Trump lawyers: DA's fight for tax returns built on innuendo
NEW YORK (AP) — A New York prosecutor engaged in a long-running battle to obtain Donald Trump’s tax returns is resorting to “speculation and innuendo” to justify his demands, the president's lawyers argued in court papers filed Thursday on the eve of an appeals court showdown.
The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals is scheduled to hear arguments Friday after a district court judge last month rejected Trump's renewed efforts to invalidate a subpoena that the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. issued to the president's accounting firm.
Trump's lawyers maintain that the subpoena was issued in bad faith and is overly broad. In Thursday's filing, they argued that aside from acknowledging an inquiry into money paid to two women who alleged affairs with Trump, Vance's office hasn't specified why it needs eight years of the president's corporate and personal tax returns.
Vance’s office argued in court papers earlier in the week that there’s “a mountainous record” of public allegations of misconduct to support its efforts to obtain Trump’s tax returns, such as news reports alleging Trump or his companies inflated or minimized the value of assets for business and tax purposes.
“But this is all misdirection,” Trump’s lawyers wrote. “(Vance) nowhere claims that his office is actually investigating any of the discredited, state, and recycled allegations of wrongdoing that are recounted in the press reports he has compiled.”
Vance's office declined comment on the latest Trump filing.
Trump’s lawyers are objecting to the breadth and scope of the subpoenas as they start the appellate process again after the Supreme Court in July rejected their initial argument that the presidency in and of itself shields Trump from the investigation.
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