A federal judge in New York ruled that Trump can’t stop his accountants, Mazars USA LLP, from turning over eight years of taxes and other financial documents to Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr., whose office is investigating whether the Trump Organization falsified business records related to hush-money payments. The judge called Trump’s claim that as president he can’t be investigated “repugnant to the nation’s governmental structure and constitutional values.”
The president filed an emergency appeal with a federal appeals court. Unless he can win a delay by a 1 p.m. deadline previously agreed to by his lawyers, Vance may soon start receiving at least some of the material. But Trump may also have another avenue open to him if he pursues a separate lawsuit in state court, which is where the judge said the case should have been brought in the first place.
Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor and partner at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler in New York, said the ruling was clear.
“The court was unwilling to accord the type of absolute immunity Trump’s lawyers asked for,” said Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor and partner at Patterson, Belknap, Webb & Tyler in New York. “The founders meant to give us a president, not a king.”