said she had an affair with Trump. The President has denied an adventure.
