President Trump today sued Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance in an effort to block New York prosecutors from obtaining 8 years of his personal and corporate tax returns from his longtime accounting firm, Mazars USA.
Vance’s office had subpoenaed Trump’s tax returns as part of its investigation into hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.
This will be at least the third time Trump has sued to block the release of his tax returns.
Earlier this year, Trump filed a lawsuit against House Democrats and the state of New York over a law that would permit tax officials to turn over Trump’s state tax returns.
Trump, his family and his company also filed a lawsuit against Deutsche Bank to block the bank from complying with congressional subpoenas for their business records.
A federal judge in Manhattan declined their request to block Deutsche Bank, which later confirmed that it is indeed in possession of Trump’s tax returns.
A federal investigation into the payments resulted in Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen pleading guilty to campaign finance violations, and it “effectively concluded” in July with no further charges.
Vance’s office opened a new investigation last month into whether the Trump Organization falsely listed its reimbursement of Cohen for the $130,000 payment to Daniels as a legal expense, which would be illegal under New York law.
Trump pressed GOP presidential nominee Mitt Romney to release his tax returns in 2012.
Breaking from decades of tradition, Trump refused to release his tax returns during the 2016 presidential campaign, claiming that he was under audit but suggesting that someday he may make them public.
He has never released them, and Democrats have been trying to pry them loose for years.
Trying to change the topic, Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One that his predecessor’s mammoth book and movie deals be reviewed by Congress.
Trump suggested Barack Obama’s undisclosed payday was suspiciously high for an amateur filmmaker and argued that the most famed directors and producers didn’t earn the kind of money the Democrat is assumed to be making off his production company.
‘Cecil B. DeMille — if he ever came back from the dead, one of the greats of all-time — he would have loved to have made that deal,’ the sitting president said aboard Air Force One.
He said the former president’s joint $65 million book deal with his wife was also ‘the highest book ever sold, and there were many other things that he did.
‘So, I think somebody should — if they’re going to be looking at me over nonsense, they should certainly be looking at that also,’ he told reporters flying with him from California.