Former President Donald Trump’s tax records have been turned over to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. following the Supreme Court’s rejection of the ex-president’s last-ditch effort to keep the documents shielded.
A spokesperson for Vance, Danny Frost, confirmed that a subpoena was enforced on Monday against Trump’s longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA, hours after the nation’s highest court rejected Trump’s appeal.
The subpoena demanded Trump’s personal and corporate records dating to 2011, including his tax returns. Trump bucked modern precedent by refusing to release his tax returns to the public even as he mounted two campaigns for the presidency.
A spokesperson for the former president did not immediately provide comment Thursday. After the court allowed the transfer, Trump pledged to “fight on” and said Vance was pursuing a “fishing expedition.”
The long-running investigation has been closely guarded. Early reports suggested that the DA was looking into hush money payments made on Trump’s behalf to women who alleged affairs with the real estate magnate. Trump denied the affairs.
After that ruling, Trump’s attorneys continued to fight the subpoena on the grounds that it was overly broad and issued in bad faith, but lower courts rejected those claims. In October, Trump’s attorneys once again asked the Supreme Court to step in, but the court wrote in a one-line order on Monday that it would not do so.
Vance’s possession of Trump’s tax records does not guarantee that the public will ever learn what they contain. The records were obtained in connection with a grand jury investigation, and New York state law requires that grand jury proceedings are confidential. It is likely that the only way the public will see the records is if Vance ultimately brings charges and includes portions of the records in charging documents.
In other news – Somizi Puts eNCA on Blast #eNCAMUSTFALL
Somizi Mhlongo-Motaung has taken to his social media account to slam South Africa’s independent news channel eNCA.
The 24-hour television news broadcaster has come under fire. This comes after a clip of its political reporter, Lindsay Dentlinger, getting reactions from politicians outside the parliament during a post-budget speech interview that went viral on social media, and it left many people foaming at the mouth. Learn more
Source: cnbc
