The Manhattan district attorney can now obtain US President Donald Trump’s personal and corporate tax returns, a federal appeals court has ruled, dealing a blow to the president whose tax returns has been hidden from the public since he entered politics.
The unanimous ruling made on Wednesday, October 7, by a three-judge panel in New York, rejected Trump’s legal team’s arguments that the subpoena should be blocked because it was too broad and amounted to political harassment from the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., a Democrat.
The judges wrote. “Grand juries must necessarily paint with a broad brush. None of the president’s allegations, taken together or separately, are sufficient to raise a plausible inference that the subpoena was issued out of malice or an intent to harass,” they wrote.
The subpoena is part of an investigation focused on Trump and his business. The subpoena also seeks accounting records and communications between the president and Mazars.