Trump’s Attorneys Ask Supreme Court To Stop Release Of Tax Returns

President Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally at Orlando Sanford International Airport. AP Photo/Evan Vucci

Donald Trump’s attorneys are asking the Supreme Court for an emergency stay to block the release of his tax returns.

The request comes after a federal appellate court ruled last week that Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance could obtain the financial information from Trump’s accountant, Mazars USA, via a grand jury subpoena.

In their application for a stay, Trump’s attorneys argue that the subpoena is overly broad and in bad faith.

“A demand for virtually every financial record of a global corporation and its owner is of course plausibly overbroad if the grand jury is focused on certain payments made in 2016,” they write. “Likewise, the subpoena was plausibly issued in bad faith if the District Attorney copied a congressional subpoena with no good-faith effort to properly tailor it to his investigative needs.” (Read it here.)

His attorneys contend that the grand jury inquiry has to do with the payments that Trump’s then-attorney Michael Cohen made in 2016. Those were the so-called “hush money” payments made to two women who claim to have had sexual relations with Trump in 2006, claims that he has denied.

Trump’s attorneys argue that the appeals court made “gave the District Attorney the benefit of the doubt at every turn” and “made the president shoulder the heavy burden of negating every speculative inference that might conceivably justify issuing a broad subpoena copied from Congress.”

The Supreme Court ruled in July that Trump did not have presidential immunity from complying with the subpoena, but that he could challenge it on other grounds.