A week after the Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump is not immune from turning over his tax returns and other financial records to the Manhattan district attorney, the president’s legal team said in a hearing Thursday that they intended to keep fighting the “tremendously broad citation”. “- an argument criticized by prosecutors as a backdoor attempt to create temporary” absolute immunity “.
Federal Judge Victor Marrero, who originally presided over the case and denied the president’s efforts to prevent Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance from citing eight years of Trump’s tax returns last year, questioned both parties in a hearing on Thursday about what has changed since his previous ruling.
At the video hearing, Marrero hinted that he had already addressed the president’s concerns last October and that only new information would make him change his mind.
Last August, Vance’s office issued a subpoena to Mazars, the president’s accounting firm, as part of the investigation into the payments of money allegedly loaned to various women before the 2016 election. The president denied having any relationship with these women, but Vance said financial records dating back to 2011 were crucial to see if business records were falsified and if tax laws were violated.
In a 7-2 decision on July 9, the Supreme Court sided with Vance in the belief that Trump should not obtain absolute immunity as acting president. But they sent the case to the lower courts for a final decision on the matter of the specific subpoena. That decision means that Trump’s legal team has the right to delay publication of his records before the case is resolved, which could happen after the November presidential election.
On Thursday, William Consovoy, one of the president’s attorneys, rejected Marrero’s skepticism, arguing that Vance’s “tremendously broad citation” was not adapted to the prosecutor’s original investigation and was “literally copied” from Congressional committees that They also searched for Trump’s tax returns.
He said Trump “is still reviewing the subpoena” and his team has not yet decided what arguments they plan to raise in an amended complaint against Vance’s request. Calling legal action a “fishing expedition,” Consovoy argued that Trump was “a target for political reasons.”
He added that while Marrero allowed Vance’s investigation into whether Trump and his company violated state laws with secret payments, he must now “focus on the subpoena itself” and narrow its scope.
Assistant District Attorney Carey Dunne responded, arguing that the president’s legal team did not offer “a single recitation of a single new fact” that would influence the judge’s original ruling, and emphasized that “delayed justice is justice denied.”
“What the president’s attorney is looking for here is delay,” Dunne said, adding that the president achieves some kind of “absolute immunity” with each passing day. “This lawsuit has delayed our collection of evidence. We accept that the President has the right to articulate any new claim, except for constitutional immunity. But there is no special high standard. It’s like I’m a CEO. “
Although the federal judge did not issue judgments on Thursday, he supported the timetable that the two legal parties had previously agreed on. The president will make any arguments he wants about the subpoena at a hearing later this month.
“The position of our office, your honor, is ‘bring it in,'” Dunne said Thursday.
The hearing came a day after Trump’s attorneys, in a joint filing memo with the district attorney’s office, renewed their yearlong effort to block or restrict Vance’s access to the president’s records. In the memo, attorneys argued that Vance’s subpoena was politically motivated and too broad.
“The President, for example, should not be required to litigate the scope of the subpoena or if it was issued in bad faith without understanding the nature and scope of the investigation and why the District Attorney needs all of the documents he has demanded.” said the president. Lawyers said in the 10-page memo. “The parties will likely disagree on the appropriate scope of the discovery.”
Trump has refused to publish his tax returns for years, overriding a precedent set by the previous six presidents. He argued in New York Federal District Court that he could not be subpoenaed in a criminal case because he is an acting president. The president lost several offers last year in lower courts to stop subpoenas.
Avoiding the concept of the inviolability of the King of England person and the limits of the monarch’s protective shield covering the Crown’s actions from legal scrutiny, the Founders rejected any notion that the Constitution generally confers similar immunity to the President. Marrero wrote in an October 2019 opinion denying the Trump blockade and reminding the President’s legal team that the President is not royalty.
Similar to his argument against the large number of Congressional committees that wanted his financial records, Trump argued that the legal measure sought to “compel the production of a huge swath of the President’s personal financial information.” His legal team criticized Vance for “willful rejection[ing] eliminate the president as a target of accusation. “
On Thursday, Dunne emphasized that the president’s lawyers have had more than a year to investigate the facts of his investigation and there was no “attempted harassment.”
He also stressed that his request for subpoena does not weigh on Article II of the Constitution, which establishes the executive branch of the federal government. He said there is no charge because “the Mazars summons is not even delivered to the president. He is not the one who responds. “
“Now that the immunity claims have disappeared, you don’t even have the right to claims that belong only to Mazars. I don’t think a discovery is necessary, ”Dunne said.
A day after the July 9 Supreme Court victory, Marrero asked Trump’s attorneys and district attorney teams to inform him if further action was needed in light of the landmark decision.
Trump’s attorneys, in Wednesday’s memo, revealed that they plan to argue that Vance’s subpoena should be blocked, while the district attorney told Marrero that the president’s team is trying to overcome the limitations of the Court’s ruling. Supreme. However, both sides agreed that the president should present new challenges to the subpoena before July 27.
“It is the president’s position that more procedures are needed,” Trump’s attorneys said in the memo. “In those proceedings, the president will present a second amended complaint in which he will present arguments that the Supreme Court held that he can present in preventive detention.”
On Wednesday, Vance’s office also asked Marrero in the joint memorandum to order the president to present any additional arguments as soon as possible so as not to lose evidence “as a result of the loss of memories or lost documents and the risk that the statutes of Applicable limitations may expire. ” The District Attorney’s Office also asked the Supreme Court on Wednesday to immediately publish its ruling to the lower federal courts, warning that delaying a process that normally takes up to 25 days could frustrate the ability to file criminal charges.
“If the president has anything left to say the ball is now on his court,” the district attorney’s office wrote.
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