President Trump, seeking to block a subpoena for his tax returns, plans to ask a federal judge to order the Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., to disclose details about his investigation into the presidents business practices, according to a letter filed on Monday.

The letter, which Mr. Trumps lawyers wrote to the federal judge in Manhattan, was in response to a filing from prosecutors in Mr. Vances office, who argued last week that they had wide legal basis to subpoena eight years of the presidents tax records and other financial documents.

The office suggested it was investigating the president and his company for possible bank and insurance fraud, a significantly broader inquiry than prosecutors had acknowledged in the past.

In their letter, Mr. Trumps lawyers asked for a hearing to discuss whether Mr. Vances office should be forced to disclose the justifications for the subpoena. The presidents lawyers, who have called the subpoena wildly overbroad and the investigation politically motivated, said the prosecutors should be required to show that each item requested in the subpoena is relevant to their investigation and within their jurisdiction.

In a separate filing, they wrote that even if Mr. Vances office were conducting a sprawling inquiry into financial crimes, the subpoena was still too broad.

If anything, it shows that the district attorney is still fishing for a way to justify his harassment of the president, Mr. Trumps lawyers wrote.

They noted that the subpoena asked for every document and communication related to the president and his businesses over about the last decade and simply copied a congressional subpoena seeking the same information.

A spokesman for the Manhattan district attorneys office declined to comment. The office has previously accused Mr. Trump of employing delay tactics in order to run out the clock on the statute of limitations for bringing any possible criminal charges.

The filings were the latest salvo in the nearly yearlong fight over the tax records between Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance, a Democrat. Mr. Vances office was expected to file a response by Friday.

Until recently, the district attorneys inquiry appeared largely focused on hush-money payments made in the run-up to the 2016 presidential election to two women who said they had affairs with Mr. Trump.

But in a court filing last week, Mr. Vances office suggested for the first time that its investigation was focused on possible fraud. The office cited several newspaper articles in describing what it called public reports of possibly extensive and protracted criminal conduct at the Trump Organization, the presidents company.

In their response, lawyers for the president said Mr. Vances office had initially subpoenaed the Trump Organization for information related to the payments, leading to a dispute about whether the company was required to hand over tax returns.

Mr. Trumps lawyers wrote that Mr. Vance, in a fit of pique, then subpoenaed the presidents accounting firm, Mazars USA, for the tax returns. The lawyers argued that the request was issued in bad faith because it was identical to a subpoena from a House committee.

They said Mr. Vance requested documents that went beyond his New York jurisdiction, including business records and transactions for entities in India and Ireland.

In their letter to the judge, Victor Marrero of the Federal District Court in Manhattan, Mr. Trumps lawyers wrote that Mr. Vance refuses to disclose to the president the nature of the grand jury investigation and has offered shifting reasons for why he copied a congressional subpoena.

Andrew M. Lankler, a veteran white-collar criminal defense lawyer who served in the district attorneys office in the 1990s, said Mr. Trumps lawyers were facing an uphill battle in their latest strategy to fight the subpoena.

The seeking of discovery is an interesting tactic, though unlikely to succeed, given that the issue at hand is limited in scope namely whether the D.A.s office has discretion to issue broad grand jury subpoenas, which it does, he said.

If the judge were to grant the presidents request, it is not clear whether any details about the nature of the investigation would eventually be released publicly.

The investigation by Mr. Vances office began two years ago but has proceeded only in fits and starts. A senior official in Mr. Vances office recently told Judge Marrero that the tax returns were central evidence in its investigation.

Mr. Trump first sued to block the subpoena last year, arguing that a sitting president was immune from state criminal investigations.

The case reached the Supreme Court, which last month ruled against Mr. Trump by a vote of 7 to 2.

No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.

But the decision opened the door for Mr. Trump to return to the lower court and raise other objections to the subpoena. The president raised his new arguments in a filing last month.

The Mazars subpoena is so sweeping, Mr. Trumps lawyers wrote, that it amounts to an unguided and unlawful fishing expedition into the presidents personal financial and business dealings.

The New York Times reported that last year Mr. Vances office also had issued a separate subpoena to Deutsche Bank, the presidents longtime lender, seeking records that Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization provided to the bank when he sought loans. The bank complied with the request, The Times said.

Even should Mr. Vance obtain the presidents tax returns, they are not likely to become public in the foreseeable future. They would be shielded by grand jury secrecy and might only surface if charges were later filed and they were introduced as evidence in a trial.

See the rest here:

Trump Moves to Force Manhattan D.A. to Reveal Details of Inquiry - The New York Times