Donald Trump was hit with a lawsuit on Thursday by Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance, who just last month subpoenaed eight years of Trump’s tax returns. This is yet another front in Trump’s ever-widening legal battle to keep his finances and tax returns a secret.
According to Vice News, this latest fight is about more than his taxes: In sweeping language, Trump claims immunity from any kind of criminal investigation. His lawyers argue the Constitution gives a sitting president way too much responsibility to let him be investigated by prosecutors, of any stripe, while he is in office.
The complaint states a sitting president cannot “be investigated, indicted or otherwise subjected to the criminal process.”
If successful in the long run, Trump’s claim would mark a massive power-grab, which goes beyond the federal policy against criminally charging a sitting president. The assertion would give Trump and all of his affiliates a free pass from even having to answer questions from any prosecutors as long as he’s in office, according to the report.
A Department of Justice policy bans the indictment of a sitting president on federal charges. However, the Supreme Court has never touched on whether a president can be indicted or investigated by a state official.
Paul Rosenzweig, a former member of Ken Starr’s investigation into former President Bill Clinton says the argument looks unlikely to win in court.
“It cannot be the case that, as a matter of law, everybody associated with the president is immune from criminal investigation while he’s the president. But taken at its fullest, that’s what the president’s argument is,” Rosenzweig said to VICE News.
Trump’s new lawsuit aims to impede Vance’s subpoena for eight years worth of tax returns from Mazars USA, Trump’s longtime accounting firm, on the grounds that he can’t be investigated regardless.
“Because the Mazars subpoena attempts to criminally investigate a sitting President, it is unconstitutional,” Trump’s complaint read, and continued to accuse New York State officials of waging a “campaign to harass the president.”
Vance has subpoenaed both The Trump Organization and Mazars for a vast pile of records as part of an investigation into hush-money payments made during his 2016 campaign to women who claim they had been intimate with Trump.
It also details the items in which they ask, documents, and communications related to:
Payments made to Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, who say they had affairs with Trump
Trump’s son Don Jr.
Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg
Trump’s former attorney, Michael Cohen
Trump’s former spokeswoman, Hope Hicks
The National Enquirer, which bought Karen McDougal’s story but never ran it
And more.
“I think it’s clear that the president is engaged in an effort to conceal and delay,” said Rosenzweig. “It’s hard to say whether that’s because there’s something bad there, or because his entire life indicates a general instinct to conceal and delay.”
However, Trump is seemingly hopeful the Supreme Court will be on his side after he helped push the conservative majority of the court with the appointments of Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch.
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