The Second Circuit Court of Appeals will not issue a preliminary injunction that would have allowed President Donald Trump to keep his tax returns from a subpoena that was issued by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, and his personal attorney said the matter will now rest in the hands of the Supreme Court.
“The decision of the Second Circuit will be taken to the Supreme Court. The issue raised in this case goes to the heart of our Republic. The constitutional issues are significant,” Jay Sekulow, counsel to the president, said in a statement to news outlets shortly after the Second Court rendered its decision.
The president’s team has said they are attempting to shield tax returns from the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office, headed by Cyrus Vance Jr., who is investigating payments made to two women.
Trump had sued Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. in September over a subpoena that was sent to Trump’s accounting company, Mazars USA, for eight years of tax returns. Vance is seeking eight years’ worth of Trump’s tax returns.
But the Second Appeals Court, located in Manhattan, said it has “no occasion to decide today the precise contours and limitations of presidential immunity from prosecution, and we express no opinion on the applicability of any such immunity under circumstances not presented here.”
It added, “Instead, after reviewing historical and legal precedent, we conclude only that presidential immunity does not bar the enforcement of a state grand jury subpoena directing a third party to produce non-privileged material, even when the subject matter under investigation pertains to the president.”
Amid the grappling over his tax returns, last month, Trump said that what is happening to him is unprecedented.
“The Radical Left Democrats have failed on all fronts, so now they are pushing local New York City and State Democrat prosecutors to go get President Trump,” Trump wrote on Twitter in October. “A thing like this has never happened to any President before. Not even close!”
In early October, the Department of Justice also wrote in a court filing that it supports President Trump’s lawsuit looking for relief from a subpoena issued by Vance, a Democrat.
It said in a statement on Oct. 2: “The United States participates now to explain why it is both correct and important that the president’s challenge to the subpoena on account of his office be resolved in federal court rather than in state court, and to support interim relief as necessary to allow for appropriate briefing of the weighty constitutional issues involved.”
