The Manhattan district attorney’s office on Monday accused President Trump and his lawyers of trying to invent a “new presidential ‘tax return’ privilege” by arguing that Mr. Trump should not have to comply with a subpoena seeking eight years of his personal and corporate returns.

The district attorney’s office used the pointed language in court papers, asking that a lawsuit filed by Mr. Trump last week be dismissed. Mr. Trump sued in federal court to block a subpoena issued by the district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., to the president’s accounting firm that seeks his tax returns dating to 2011.

Citing constitutional grounds, lawyers for Mr. Trump argued in their lawsuit that a sitting president could not be criminally investigated and said that forcing him to comply with the subpoena would cause him “irreparable harm.”

In its response, the district attorney’s office noted that Mr. Trump did not go to court to stop two recent criminal investigations that focused on him or his family business, one by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and the other by federal prosecutors in Manhattan.

The only difference, Mr. Vance’s office argued, was that its criminal investigation involved securing the president’s tax returns.

The president “is, in fact, seeking to invent and enforce a new presidential ‘tax return privilege,’ on the theory that disclosing information in a tax return will necessarily reveal information that will somehow impede the functioning of a president,” Mr. Vance’s office wrote.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers have argued that the investigation by the office of Mr. Vance, a Democrat, is politically motivated. Lawyers for Mr. Trump and his company declined to comment on Monday.

Prosecutors in Mr. Vance’s office are examining the role that Mr. Trump and the family business, the Trump Organization, played in hush-money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election.

Both Mr. Trump and his company reimbursed Michael D. Cohen, the president’s former lawyer and fixer, for money that Mr. Cohen paid to buy the silence of Stormy Daniels, an adult film actress who said she had an affair with Mr. Trump. The president has denied the affair. Although federal prosecutors have said that their inquiry is “effectively concluded,” Mr. Vance’s office is exploring whether any state laws were broken.

Mr. Cohen, who last year pleaded guilty to violating federal campaign finance laws, is currently serving a three-year sentence for his role in the scheme.

In an effort to rebut the claim by Mr. Trump that turning over his tax returns would cause him “irreparable harm,” the district attorney’s office said that “every president since Jimmy Carter has voluntarily released his tax returns before or upon taking office, which has to date never impeded a president’s ability to serve.”

Mr. Vance’s office also said Mr. Trump’s lawsuit belonged in state court, not before a federal judge.

Mr. Trump said during the 2016 campaign that he would make his tax returns public but has since refused to disclose them. His lawyers have gone to great lengths to keep his personal financial information under wraps. They have sued to block attempts by congressional Democrats and New York lawmakers to gain access to his tax returns and financial records. They also successfully challenged a California law requiring presidential primary candidates to release their tax returns.

Judge Victor Marrero is scheduled to hear arguments in the latest case in Federal District Court in Manhattan on Wednesday.

Mr. Vance’s office issued the subpoena to Mr. Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA, on Aug. 29, seeking a wide range of business documents, including eight years of the president’s personal and corporate tax returns. A spokeswoman for Mazars did not respond to a request for comment.

In their court papers, Mr. Trump’s lawyers asked Judge Marrero to declare the subpoena invalid until the president leaves office and to prevent Mazars from disclosing the information.

Justice Department memos written during the Nixon and Clinton administrations bar federal prosecutors from charging a sitting president with a crime. Mr. Trump’s lawyers went further in their lawsuit, arguing that a sitting president cannot be “investigated, indicted or otherwise subjected to criminal process.”

“Criminal investigations impose severe burdens on the president and distract him from his constitutional duties,” Mr. Trump’s lawyers wrote.

They said the subpoena was “a bad-faith effort to harass the president by obtaining and exposing his confidential financial information, not a legitimate attempt to enforce New York law.”

The district attorney’s office said Mr. Trump’s claim that the office intended to expose the president’s personal financial information was “purely speculative — and, frankly, outrageous.”

The prosecutors also sought to rebut Mr. Trump’s argument that if Judge Marrero did not intervene and the president’s accounting firm was forced to turn over his returns, even if a court later reversed that decision, “there will be no way to unring the bell.”

In such a case, the prosecutors argued, “that bell could absolutely be ‘unrung,’ so to speak,” saying that they would have a legal and ethical obligation to keep Mr. Trump’s materials confidential, by not using them in any investigation and by returning or destroying them.

Benjamin Weiser is a reporter covering the Manhattan federal courts. He has long covered criminal justice, both as a beat and investigative reporter. Before joining The Times in 1997, he worked at The Washington Post. @BenWeiserNYT

William K. Rashbaum is a senior writer on the Metro desk, where he covers political and municipal corruption, courts, terrorism and broader law enforcement topics. He was a part of the team awarded the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for breaking news. @WRashbaum • Facebook

Source: Read Full Article