Politics- A federal judge on Thursday struck down President
Donald Trump 's effort to block Manhattan prosecutors from obtaining his tax returns. - The Supreme Court ruled last month that the Manhattan DA's subpoena for eight years of Trump's tax returns was valid but said his lawyers could still raise legal and constitutional objections in lower courts.
- Trump's lawyers subsequently asked a federal judge in New York to toss out the subpoena, arguing that it was overly broad and that Trump has absolute immunity from being investigated while in office.
- On Thursday, US District Judge Victor Marrero dismissed Trump's attempt and said it was "as unprecedented and far-reaching as it is perilous to the rule of law and other bedrock constitutional principles on which this country was founded and by which it continues to be governed."
A federal judge on Thursday dismissed President Donald Trump's effort to block Manhattan prosecutors from obtaining his closely held tax returns.
US District Judge Victor Marrero called Trump's legal attempt "as unprecedented and far-reaching as it is perilous to the rule of law and other bedrock constitutional principles on which this country was founded and by which it continues to be governed."
The Manhattan DA's office, headed by District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., is in a drawn-out legal battle with the president over its investigation into illegal hush-money payments made to the adult film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election.
Vance is investigating whether the Trump Organization violated any state laws while facilitating the payments to Daniels. Trump's former longtime lawyer, Michael Cohen, accused the president and senior executives at his company of engaging in "financial fraud" while coordinating the payments.
New York prosecutors subpoenaed eight years of Trump's personal tax returns after Cohen's testimony. Trump, in turn, sought to block the subpoena by arguing that a sitting president is immune from criminal investigation or prosecution.
The Supreme Court ruled last month that the Manhattan DA's subpoena is valid but noted that Trump could still raise constitutional and legal objections to the subpoena in court. Trump's lawyers subsequently asked Marrero to toss out the subpoena, arguing that he has absolute immunity and that the subpoena is overly broad because it seeks eight years of the president's tax returns when the investigation itself is primarily centered around the 2016 hush-money payments.
On Thursday, Marrero referenced previous legal arguments the president's team made before the court in which they said that hypothetically, even if Trump were to shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue — an example Trump first brought up during the 2016 election — he would be immune from prosecutorial scrutiny.
"They declared that under their theory of temporary absolute immunity, even if the President (presumably any president) while in office were to shoot a person in the middle of New York's Fifth Avenue, he or she would be shielded from law enforcement investigations and judicial proceedings of any kind, federal or state, until the expiration of the President's term," Marrero wrote on Thursday. "Short of that time laps, they argued, 'nothing could be done' by the authorities to prosecute the crime."
"As this Court suggested in its earlier ruling in this litigation, that notion, applied as so robustly claimed by the President's advocates, is as unprecedented and far-reaching as it is perilous to the rule of law and other bedrock constitutional principles on which this country was founded and by which it continues to be governed," the ruling said.