President Donald J. Trump and Attorney General William Barr depart after delivering remarks on citizenship and the census in the Rose Garden at the White House on Thursday, July 11th, 2019 in Washington, DC.
Jabin Botsford | The Washington Post | Getty Images
The Justice Department on Wednesday said in a court filing that it wants a federal judge, rather than a New York state judge, to decide whether President Donald Trump can block the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office from getting his personal and corporate tax returns with a grand jury subpoena.
The filing by the Justice Department with Manhattan federal court Judge Victor Marrero did not take a position on whether the subpoena for Trump’s tax returns is valid.
Instead, the department argues that there are “weighty constitutional issues involved” that are more appropriately decided by a federal judge, Marrero, as opposed to a state one.
The filings said that blocking the subpoena until Marrero can rule on those issues “will prevent irreparable harm to the President’s asserted constitutional interests in not having his records subjected to state criminal compulsory process in these circumstances.”
The Justice Department says that such a delay will give the department time to file briefs on the question of the validity of a subpoena for a sitting president’s tax returns.
The filing came in response to Marrero’s directive to federal prosecutors last week to declare if they had an opinion about the issue.
Manhattan DA Cyrus Vance Jr.’s office in August got a grand jury to issue a subpoena demanding eight years of Trump’s tax returns from his accounting firm, Mazars USA, as part of an ongoing criminal investigation.
Vance is investigating how the Trump Organization accounted for hush money payments by others shortly before the 2016 presidential election to two women, porn star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal, to keep them quiet about their alleged sexual trysts with Trump.
The president denies having sex with either woman.
