The United States Supreme Court has denied a request from former President Donald J. Trump to block Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. from enforcing a subpoena for his personal and professional tax records, dealing a major blow to the former president.
No dissents were published from the high court.
The court’s order is a win for Manhattan District Attorney Vance, who has been seeking Trump’s tax records since 2019 as part of an investigation. Vance, a Democrat, had subpoenaed the records from the Mazars accounting firm that has long done work for Trump and his businesses. Mazars has said it would comply with the subpoena, but Trump sued to block the records’ release.
In a short statement issued after the court’s decision, District Attorney Vance wrote: “The work continues.”
Vance’s office had said it would be free to enforce the subpoena and obtain the records in the event the Supreme Court declined to step in and halt the records’ turnover, but it was unclear when that might happen.
The decision caps off an 8-year battle into the former president and business magnate’s taxes that had previously reached the Supreme Court.
Trump’s tax records are not supposed to become public as part of prosecutor’s criminal investigation, but the high court’s action is a blow to Trump because he has for so long fought on so many fronts to keep his tax records shielded from view. The ongoing investigation the records are part of could also become an issue for Trump in his life after the presidency.
In the past, Trump has called it “a fishing expedition” and “a continuation of the witch hunt — the greatest witch hunt in history,” which the former president echoed in a statement released Monday following the court’s decision.
“This investigation is a continuation of the greatest political Witch Hunt in the history of our Country,” Trump said, before slamming special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian collusion, as well as the two impeachment trials against him, the most of any president in history.
“For more than two years, New York City has been looking at almost every transaction I’ve ever done, including seeking tax returns which were done by among the biggest and most prestigious law and accounting firms in the U.S.,” Trump claimed, adding: “The Supreme Court never should have let this ‘fishing expedition’ happen, but they did.”
The former president went on to accuse this investigation of being “all Democrat-inspired in a totally Democrat location, New York City and State, completely controlled and dominated by a heavily reported enemy of mine, Governor Andrew Cuomo” and pledged to “fight on.”
The Supreme Court, which includes three Trump appointees, waited months to act in the case. The last of the written briefs in the case was filed Oct. 19, but the court waited through the election, Trump’s challenge to his defeat and a month after Trump left office before issuing its order.
The court offered no explanation for the delay, and the legal issue before the justices did not involve whether Trump was due any special deference because he was president.
The case the high court ruled in involves a grand jury subpoena for more than eight years of Trump’s personal and corporate tax records. Vance has disclosed little about what prompted him to request the records. In one court filing last year, however, prosecutors said they were justified in demanding the records because of public reports of “possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization.”
Part of the probe involves payments to two women — adult film actress Stormy Daniels and model Karen McDougal — to keep them quiet during the 2016 presidential campaign about alleged extramarital affairs with Trump. Trump has denied the affairs.
The court Monday also rejected an appeal from Daniels who sought to revive her defamation suit against Trump, leaving in place a lower court ruling dismissing the case.
In July, the justices in a 7-2 ruling rejected Trump’s argument that the president is immune from investigation while he holds office or that a prosecutor must show a greater need than normal to obtain the tax records.
Justices Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, whom Trump nominated to the high court, joined that decision, which was issued before Trump’s third nominee, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, replaced the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court.
As part of its July decision, the high court returned the Vaace case and a similar case involving records sought by Congress to lower courts. And the court prevented the records from being turned over while the cases proceeded.
Since the high court’s ruling, in the Vance case, Trump’s attorneys made additional arguments that his tax records should not be turned over, but they lost again in federal court in New York and on appeal. It was those rulings that Trump had sought to put on hold.
In another decision issued Monday, the court declined to hear a lawsuit from Pennsylvania Republicans about the state’s extended mail-in ballot date.
Conservative justices Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch dissented.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
