U.S. President Donald Trump delivers remarks at Young Black Leadership Summit at the White House in Washington, U.S., October 4, 2019. REUTERS/Yuri Gripas
October 7, 2019
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A federal judge on Monday rejected Donald Trump’s request to block Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance from enforcing a subpoena for eight years of tax returns related to a criminal probe into the U.S. President and his family business.
U.S. District Judge Victor Marrero in Manhattan decided to abstain from resolving the dispute, and therefore dismissed Trump’s lawsuit.
Vance had subpoenaed the returns and other records from Trump’s longtime accounting firm Mazars USA.
Marrero also criticized Trump for advancing what the judge called an argument that the president, his family and businesses “associated with him in potentially unlawful private activities, are in fact above the law.”
Trump’s lawyers had adopted the broad position that the president was immune from being subjected to a criminal probe while in office, and that the U.S. Constitution required Vance to wait until after Trump left the White House.
(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; Editing by Catherine Evans and Alison Williams)
