Former President Donald Trump’s tax returns and underlying tax documents are now in the hands of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, reports NBC.
Donald John Trump is an American media personality, businessman, and politician who served as the 45th president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.
The subpoena for Trump’s tax documents from Mazars USA was enforced on Monday and Vance’s office now has them, a spokesperson for Vance’s office, Danny Frost, told NBC News on Thursday.
The subpoena was enforced after the Supreme Court declined on Monday to stop their production following an emergency application from Trump’s attorneys.
A subpoena is a writ ordering a person to attend a court.
In that ruling Monday, the high court declined to block a New York grand jury from getting Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, a decisive defeat in his long legal battle to keep his tax records out of investigators’ hands.
The ruling doesn’t mean the returns will become public any time soon, and they might never be publicly released. Under New York state law, materials turned over to a grand jury must be kept secret.
But Vance has now compelled Trump’s accountants to turn over the records that Trump has steadfastly refused to surrender to prosecutors or Congress.
In July, the Supreme Court rejected Trump’s contention that as a sitting president he was immune from any part of the criminal justice system — including grand jury investigations. But the decision said he could go back to the lower courts to make the same arguments available to anyone who is trying to defeat a subpoena.
